MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (Legal Newsline) – The company who dug a nine feet-deep trench that collapsed on a worker won’t be liable for his death from his injuries.
The Twelfth Appellate District court in Ohio on Sept. 8 affirmed a Warren County decision in favor of Stauffer Site Services and two supervisors who issued a stop-work order on a trench in Hillsboro because one side of it was unstable.
At some point after they left the work site to find trench boxes, Marcus Mennett continued his work spreading gravel at the bottom of the trench and setting storm sewer pipes.
The trench collapsed and buried Mennett. He was dug out alive but died two days later.
The court found the company and its employees had acted responsibly.
“(A)ll workers abandoned work on the trench, with workers doing different things during the break,” Judge Robin Piper wrote.
“For an unknown reason, Mennett reentered the trench before the accident occurred, but there is no evidence that Mennett’s actions were based upon any act from his coworkers that required him to reenter and work in the trench.”
His estate argued that Mennett must have been coerced into continuing his job under threat of being fired, but the court said that assertion is unsupported by evidence.