Bottled water company sued in Indiana worker's death

WTHR-13 (Indianapolis) ^ | 9/1/10 | n/a

[DemforBush]

Franklin - The family of a woman who died after a pallet of bottled water fell on her at a Kroger store in central Indiana is suing the water bottler, arguing a new eco-friendly bottle design might have contributed to the accident...

[tiki]

eco-friendly

Sue algore and the environazis.

[ExpatCanuck]

My guess is the woman in question did something to precipitate the pallet's fall on her.

Yeah, she was standing where it fell. Do you buy bottled water and have you seen the new 'eco-friendly' bottles? They are much thinner that the older bottles, but they still pack the same number of bottles (hence the same weight of water) into each pack and by default onto each pallet. Someone could have overstacked them, or they just collapsed from the weight. Honestly, what the heck could she have been doing to make it fall on her?

[Malsua]

Honestly, what the heck could she have been doing to make it fall on her?

Bumped it with a hand jack or a cart? Enough to crinkle a few on her side of it and down it comes. Clearly it was overly stacked for the packaging.

[Malsua]

“a pint's a pound the world around”.

Pretty much. I always just rough calculate it to 8lbs a gallon. Its a few ounces more than that depending on temperature so it really only matters if you're dealing with large volumes and where a structure needs to support it.

[tiki]

eco-friendly

Sue algore and the environazis.

[Mobties]

“Clearly it was overly stacked for the packaging.”

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If that’s so, it should be easy to duplicate in the parking lot outside the court room .... or by looking at the shipping records for these pallets to see how many hundreds or thousands of times such a “fall” occurred.

Frankly, I don’t see how anything is “clear” at this point except perhaps that the journalist got his/her story from the tort lawyer handling the woman’s, or rather her surviving spouse’s, lawsuit.

[Right Wing Assault]

Your answer is crazy. How does “Two pints in a quart, four quarts in a gallon” give 250,000 gallons??

You are multiplying when you should be dividing.

The pallet was 4100 pounds as they reported. A gallon of water weighs 8 pounds. So the pallet had about 500 gallons on it.

[Mobties]

Sorry, I couldn’t get the article to download and was working off one of the posts that spoke of 250,000 units/pints.

If the weight was quoted as 4,100 pounds I’d say you’re right in assuming 500 gallons of water (4,000 pints) and another 100 pounds for the pallet and packaging.

[Clarksville]

It would be interesting to try and recreate this, there are many things to consider along with the bottle. How was the load stacked, evenly or off to one side? Did something (like a forklift) damage one side of the bottom pallet, weakening one side causing it to topple. How many pallets high were the pallet stacked (typically designed for 3 high stacking in the warehouse safely). Rarely does a pallet collapse “quickly” due to too much weight, usually you see it coming.
In any case condolences to the family.