Roger and Tami Nash
5195
Mount
February 26, 2004
Ardell
DeBerg - CEO
TLC
Companies, Inc.
Suite 350
Mr. DeBerg,
In May 27,
1999, one of your employees was responsible for the death of our 17-year-old
son, Justin and three other members of our church. As you are probably aware,
we have been involved for over four years in litigation against your company
that recently ended with the Alabama Supreme Court ruling against the families
of the four victims that were killed.
Congratulations
on your “victory”.
Needless to
say, we are very disappointed with their ruling. I hope that you can understand
that our family has suffered a loss that is beyond description. To a parent,
there is no pain that is greater than to lose a child to such a senseless
death. You will never understand the full extent of our loss. Justin was a fine
Christian young man. He was handsome, polite, intelligent and very talented. In
fact, all of those killed by your employee where wonderful, godly people.
Connie was a college professor who was molding young minds to be good
productive citizens. Jeannine was a loving grandmother who was an unmovable
example of strength and faith, not only to her family, but to everyone who knew
her. And Justin and Josh where two fine young men who had their whole lives
ahead of them and would have made this world a better place.
Whenever
this type of tragedy takes place, there are many more victims involved than
just those who were killed. We have a lifetime of grief and pain ahead of us.
We brought
this suit, not because we were after money, but because we wanted justice, and
we had hoped that a successful lawsuit would cause your industry to rethink the
way you do business. We would gladly give you anything, if only you would give
Justin back to us. But of course, there is no one who can bring him back and
nothing you can do to compensate for our loss.
If we cannot have Justin back, we at least
wanted to make everyone that contributed to his death be held accountable for
their mistakes. But from the very
beginning, you have refused to acknowledge any responsibility or to consider
that there may have been something that you could have done to prevent this
tragedy.
You are
probably already saying to yourself, “It was not our fault”, “We had nothing to
do with this wreck”, and “Roger Walker was not our employee”. That attitude is part of the problem. Nothing
will change until you can see the role that your company plays in fostering an
atmosphere of indifference about the quality of truck drivers that are hired
for you.
It is our
hope that this letter might help you to see how your
policies, or the lack of policies, contributed to the wreck, and that you might
make the necessary changes to help insure that no other family goes through the
nightmare that we are going through.
There are
several things that your company did that contributed to Justin’s death. Many
of the problems stem from your desire to inflate the actual value of your
services. While facing the victim’s families in the courtroom, it was stated
over and over by ATS that they were “just a payroll company”, but your
advertising, sales info, and web sites list the supposed benefits and services
of employee leasing, such as removing from the trucking companies much of the
responsibility for verifying that the drivers meet all the DOT regulations and
other safety requirements. In our case, even though the driver listed on his
application that he had been fired from his previous employer, Mercer, the
owner of the small trucking company, felt no need to contact the previous
employer because that was something that your company, as the “employer of
record” was to do.
The DOT
regulations give you a maximum of 30 days to contact previous employers, but of
course if there are reasons to be concerned about a possible safety issue, you
have the right to contact them before the driver is put on the road. Mercer was
made to feel that he did not need to worry about background checks, employer
verification, or other the “hassles” of having employees. That was why he hired
the services of an employee leasing company.
I hope you
can see that your company has a complete lack of policies about how to deal
with possible safety concerns when hiring new employees and that this lack of
policy contributed to our son’s death.
In fact,
everything about the agreements between your company and your clients, and the
agreements between your company and your employees, seem to be custom tailored
to cause everyone involved to believe that you consider yourself the “sole
employer”, and completely responsible for the employees you hire.
Can’t you
understand why, after reading the enclosed ‘employment acceptance agreement’,
we felt that ATS should be held responsible for the actions of Roger Walker?
Why would you have your employee sign this form, and then claim that he is not
your employee? Your whole industry seems to be built on a dishonest foundation
that is geared to take advantage of loop-holes in the employment laws, but in
doing so, you have also opened up loop-holes that allow unsafe drivers to get
on the road and kill innocent people.
At the very
lest, please put into place a policy that instructs the motor carrier not to
allow an employee, that has be terminated by his previous employer, to drive
until the previous employer has be contacted to learn the reason for the
termination. In our case,
Please make
some changes in the way you do business; maybe the life you save will be your
child.
It would
help very much if you would let us know of the changes that you have made. In
fact, after nearly 5 years of silence, it would be helpful just to hear the
words “I’m sorry.
Sincerely,
Roger and
Tami Nash
www.JustinNash.com
Cc. Rodney Jordan – V.P. Human Resources