BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A federal jury took two hours to decide Monty Cummins' employer was responsible for his fatal fall and awarded more than $3.4 million to his Elsmere, Ky., family.
The employer -- Henkels & McCoy, a contractor based in Blue Bell, Pa., near Philadelphia -- already had paid a $63,500 fine to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Mr. Cummins was working in a "cherry picker," a bucket at the end of a truck-mounted boom, pulling power lines from pole to pole in Amelia.
A chain supporting the boom broke, and the 33-year-old lineman died after he fell about 35 feet to the ground.
Attorneys Randy J. Blankenship and Daniel J. Temming took the claim before a jury in U.S. District Judge Susan J. Dlott's court when settlement attempts failed.
OSHA said the company ignored manufacturer's advisories on inspecting and lubricating the chain and kept the chain in service long after it should have been replaced.
That created a "substantial certainty" that someone would be hurt, Mr. Temming said.
After an eight-day trial, jurors blamed the company for Mr. Cummins' death. Jurors gave Faith Cummins and their son, Dustin, now 10, $3,429,648.
Mr. Temming said he and Mr. Blankenship will ask Judge Dlott to give the family a further $1.5 million in interest on the award from Sept. 26, 1994, the day Mr. Cummins died.
Mr. Temming said prejudgment interest was justified because Henkels & McCoy did not seriously consider a settlement early in the litigation.
Thursday, company attorney R. Gary Winters said he would respond to that allegation in court. Meanwhile, he said his client had not decided whether to appeal the verdict.
