Widow Files Suit in Husband's Mine Shaft Death

Widow Files Suit in Husband's Mine Shaft Death

Daniel McFadden was at the mine site for ceremony only.

Retired from Frontier-Kemper Contractors since 1995, McFadden was paying the company a visit on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. He and two other men were touring a construction site at the Gibson County Coal mine in southwestern Indiana where Frontier-Kemper was building a 500-foot ventilation shaft.

But something went horribly wrong that day.

McFadden, 66, and two other men Christopher Todd Richardson, 38, of Cedar Bluff, Va., and Jarred A. Ashmore, 23, of Henderson, Ky., plunged to their deaths.

The trip [into the shaft] in the open-top bucket Friday was routine, but the bucket was somehow upset as it was descending, said George Zugel, director of safety and health for Frontier-Kemper Constructors Inc. The company is building the 550-foot vertical ventilation shaft at the Gibson County Coal mine in southwestern Indiana.

"I can't express enough these were more than co-workers, these were our very close personal friends," Zugel said. "It's terrible."

No other injuries were reported, and authorities said no one else was in the bucket. The "sinking bucket" can hold six to 10 people and is about 6 feet high, worker John Ervin said.

"I don't understand how this could have happened," Ervin said.

At the start of a shift, the bucket typically takes about six people down to the work area at the bottom of the shaft, Ervin said. The bucket is inspected daily, he said.

Now, McFadden's widow has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the company that her husband founded in 1965, claiming that the company take adequate safety measures to protect McFadden and the other men.

The complaint says Frontier-Kemper failed to provide safety belts or harnesses as fall protection, and that a 20-foot nylon sling and shackle attached to the bottom of the bucket should have been removed when the three men entered the bucket to be lowered. An employee who was supposed to watch the bucket also left to do other work when the bucket was lowered, the lawsuit states.

Attorneys for McFadden's wife, Sandra Lee McFadden, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court. It seeks $9.5 million in damages, as well as compensation for funeral expenses and lost income.

George Zugel, corporate safety director for Evansville-based Frontier-Kemper, said he was unaware of the lawsuit and declined comment.

The Indiana mine safety agency and federal inspectors, which investigated the fatal workplace accident, have already ruled that the company should have provided better safety measures to protect McFadden, Richardson and Ashmore and others who were working in the mine shaft.

An accident at a southern Indiana coal mine that killed three men occurred when a nylon sling used to transport supplies up and down a shaft got caught, causing the bucket the men were riding in to tip and send them plummeting to their deaths, a report by the state's mine safety agency said.

The bucket traveled about 20 feet down the shaft at Gibson County Coal Co. near Princeton Aug. 10 when a shackle attached to the sling became wedged in a mine shaft door and the bucket tipped, causing the men to plunge about 550 feet, according to an Indiana Bureau of Mines and Mine Safety report released Monday.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration cited the independent contractor that was constructing the mine shaft for failing to ensure that a worker was controlling the hoist while the bucket was descending the shaft and for failing to ensure the men were wearing harnesses that could have protected them from falling.

"Use of safety belts in this instance may have either prevented or mitigated the severity of this accident," said a federal report that was also issued Monday.

Frontier-Kemper Constructors Inc., was not cited for having the sling attached to the bucket, but the company submitted a safety plan to the MSHA on Aug. 17 that includes a prohibition on attaching straps, lanyards or rigging to the bottom of a bucket that is transporting people, the state's report said.

"They should not have had that on there," said Donald "Blink" McCorkle, deputy commissioner of the state mine bureau, which investigated the accident. "The practice there was that they did it and they did it quite often based on the interviews. It's a shame that they had to have that terrible thing happen to realize that it shouldn't be on there."

Sources: USA TODAY & AP.Google.com

Topics: workers' compensation benefits, injured worker, workplace injury, worker safety, workers' compensation attorney, workplace death, mine accident, wrongful death lawsuit