Attorney Daily - Your source for the most important legal news

On August 14, 2008, a gigantic support leg of a 30-story-tall crane once used to build ships collapsed as it was being dismantled at Fore River Shipyard, killing an iron worker. It was the third death in three years resulting from a crane failure at the shipyard. Four additional ironworkers suffered minor injuries when the support leg gave way beneath the crane, nicknamed Goliath, which has loomed over the shipyard for 33 years.

“This is just a very sad day here in Quincy,” Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating said during an afternoon press conference at the shipyard. “It’s a sad day when a landmark has become a tragic memorial.”

“It did collapse in the manner it was designed to collapse,” Quincy Fire Chief Joseph Barron said at the press conference. “It just did not collapse when it was supposed to, obviously.”

The collapse did not affect the structural stability of the rest of the crane, Barron said.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration dispatched three inspectors to the scene. The federal inspectors are trying to determine the cause of the collapse and whether any workplace safety rules were violated by the workers or companies involved, OSHA spokesman Ted Fitzgerald said. The investigation could take several months to complete, he said.

The collapse of the support leg sent an enormous thud echoing throughout the neighborhood.

Quincy police and firefighters responded to a flood of 911 calls that began at 12:26 p.m. Two of the four injured ironworkers were taken to Quincy Medical Center, where they were treated and released. The other two were treated at the scene.

Standing outside the shipyard, Don Gauthier said he spent 22 years working at Fore River, many of them as a crane supervisor. Over the years, he said, the shipyard helped build 12 liquefied natural gas tankers.

Gauthier said he had been watching how the crane was dismantled and had been concerned about the decision to take it apart from the bottom up. “It’s a shame. They should have taken the main girder off first and then removed the support beams,” Gauthier said. “Personally, I don’t think they went about it in the right way.”

Gregory Nordholm of Norsar LLC, the Washington state-based company that was hired to dismantle and move the crane, said he was about 15 feet away from the 370-foot crane when it collapsed. The work crew was preparing the crane so it could be lowered closer to the ground, he said. The plan was to lower it 80 feet.

“I don’t know exactly what happened,” he said.

It appeared to be part of the leg of the crane that initially failed, he said. “That leg section landed right on him and killed him instantly.”

Nordholm said he did not know the cause of the failure.

“We’re determined to figure out what happened and why it happened, so this doesn’t ever happen again,” he said. “The crane is safe and secure now.”

The crews stopped working on the crane and will not resume until investigators determine what occurred, he said.

Nordholm said that in addition to OSHA, the Quincy Building Department is also investigating.

Investigators from the state Department of Public Safety were at the scene to check the crane operator’s licensing, according to spokesman Terrel Harris.

“It’s early and preliminary, but they haven’t found any problem with the operator,” he said. “All his licensing is current.”

Federal regulators before have cited Norsar. In 2006, the company received 10 citations for workplace violations at a job site in Seattle related to health violations, according to federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration records posted on the agency’s website.

And in 2001, the company was fined $7,100 for five workplace hazard violations at a site in South Carolina, according to records. The violations were related to safety issues such as wiring, equipment use, and access to deck openings.

General Dynamics Corp. closed the shipyard in 1986. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority purchased the property the following year for $49.5 million. In 1997, the MWRA sold most of the property for $10 million to Massachusetts Heavy Industries Inc., a firm led by Greek entrepreneur Sotiris G. Emmanuel, who planned to reopen the shipyard.

But his plans to revive the local shipbuilding industry were never realized. After his company defaulted on federally guaranteed loans, the US Maritime Administration seized the property.

Quincy car dealer Dan Quirk, who acquired the property in a 2003 government auction for $9 million, currently owns the former shipyard. Quirk plans to redevelop the property into a “waterfront village” for industrial, commercial, and residential use.

The shipyard, which employed 32,000 people at its peak, stopped using the Goliath after General Dynamics sold the facility.

The crane, for decades a towering fixture on the Quincy landscape, has been sold to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering of South Korea and was to be broken down into nine pieces, loaded onto a barge, and shipped to its new home in Mangalia, Romania.

In January 2005, another crane failure in the shipyard killed two workers.

In July 2005, OSHA cited Testa Corp. for 15 alleged violations of safety and health standards at the shipyard. The agency found that Testa, which had been hired to remove a 190-foot craneway, failed to do an engineering survey to determine its stability.

On July 19, 2008, federal investigators started trying to understand why one of the world’s largest mobile cranes toppled over, killing four contract workers and injuring seven others.

Officials said it could take time before knowing what caused the 30-story-tall crane to collapse on July 18, 2008, at a LyondellBasell refinery in Houston.

The massive crane, capable of lifting 1 million pounds, was owned by Deep South Crane & Rigging, which Saturday released the names of its four workers killed in the accident.

“We wish we had all of the answers on what happened and why but we do not and speculating on cause would not resolve anything,” the company said in a statement. “But we are actively working to find those answers.”

At the LyondellBasell refinery, company officials said they were trying to restore normalcy. The refinery brought in grief counselors and will hold a series of safety meetings to address concerns about the accident starting Monday, said David Roznowski, a company spokesman.

“This is a real blow to our refinery team, and it will take some time to recover from this,” said Roznowski.

Investigators with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration began their formal accident investigation as well on July 19, 2008, Roznowski said.

Cameras are mounted around the plant and refinery officials said the company hopes the video will help determine what happened.

As of July 19, 2008, two of the injured workers remained in Houston hospitals. Their injuries were not life threatening, Roznowski said.

Two other injured workers were taken to a hospital and have since been released. Three others were treated and released at the scene, fire officials said.

The first lawsuit stemming from the collapse was filed in Harris County state district court, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a worker injured after jumping from an elevated bucket when he saw the crane start to fall. It seeks a temporary restraining order to preserve the scene and evidence relating to the accident.

The massive crane fell during the afternoon of July 18, 2008, with enough force to lift workers off the ground, and toppled across another smaller crane and a tent where workers were eating lunch.

Crane safety has been getting extra scrutiny in recent months because of an alarming number of crane-related deaths in places such as New York, Miami and Las Vegas.

The crane failed and collapsed during maintenance, LyondellBasell officials said. It had not been scheduled to do any work until next week, but was idling after it hit the ground, said Jim Roecker, the company’s vice president for refining.

The maintenance project has been suspended for a week, but refinery operations at the plant were operating normally, said Roznowski. The refinery has about 3,000 employees and 1,600 contract workers.

On June 20, 2008, the owner of a building that was badly damaged in a deadly new York City crane collapse that took place on May 30, 2008, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the crane owner, contractor and others working on a new 32-story apartment tower across the street.

The company, First & 91 LLC, says in court papers filed in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court that it lost tenants and rent revenue, faces additional costs including repairs, and will suffer because the Upper East Side building has been “stigmatized.”

The lawsuit names crane owner New York Crane & Equipment, crane lessee Sorbara Construction, general contractor Leon D. Dematteis Construction and the owner of the building under construction, 1765 First Associates LLC.

The contractor declined to comment and other defendants did not immediately return calls. The crane operator and another worker died when the 200-foot crane collapsed and smashed into an apartment building at East 91st Street at First Avenue. The May 30, 2008 accident occurred 40 blocks north of the site where another crane collapse killed seven people on March 15, 2008.

The plaintiffs contend the crane in the second collapse was “improperly and hazardously welded” and that that was concealed from the city’s Buildings Department.

The investigation into the May 30, 2008 collapse has focused on a crane part called the turntable. Investigators say it was taken off another crane with cracks in it more than a year ago, rebuilt and installed about a month before the accident.

The 24-year-old Kodiak crane that was at the 91st Street site is a model that is out of production. Immediately after the collapse the city shut down four other sites that were using Kodiak cranes.

The Buildings Department said Friday that one 24-year-old Kodiak crane also owned by New York Crane was being dismantled this weekend after an engineer found two cracks in that crane’s turntable.

One of the three other sites where Kodiak cranes were operating was given the OK to resume operating. Tests are pending on the other two sites, the city said.