The man who owned the crane that was involved in a fatal 2008 accident on the Upper East Side admitted that he never looked at the wreckage after the accident because he is afraid of heights. Apparently he also does not know what the acronym OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) stands for.
The owner, who describes himself as the “King of Cranes,” testified in the wrongful death trial about the accident last week. Two men died in that accident, a crane operator and a construction worker. The owner is accused of causing the accident by using shoddy parts to repair the equipment, creating a dangerous work site.
The crane company’s owner was acquitted of criminal charges in 2012. He now faces a civil trial.
The families of the deceased workers expressed anger and dismay that the crane company’s owner only went to inspect the wreckage of the crane many hours after the accident. According to the news report, the elderly father of one of the men was so upset that he had to be taken from the courtroom on a stretcher.
One of the workers was from Staten Island. The other worker was an immigrant who had come to the United States from Kosovo for a better life. His family came to the United States to attend the trial.
The mother of one of the men said after the court session ended that she didn’t believe the owner was afraid of heights because, she noted, he was a pilot. She also said that she heard no remorse from the man whose corner-cutting led to her son’s death after he fell 240 feet to the ground in the cab of the crane. The crane owner was known to use Chinese-made parts at half the cost of U.S. arts to repair his company’s cranes.