aurelius wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 11:51 am
My understanding: This was a work place accident where proper procedure was not followed by multiple people including the deceased. Would they not have to prove gross negligence to go after Baldwin personally? I understand gross negligence to be a high bar.
I don't believe you are correct. Amateur legal opinions follow:
Let's be careful with terminology. Most jurisdictions have 'negligence' and 'recklessness'.
Negligence meaning you have a duty to act with due care and don't, including by honest mistake or accident. Simple negligence is not usually criminal*, but is usually sufficient for civil liability if it results in harm.
Recklessness means you willfully disregarded some important standard of care or safety. Recklessness is normally the threshold for criminal* jeopardy, but of course can still result in civil liability as well. I assume you are using "gross negligence" to mean recklessness and not simple negligence.
That an accident occurs in the workplace does not shield the individual actor from liability. It is probably often the true that for a significant injury to happen in a modern workplace, there probably were more than one rule that was broken leading up to the mistake, and thus it is easier to argue the case against the organization than any one individual. But there is nothing that would prevent you from, say, personally suing a crane operator who dropped a beam on your foot through simple negligence. However this doesn't usually happen because the employer usually has the deepest pockets, either in sufficient insurance or assets to satisfy the damages, and certainly more than you would get from the operator personally. And as long as it was simple negligence, the operator also won't likely be criminally charged.
The Baldwin case is atypical because Alec Baldwin most likely has far more assets than the shell company that was making Rust. Hence the suit of him personally, which I believe alleges simple negligence. Presumably this was filed by a competent attorney who would know if it was fundamentally possible to sue an individual for negligence in the workplace. Not that that means the suit will be successful but you can generally assume that decent attorneys are not going to miss basic questions of whether a court has personal jurisdiction.
*Relevant: negligence CAN be nominally criminal if a statute says it is... there are plenty of such statutes, often involving negligence in the use of a dangerous object like a car or a gun. Crimes of simple negligence are usually misdemeanors if there aren't aggravating factors.