Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009

Suit: Fatal bridge fall in area was avoidable

ASH, N.C. -- A lawsuit was filed Friday in Craven County, N.C., Superior Court seeking at least $10,000 in actual damages and an unspecified amount of punitive damages in the death last year of a construction worker at the new bridge to Oak Island, N.C.

The lawsuit blames the general contractor, the bridge's design engineer and a supervisory engineer hired by the N.C. Department of Transportation for the death of Jose Antonio Montalvo of Sumter, who died when a girder he was tethered to fell nearly 70 feet.

Another worker was injured in the accident, which the lawsuit maintains was avoidable. Joel Rhine of the Wilmington, N.C., law firm of Lea, Rhine and Rosburgh, which filed Friday's suit, said that a second lawsuit will seek damages for the injured worker.

Concurrently, Myrtle Beach attorney Otis Allen Jeffcoat III, ancillary administrator for Montalvo's estate, filed a tort claim Friday with the N.C. Industrial Commission seeking $1 million from the N.C. Department of Transportation in Montalvo's death.

Ted Vaden, the department's deputy secretary for communications, said the state would not comment on active legal matters. No one could be reached Friday evening at offices for Barnhill Construction, the bridge's general contractor or Triplett-King Associates, the design engineer. T.Y. Lin International of San Francisco, the supervisory engineer, did not return a call seeking comment.

Rhine said in the lawsuit that Lee Construction of the Carolinas, the subcontractor building the bridge, was not named in the lawsuit because it was named in an earlier worker's compensation claim.

The lawsuit was filed in Craven County because Barnhill has offices there. It alleges that inadequate support was used to hold 158-foot girders in place during construction. As a result, the support failed, taking Montalvo and worker Ricky Bryant to the ground with it.

The suit said that the support used in the construction did not meet requirements set by the American Association of State Highway Transportation and that procedures required under N.C. state law were not followed.

The lawsuit further alleges that connecting rods that were part of the support were not long enough to make the necessary connections and that welding two sections together to increase the length was against the manufacturer's specifications for the rods. It also blames Barnhill for not having the required supervision on site to make sure that all safety requirements were followed.

The suit further alleges that another part of the support system was improperly installed.

The suit said that Montalvo's death was avoidable and would not have happened if those in charge had followed proper and required safety precautions.