The factory was permanently closed, with the loss of 215 jobs. Within two years of the accident insurance companies and the North Carolina business lobby together introduced legislation limiting the compensation available to injured workers and relatives of killed workers. Insurance companies had originally agreed to pay $16.1 million to the injured and the families of the deceased. Some of the workers became activists as a result, to fight what they see as "bureaucratic injustice". They had originally hired John Coale, an attorney who had worked on the Bhopal disaster, but he could not legally practice in North Carolina.