Former SSCC Managers Sentenced

Two former Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. (SSCC) managers who were sentenced to 29 days each in jail for violating workers’ injury compensation rights will likely serve the term through community service hours, The Salinas Californian reports.

The county District Attorney’s Office said 20 employees of the Salinas, Calif., box plant were victims in the case.

In March, the two managers pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of concealing events related to on-the-job injuries and conspiring to deny injured workers their benefits.

David Polk, 53, and Douglas Tateoka, 61, were also fined several hundred dollars and placed on three years of probation. Michael Lawrence and Richard Rosen, lawyers for Polk and Tateoka, respectively, say the judge indicated he would dismiss the probation time once the clients pay off the fines.

Rosen says the case had gone on for two years. Polk also pleaded guilty to conspiring to deny injured workers their benefits in a separate case.

The District Attorney’s Office said two employees reported in October 2006 that workers at the facility were being discouraged from opening compensation claims, and a year later county and state investigators obtained warrants to search the facility.

They found that injured workers were being treated outside the compensation system and discouraged from filing formal claims, the office said. Prosecutors said the conspiracy was partly motivated by an incentive program that paid bonuses to managers and other employees if the numbers of reported injuries were kept low or zero.

Steven Davis of Davis Chiropractic, a retired human relations manager for SSCC, and Eugene Guzman, a physician’s assistant at Pinnacle Urgent Care, were also charged with participating in the fraud.