Family awarded $8.7 million in death of labor official
A Buffalo jury Tuesday ordered insurance carriers for Dunlop Tire Corp. and the related Goodyear-Dunlop Tire North America to pay the family of a former labor union official almost $8.7 million for his death from injuries suffered in a fall from a defective catwalk three years ago.
The jury made the award to the widow of ********* of the Town of Hamburg and his two sons and daughter after about three hours of deliberations following a two-week trial in the wrongful-death lawsuit before State Supreme Court Justice Eugene M. Fahey.
The jury had only to determine the amount of the financial award because in October 2000 Fahey ruled that Dunlop Tire and Goodyear-Dunlop were 100 percent liable in the death of *********, 40, court officials said.
Attorneys for the ********* estate said the victim was on a crew from a Buffalo concern working in the boiler house at Dunlop’s Sheridan Drive plant in the Town of Tonawanda when he fell 30 feet through a hole in the catwalk in October 1999. A former trustee of Local 7, Boilermakers Union, ********* died in Erie County Medical Center on Dec. 15, 1999, of complications from head injuries, according to John F. Maxwell attorney for the ********* family. – The Buffalo News