Gaffney sits in a region with active manufacturing, warehousing, and construction activity—settings where crush hazards often involve:
- Forklifts, loading docks, and trailers (pinning incidents, shifting cargo)
- Conveyors, rollers, and moving parts (caught-in/between injuries)
- Presses, compactors, and industrial equipment (compression and entrapment)
- Material handling near pedestrian routes (especially when traffic lanes aren’t separated)
Local employers and contractors may rely on safety checklists and maintenance schedules—but when a guard is bypassed, a procedure is skipped, or a hazard is known and not corrected, the legal question becomes: who had the duty and failed to act reasonably?


