Lubavitcher Wins Settlement Against Slaughterhouse

A North Texas rabbi whose right arm was nearly amputated in a 2010 accident at a Fort Worth slaughterhouse during the processing of kosher beef has won an undisclosed settlement, his attorney said Friday.

Peretz Avram Shapiro of Dallas, a member of Chabad, an outreach program of Judaism’s orthodox Hasidic Lubavitch movement, had been hired by Alle Processing of Maspeth, N.Y., as a mashgiach — a person trained to oversee production of kosher meats.

Alle had contracted with Beltex, operator of a former horse slaughter plant on Fort Worth’s north side, which also does business as Frontier Meats and processes cattle, ostrich and wild boar. Both companies settled with Shapiro, said his attorney, Charla Aldous of Dallas. Neither side would discuss terms.

Shapiro, 38, had been working as a bank bill collector after being laid off by Chabad’s Dallas branch after the 2008 recession. Later, he took the kosher supervision job to help support his family, earning $250 for a five-hour shift.

On May 8, 2010, the rabbi was told to stand in a cramped corner of Beltex’s kill room floor next to a device that raises workers when they carve hanging carcasses. When Shapiro perched his elbow on the lift, it got caught in an opening, he said.

“Another 4 mm [just over one-eighth of an inch], and I would have lost my arm — maybe or my life,” the British-born clergyman told the Star-Telegram. His arm was trapped in the jammed lift, and workers could not use the electronic controls. A good thing, he said. “Had it [the lift] worked it would have taken it [the arm] all off.”

Finally, meat cutters lifted the machine and freed Shapiro.

“I remained conscious during the ordeal,” he said, adding that he still felt his hand when his arm dangled from above the elbow.

Shapiro was airlifted to Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, where trauma orthopedic surgeon Dr. Paul Freudigman reattached the arm in a lengthy operation.

Shapiro has regained about half the strength in his arm, but “it will never be the same,” said the rabbi, who now runs Jewish Life Network, a Chabad-related agency he founded in Dallas that focuses on the needs of seniors. “There’s definitely permanent damage. I lost muscle tissue and have a permanent feeling of numbness.”

While he was hospitalized and under sedation, a representative of Alle urged the rabbi to sign a document that identified him as a company employee, not an independent contractor, he said.

“I was told, ‘Sign these and everything would be taken care of,’” he said. “I was able to think straight enough not to sign it. In hindsight, it was pretty fishy sending someone to my hospital bedside.”

Aldous says Alle was seeking to avoid huge costs by having Shapiro covered by workers’ compensation insurance as an employee.

After the hospital visit, Alle tried to register the rabbi for workers’ comp in New York and then Texas, but the application was dismissed in both places, Aldous said.

The lawsuit said Alle was negligent by not training Shapiro for his work as a mashgiach. Shapiro said he had been instructed in kashrus, Jewish dietary laws, in rabbinical school in Morristown, N.J., but had not set foot in a slaughterhouse until working at the Beltex plant.

In its response, Alle said Shapiro was negligent and directly responsible for his own injuries by failing to exercise prudent care and caution. Moreover, the New York company said an unidentified person who was not a party to the suit also bore responsibility.

“This was a case with disputed facts and contested liabilities in which a settlement was reached,” Craig Saucier of San Antonio, Alle’s attorney, said when reached for comment. Beltex’s spokeswoman Connie Roberts did not return a call seeking comment, and its attorney, Malcolm Renwick of Dallas, was in mediation and could not be reached, his office said.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigated and called the accident a “serious” violation. It recommended a $2,450 fine, saying Beltex failed to protect workers from having their arms crushed by uncovered moving parts of a machine.

Saucier said Alle continues to process kosher meat at the Belgian-Dutch-owned Beltex plant, which was last in the news when 13 feral pigs escaped in December and were subsequently euthanized.