The widow of a factory worker alleges in a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court that her 36-year-old husband died from long-term exposure to a deadly chemical at the world's largest manufacturer of surfboard blanks.
The wrongful-death suit filed last week against Clark Foam Products provides a partial explanation for the Laguna Niguel company's abrupt closure in December.
In legal papers, Maria Teresa Barriga claims that her husband, Martin Barriga, and other employees ran with open buckets of toxic toluene diisocyanate sloshing on their hands, arms, torso, legs and feet.
During lunch breaks, Barriga and other workers warmed their meals in the same microwave used to heat the chemical, the suit alleges.
Toluene diisocyanate, known as TDI, is commonly used to make foam products and paint. When heated, the chemical becomes toxic and can cause severe respiratory, gastrointestinal and central nervous system problems. It is also a possible carcinogen, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Barriga's death certificate lists cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, inflamed and scarred lung sacs and arterial inflammation as causes of death. A biopsy showed that he also suffered from a cancerous chest tumor.
Clark Foam founder Gordon Clark, also named in the suit, could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But he had alluded to the possibility of litigation in a five-page letter addressed to his customers Dec. 5, the day his business closed.
He said excessive government regulation and pending lawsuits -- including one by a widow of an employee "who died from cancer" -- had forced him to shutter Clark Foam. Because his factory had been making 9 out of 10 surfboard blanks in the world, the move sent the price of boards skyrocketing for months.
"Our official safety record as an employer is not very good," Clark wrote in his only public statement. "We have three ex-employees on full workman's compensation disability -- evidently for life. I may be looking at very large fines, civil lawsuits and even time in prison."
Maria Teresa Barriga said in an interview this week that her husband was a model family man, an avid soccer player and reliable breadwinner who held his $14-an-hour Clark Foam job for 16 years. She said the curly-haired Mexican immigrant who lived in San Juan Capistrano hid the extent of his health problems from her.
