Geoffrey Fieger recently reached a $3 million settlement in a deliberate intent case involving the death of a coal miner in a fatal rib roll accident at a coal mine in West Virginia.
The young coal miner’s entire body was crushed by a rock measuring 25 feet long and 5 or 6 feet tall. The gigantic boulder fell from the rib of an 18-D belt trench. The defendants claimed that the death of the young coal miner was completely unforeseeable.
Plaintiffs claimed the incident was foreseeable because there had been an almost identical rib roll accident at one of defendants’ mines a few years earlier. Also, the defendants had been cited numerous times by the MSHA for failures to protect miners from hazardous roof and rib conditions
Plaintiffs alleged that implementing a simple safety protocol called “rib pinning in cycle” would have avoided the rib roll.
The case settled a few weeks before trial.
Geoffrey N. Fieger has been practicing personal injury law for almost 40 years. Geoffrey Fieger is known as an attorney who is well-prepared and achieves successful results on behalf of his clients.
