The goal was to crack down hard on what appeared -- in the most egregious cases -- like a callous acceptance of death on the job in rural California.
The Sacramento-based California District Attorneys Assn. dispatched circuit-riding prosecutors to remote counties to help bring felony cases against employers whose "willful negligence" had killed or maimed workers.
But accusing respected businessmen in rooted and inherently dangerous rural industries of manslaughter has proved tough.
Four years after the effort began, several of the cases have fizzled before judgment or ended in acquittal, underscoring deep cultural rifts that divide urban and rural California.
Now, one of the targets is striking back: Michael Meister Miller, 62, chief executive of Sierra County's Original Sixteen to One gold mine, is taking the prosecuting attorneys to court.
Miller and his former mine manager, Jonathan Farrell, 34, were indicted on felony manslaughter charges in 2002 after a worker crushed his head on an unmarked low-hanging ore chute. But after Miller argued that exculpatory evidence was withheld from a grand jury, a Sierra County Superior Court judge tossed the case with little comment.
Miller and his company are now alleging malicious prosecution, intentional interference with the mine -- in operation for more than a century -- and infliction of emotional distress.
Prosecutors are generally protected from suits that pertain to their actions on the job. But a technical slip has kept the claims alive, for now: Although Sierra County's then-district attorney orally appointed the visiting prosecutors as deputy district attorneys and filed records of their oaths with the court, written appointments were not filed with the county clerk as required by law.
That has given Miller a chance to vent his rage. It has also offered a glimpse at the uphill battle the prosecutors face in rural areas as they seek to apply a new law and bring blue-collar bosses to justice for accidents that often occurred outside the bosses' presence.
State law allows for such felony cases. But support from juries and even judges in places where men have long made a living on the land has been thin at best.
"We're talking about areas where the fit between the cultural values of rural communities and the administrative state is neither comfortable nor acknowledged," said UC Berkeley criminal law professor Franklin Zimring. "California isn't a state; it's a country with very different regions.... We have our own Appalachia. This is a marvelous illustration of that."
