Global Fastener News

Big Dig Probe Reaches $1m Mark

Jason Sandefur

In the last year, the state of Massachusetts has spent nearly $1 million on a special prosecutor to investigate the July 2006 collapse of the Big Dig tunnel ceiling in Boston, the Boston Globe reports.
So far that investigation has yielded a single indictment: a charge of involuntary manslaughter against Powers Fasteners Inc. that carries a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine if the company is convicted. The company, which supplied epoxy for the project, has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
“(Special assistant attorney general Paul) Ware, head of litigation at the Boston office of the law firm Goodwin Procter, was originally hired in early March under a four- month contract to decide whether anyone should face criminal charges, but his duties were later expanded to include negotiating a settlement with Big Dig project managers Bechtel/ Parsons Brinckerhoff, and his contract was extended through the end of next month, increasing the amount he can be paid from $378,000 to $978,000,” writes Andrea Estes of the Globe.
Ware and two fellow attorneys reportedly are each billing the state $525 per hour, prompting one state lawmaker to call the situation “a nightmare for taxpayers.”
Bechtel/ Parsons Brinckerhoff has offered the state more than $300 million to avoid criminal charges, but that agreement has not been finalized.
“The only reason that our company has been indicted is that unlike others implicated in this tragedy, we don’t have enough money to buy our way out,” Powers Fasteners president Jeffrey Powers stated after the indictment was announced.
By singling out Powers Fasteners, Coakley’s assessment of the case contradicts a National Transportation Safety Board report that spread broad blame for the ceiling collapse. The NTSB investigation found that designers and construction crews had not considered that the epoxy holding support anchors could pull away. The NTSB also specifically faulted ceiling designer Gannett Fleming for failing to stipulate which kind of epoxy to use during installation. �2007 FastenerNews.com