Grounding?

I recently replaced a condensate drain pan discharge line heater on a Traulsen refrigerator. Nothing new about that, it happens, and this unit is old, old, old. The line cord electrical box happened to be missing a cover, so I figured I'd replace it, but check this out.




Look closely, and you can just make out the green grounding wire is cut. It's actually been cut by presumably some terrorist or anarchist. A long time ago in a job far, far away, doing some P.M. work at a middle school's Home Ec room. I came across a domestic refrigerator with a broken/missing ground pin on the plug. Even back then, I was liability and safety conscious, and replaced the plug forthright, only to find it now tripped the breaker. It was late, school was dismissed, no one was around. I traced the problem to a shorted compressor coil. I moved their food elsewhere and condemned the unit.

Did a mentally unbalanced person cut this plug in order to make the unit work at the risk of the user? What if someone was somehow grounded and unwittingly touched a metal part of this thing and couldn't let go? It's happened, peruse EC&M's Forensic Casebook. I was afraid my Traulsen also had a bad compressor, but turned out it was fine and runs happily with equipment grounding.

It makes a strong case for running a ground test on all equipment you work on, even in a non-electrical capacity, or running a grounding assurance program...