Page 173 - Crisis Communication Practical PR Strategies

4
5
1 154 Crisis Communication

$7 million in fines and restitution – more than half of that sum
going to the most severely injured individual. In addition, it agreed
to spend more than US $4 million on improvements to the plant’s
sewer system, and paid significant amounts to the communities
whose fire departments fought the blaze years earlier.
Key considerations and risks
The allegations being made by the federal government against
the company and its officials were very serious – any attempt to
minimize the seriousness of the situation would have alienated
both the plant employees and the public officials who had con-
ducted the investigation into what went wrong. At the same time,
the plant was running a full production schedule and needed to
project the confidence that all systems and operating functions
were under control – any problems that might have existed had
been fully resolved.
There had been a change in the ownership of the plant in the
years between the incident and the settlement: the original
owner had become a joint venture partner with another petro-
leum company. While some of the management personnel were
the same, the decision-making process for both the legal settle-
ment and the public relations strategy had to be altered slightly,
to respect the changed ownership. There had been subsequent
incidents at the plant – none as significant, none resulting in
human injuries – but still, adverse publicity had impacted the
general public’s sense of confidence in the trustworthiness of the
company’s pronouncements about safety.
While the legal charges were being levied against the
company, it was individual executives from the company who
needed to appear in court and in news broadcasts, in order for
both the legal courtroom and the ‘court of public opinion’ to
conclude that the company was accepting its responsibilities. It
was not good enough to talk through the lawyers.
Essential programme elements
The actual settlement of legal claims was prepared to meet the
terms and requirements of the federal court. Guilty pleas were
entered on two misdemeanour counts; a deferred prosecution
agreement related to other charges was documented; and an
executive of the company appeared in court to enter the pleas.
Media materials were prepared for use in journalists’ cov-
erage of the settlement: individual managers were quoted as