Someone Is Responsible for Griffin Electric’s Fatal Equipment Failure

As the city of Griffin mourns Eric Weems, and Trent Granger begins the long process of healing from severe injuries, the time approaches to address the cause of their horrifying accident.

Weems and Granger, both linemen with the City of Griffin’s electric department, were working to restore power to homes in the area of Spalding Street and Little Street, following the recent storms. At around 12pm on November 13th, a sudden accident resulted in Weems’ death and sent Granger to the hospital in critical condition. Immediate reports attributed the accident to an “equipment failure.”

Fault can be an uncomfortable subject in the wake of a tragedy, but uncovering the truth of what happened is important for several reasons. Holding negligent parties accountable in a fair, accurate way reduces the chances of similar accidents happening in the future. It also provides injured and grieving survivors with necessary compensation and closure.

The Failing Equipment Appears to Have Been a Bucket Truck

An “equipment failure” can mean many things for linemen. A multimeter failure could mislead someone into believing that a live wire is safe to touch. A PPE failure could expose someone to deadly current that effective PPE would have insulated against.

In this case, however, electrical exposure doesn’t seem to be the cause of the victims’ injuries. One of the first journalists on the scene noticed that the bucket truck being used to reach the power lines appeared to have lost its arm.

Working at a height is dangerous in any profession. That’s why it’s so important for workers who use bucket trucks and other mechanized lifts to wear fall protection and make sure these machines are securely balanced during use. As Weems himself once explained in a 2020 Facebook video from Griffin Electric, experienced linemen like himself need to stay aware of how dangerous their work is. No two projects are exactly the same, so complacency can be deadly.

But a complete structural failure of a bucket truck arm is not the kind of danger that a lineman can avoid through constant, careful attention. It can’t be stopped by checking a harness, or observing the grade of the ground under the vehicle.

At a certain point, linemen need to be able to trust their equipment and their employers. If the journalist’s observations are correct, that’s the point where things went wrong for Weems and Granger.

Worker’s Comp Never Covers a Victim or Family’s Losses in Full

When a person is injured or killed during the course of their employment, the standard legal remedy is a worker’s comp settlement. Proving fault isn’t necessary for a worker’s comp claim. Employers are required to provide worker’s comp coverage for all work-related injuries, even those caused by employee errors.

The catch is that worker’s comp for an injured employee only covers medical care from approved healthcare providers, and two-thirds of lost income. That adds up to a lot less than what a civil court would award in a personal injury case. Likewise, worker’s comp death benefits are typically quite meager compared with wrongful death settlements from civil suits.

Most frustratingly for victims of employer negligence, there’s no option to waive worker’s comp coverage and pursue a lawsuit instead. As long as employers cooperate with worker’s comp law, they’re immune to lawsuits concerning on-the-job accidents.

This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for workplace accident victims and their families to sue for full compensation, however. It just means that they’ll need to choose a defendant other than the employer.

Griffin Electric May Not Bear Sole Responsibility for the Accident

Companies and organizations don’t operate in vacuums. They delegate tasks to subcontractors. They partner with other entities on large projects. At the very least, they buy products from outside vendors.

Determining fault after an accident can be a complicated task, not just because evidence fades over time, or because people tend to resist revealing their mistakes, but because fault doesn’t necessarily lie in just one place. Modern safety standards usually have redundancies built in, so that it takes multiple mistakes to cause a serious incident.

For example, Griffin Electric had a duty to maintain its machinery in safe working order, and to take all other reasonable steps to make the linemen’s jobs as safe as possible. But there are other entities that owed these men a similar duty, including:

• The bucket truck manufacturer — Companies that sell any kind of product are responsible for making sure it performs as advertised and doesn’t pose an unnecessary or unexpected danger to users. That includes heavy machinery.
• The manufacturers of any defective parts — Even equipment suppliers buy parts from other suppliers. If the bucket truck failed because of a faulty component rather than a design flaw, the company that made that individual component would share liability for the accident.
• Maintenance contractors — Equipment maintenance is one of the most common tasks for a company or organization to outsource, and for good reason. A dedicated maintenance company can usually provide better service for a piece of equipment than the company that owns it. Still, maintenance companies aren’t perfect. They can make mistakes and cut corners too.

It’s possible that this accident rests on the shoulders of just one company, but more likely that there’s blame to share.

Hiring a Lawyer Can Help Workplace Accident Victims Get Better Coverage

Workplace accident victims and their families have nothing to lose by filing a worker’s comp claim, but a lot to lose by stopping there.

Pursuing a civil suit in addition to worker’s comp can give survivors the chance to choose their own doctors, recover their full lost income, and collect fair compensation for their pain and emotional losses. It also helps ensure a full investigation, one that goes beyond ruling out intentional foul play and retraces the full sequence of events that allowed the accident to take place.

The industrial accident lawyers at the Stoddard Firm are passionate about shining a light on negligence that might otherwise go unnoticed, and getting every client the best possible outcome.

If you are Trent Granger or the next of kin to Eric Weems, or if you have also been injured or lost a loved one during electrical work in Georgia, feel free to reach out by phone or chat for a free consultation on how we can help.