Harry A. Sieben, Jr. Press

Transportation Department is sued over bridge collapse

Published: December 13, 1990
Section: NEWS
Page#: 09B

By Laurie Blake; Staff Writer

The state of Minnesota has been drawn into the legal dispute over who is at fault for the collapse of the Lake Street-Marshall Av. Bridge last spring.

The state Transportation Department was named last week as a third party in a suit initiated by the children of Robert Moser, the construction foreman who was killed April 24 when part of the bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River. Moser had gone onto the bridge, which was under construction, to inspect it.

The children also are suing Rehder Wenzel Inc., the Bloomington engineering firm that designed construction scaffolding for the bridge, and Howard Needles Tammen & Bergendoff, the Edina engineering firm that double-checked the scaffolding design. The suit alleges that Rehder Wenzel produced an unsafe design for the scaffolding and that Howard Needles failed to detect the design flaw.

After an investigation of the accident, the state concluded this fall that the bridge collapsed because engineers miscalculated in their design for the scaffolding and chose an inadequate steel support beam. The suit relies largely on that report, said Harry Sieben, lawyer for the Moser children.

Rehder Wenzel attorney Michael Streater said: "We take great issue with the state's report." Rehder Wenzel contends that there were construction deficiencies that caused the bridge to collapse, Streater said. He said that if Rehder Wenzel is held responsible for damages, it will seek to collect all or part of that from the state and C.S. McCrossan Inc. of Maple Grove, the general contractor.

In bringing the state into the suit, Rehder Wenzel charges that the state was negligent for failing to discover McCrossan's deviation from the plans and specifications prepared by Rehder Wenzel. And it charges that the state was negligent in failing to enforce its order to evacuate the bridge.

"Had McCrossan honored the state's evacuation order, Mr. Moser wouldn't be dead," Streater said. Moser went out onto the bridge to check it after workers had detected problems. McCrossan has contended the state report on the cause of the accident has cleared it of all responsibility. In an effort to recover $2.4 million in losses, the construction firm has sued Rehder Wenzel and Howard Needles, accusing them of flaws and negligence in the scaffolding design.

McCrossan also is contesting safety violation fines from the Occupational Safety and Health Division of the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. In August, the division fined McCrossan $110,440 for five "willful and flagrant" safety violations in connection with the bridge collapse - one violation for each of five workers it sent out to inspect the bridge just before it collapsed. Since then the division reduced the violations from willful to serious, a revision that decreased the fine to $2,000. But it added a fine for not implementing emergency procedures after the accident and for failure to secure the accident site; total fines are now $96,140. McCrossan has charged the division with doing a sloppy investigation of the accident and for issuing citations that had no foundation in fact.

"OSHA (the division) has put itself in the embarrassing position of having to abandon most of its original charges and assert new ones," Charles McCrossan, president and owner of the firm, said in news release. David Abrams, acting commissioner of labor and industry, said the fines were changed because the division found new information through additional depositions that changed the charges.

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