Kansas City Personal Injury Lawyer - Wrongful Death

Few Details In Kansas City Crane Accident

Brett Emison — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:05:50 GMT

There are still few details of what caused the deadly crane accident in Kansas City, Missouri. The Kansas City Star identified the worker killed as Ryan Goodman, of Lee's Summit. The injured steel worker was identified as Shane Wagener of Grain Valley.

According to the Kansas City Star:

The workers were about 50 feet up in the air on a cherry picker-type lift when the vehicle tipped over about 1:45 p.m., throwing the men onto 16th Street just east of Broadway.

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It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the lift to tip over.

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The long boom of the orange and yellow lift lay crumpled across a truck piled with steel beams. The vehicle’s base was on end just north of the structure, with two of four wheels in the air.

Two hardhats and what appeared to be blood could be seen on the pavement beneath the basket, which came to rest a few feet above 16th Street.

The Boston Globe had some additional details in its report:

The two men were in the bucket of the 100-foot-tall JLG Lift when it fell away from the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and landed across a platform of steel beams at about 1:40 p.m., officials said.

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The men were installing steel panels on the building for Detroit-based subcontractor Midwest Steel, said Kyle McQuiston, spokesman for Kansas City-based general contractor JE Dunn Construction Group.

Immediately follow this tragic accident, I asked, why do these crane accidents keep happening? There have been far too many of these cranes tipping over or collapsing and far too many workers dying. The Boston Globe agreed:

Crane accidents kill up to 82 construction workers each year in the United States, according to the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration. A crane at the construction site of a new federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, also collapsed Tuesday, but police say no one was hurt.

A construction worker died last month after falling from a lift that toppled over and struck a downtown Philadelphia apartment building.

And two New York City crane collapses in 2 1/2 months during the spring of 2008 left nine people dead. Investigators have blamed faulty rigging of an 11,000-pound crane part in the first of those accidents, which killed seven people on March 15, 2008.

Crane manufactures need to do more to protect the workers that use their equipment. Many crane makers fail to incorporate simple and inexpensive safety features that would prevent a tragedy like the one that occurred at the Kauffman Center construction site. The manufacturers need to be held accountable so that they will stop putting profit over safety and so that other families will not have to suffer the terrible tragedy experienced by the Goodman and Wagener families yesterday.

You can learn more about dangerous and defect products -- including cranes and lifts -- at our safety blog or at our web site.

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Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Brett Emison

Big Dig Epoxy Company Targeted in Lawsuit

Courtney Mills — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 13:47:36 GMT

Powers Fasteners Inc., the company that provided Boston's "Big Dig" tunnel project with defective epoxy for ceiling tiles, was indicted Wednesday, August 8, 2007, in the death of a motorist. The motorist was killed when several of the massive ceiling panels lining the Big Dig tunnel came crashing down on her car from above.

The president of Powers Fasteners, Jeffrey Powers, claimed that Powers Fasteners was being unfairly singled out in Boston's colossal public works program that had become a growing embarrassment of cost overruns to Governor Romney during his term in office.

Prosecutors hastened to point out that the indictment of Powers Fasteners does not preclude subsequent lawsuits against Bechtel, the primary developer of the Big Dig. More likely than not this indictment against Powers is the opening salvo in a series against the many contractors associated with the Big Dig public works tunnel project.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Courtney Mills

Wrongful Death Lawsuit Filed on Behalf of Two Comair Victims

Shannon Weidemann — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:03:51 GMT

Comair Flight 5191 crashed on August 27, 2006 in Lexington, Ky. It took off from a runway that was much too short, killing 49 people.

The parents of two of the victims have filed wrongful death lawsuits at the U.S. District Court in Kansas City. Paige Winters, age 16, and her riding instructor Thomas Fahey, age 26, were in Kentucky looking for a new horse and returning home on the Comair flight. The lawsuits are against Delta and Comair and mention recklessness, negligence, and/or carelessness by the airlines.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Shannon Weidemann

Kansas City Settles Wrongful Death Lawsuit

Staff Writer — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 10:35:06 GMT

The city of Kansas City has agreed to a settlement of $300,000 with the family of a college student killed when the car he was riding in skidded on a patch of ice caused by a water main break. The student was home for Christmas Break from UM-Columbia in December 2004.

The plaintiffs' attorney said neighbors had reported the water main break earlier in the day and warned that the water flowing over the road was creating dangerous icy conditions. But the problem was not immediately fixed.

This is the city's second settlement of its kind since August when it paid $224,000 to a woman injured after slipping on ice from a leak that had been there for years.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Staff Writer