Big Dig Settlements with Family Top $28m
Big Dig Settlements with Family Top $28m
Jason Sandefur
The family of the woman crushed to death in the 2006 Big Dig ceiling collapse will collect more than $28 million after reaching settlements with the last of the defendants in the family’s civil lawsuit, the Boston Globe reports.
Milena Del Valle was killed in July 2006 when heavy concrete ceiling panels collapsed on her car. Her family agreed to accept a total of $18.1 million from contractor Modern Continental, project manager Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, six smaller companies, and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. That will be added to the combined $10 million the family has agreed to accept from Powers Fasteners and another defendant.
Powers Fasteners faces one count of manslaughter.
“In May, Powers Fasteners was the subject of a federal grand jury considering charges in the case,” writes Donovan Slack of the Globe.
Modern Continental faces multiple charges after the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston concluded the company knew the ceiling bolts were coming loose but glossed over the problem until the collapse.
To avert criminal charges, Bechtel and a number of smaller companies agreed to a settlement with the state of roughly $450 million.
A National Transportation Safety Board report spread blame for the ceiling collapse, concluding that designers and construction crews had not considered that the epoxy holding 5/8″ diameter threaded steel anchor rods embedded about five inches in the tunnel’s concrete roof could creep under load. The NTSB specifically faulted ceiling designer Gannett Fleming for failing to stipulate which kind of epoxy to use during installation. �2008 FastenerNews.com
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