For instance, on Oct. 12, 1994, the Missouri public prosecutors filed a complaint in St. Louis County Circuit Court (Case #94CR-005665) charging Lee Mechanical with 52 class B misdemeanor counts of violating the state’s "Prevailing Wages on Public Works law" in a Marquette High School project.

Lee Mechanical asked that the charges be quashed and the charges be dismissed on, citing technicalities 1) the statute of limitations had run out on many of the violations and 2) the wording of the prevailing wages law was "unconstitutionally vague" as to what, exactly, "work of a similar character" meant.

A circuit court judge dismissed some of the charges as not being within the year allowed, but sustained 18 counts. Lee Mechanical appealed the lower court ruling to the state appellate court (Eastern District,#78893), which referred to the state Supreme Court. On Feb. 25, 1997, Missouri’s highest court overruled Lee Mechanical’s motion for a rehearing.

At the end of the day however, Lee Mechanical was still able to beat scores of Missouri state law violations and rip off thousands of dollars in wages from its own employees — all on technicalities.

Lee Mechanical’s working hypothesis here is apparently: Hey, if our employees can’t figure out they’re ripped off before the statute of limitation runs out, we’re home free. If they do, well, we’ll pay what we’re forced to and not a penny more.

The moral of this story seems to be "Violate Missouri law, and when you’re caught, drag out the legal proceedings and use loopholes in the law to escape accountability for up to two-thirds of the monetary damages."

On Nov. 18, 1996, Margarete Barnett and Gabriela Brewer filed a civil petition (Case #CV-1096-502CC) in the Washington County, Mo., Circuit Court alleging that Raymond Barnett had been killed at the Redwing Shoe Factory in Potosi, Mo. on May 13, 1994 as a direct result of negligence by Lee Mechanical and "various individuals employed by, or associated with Lee Mechanical."

According to the suit, Redwing Shoe hired Lee Mechanical to install industrial air-conditioning units at its Potosi factory, and, in turn, Lee Mechanical hired Wesbar Company as a subcontractor for that project. Barnett was an employee of Wesbar and was working on the Potosi shoe factory roofing project when the accident occurred.

In order to install the industrial air units, Lee Mechanical "had cut holes in the roof of Redwing Shoe" and covered one of the holes "with plywood or particle board insufficient to support the weight of a 200 pound person and failed to otherwise warn of or secure the hole."

Barnett was going about his usual job tasks that day when, according to the lawsuit, he "did tread upon the plywood or particle board which covered the hole in the roof of Redwing Shoe Factory and in doing so, fell some 15 feet through the roof to the concrete floor below where decedent suffered massive and multiple injuries including but not limited to laceration of the scalp, subscapular hemorrhage, comminuted fracture of the skull, lacerations and contusions of the brain, aspiration of blood, soft tissue hemorrhage and fracture of two ribs."

A "comminuted fracture" is one in which the bone is broken, splintered or crushed into a number of pieces.

In any event, Barnett’s accident resulted in one OSHA violation being issued, with penalties imposed (see below, Inspection # 109578914), and a wrongful death lawsuit by his survivors.

Barnett’s injuries were massive, fatal and the result of "carelessness, recklessness and negligence of Defendant [Lee Mechanical]," the suit alleged.

Lawyers for Lee Mechanical attacked the lawsuit not on it merits, but on the grounds that there were technical "defects" in the pleadings, documents indicated.