A man working at the Barbour’s Cut Terminal on the Houston Ship Channel just suffered a horrific, fatal accident when he got trapped beneath a crane that suddenly started moving. The heavy machine’s sudden motion apparently caught the worker up by surprise and severed his legs.
According to the news account of the Terminal worker’s death at the Houston ship channel, the vice president of the International Longshoreman’s Association said that “the crane is designed to move” and that the tragedy “appears to be an accident.” The news account of the tragedy is too brief to provide a full context to the tragedy.
Indeed, it’s not long enough for the Association vice president’s statement to make much sense. Most heavy equipment is “designed to move” in some way. But is it designed to move suddenly, without warning to fragile human workers who might be in its vicinity and who might suffer grievous injuries from even slight contact with the moving crane?
A crane is an enormously heavy and powerful device. It has to be to do its job. It would just make sense that such a machine, before lurching into sudden motion, would warn nearby people to stand clear. Or least warn them it was about to move in some way, then give them a chance to get out of the way. Or that the operator of the crane would take care not to catch up other innocent workers in his machine’s motion.
Was there a warning that should have been issued that wasn’t issued before this mammoth machine began its motion? Did the warning signal not work? Were there not any safety procedures in place providing that such a warning should be issued? Did the machine suddenly go into motion when it shouldn’t have due to a defect, operator error, or an easily accessible control switch left unguarded? Was the operator of the crane not paying attention when he initiated the crane’s motion?
Basically, what happened in this tragic fatality? The news report doesn’t really say. But it does appear that the worker trapped and killed by the crane’s motion was taken by surprise. And the news report implies that the worker was a regular worker or longshoreman. Such a worker would probably be familiar with working in the vicinity of the cranes along the Houston ship channel’s busy piers and terminals.
Even with so little hard information available, it seems that some degree of negligence on the part of an owner, crane operator, or other party must be involved for this accident to have affected the tragically killed worker in the way that it did. The worker’s devastated surviving family members could be eligible to obtain just compensation for the needless loss of their loved one.
Injured workers also have recourse through a Jones Act (Merchant Marine Act of 1920) tort case or through a worker’s compensation claim under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act. We discuss the ways they could find some recompense through these Acts in further articles.
For help determining whether a Jones Act tort action of an LHWCA compensation claim governs your accident, click here.