One killed, eight injured in church roof collapse

In North Carolina last week, one construction worker was killed and eight were injured when 32 roof trusses that they were setting collapsed.  The project that they were working on involved the construction of a new church building.  The men were employed by a carpentry subcontractor on the project.  The owner of the company stated that the cause of the roof collapse was that the walls of the church were "bowed out" leading to the collapse of the trusses.

Workers injured in a construction site accident in Illinois are entitled to make a claim for Illinois worker's compensation benefits.  Worker's compensation benefits in Illinois include: two-thirds of your average weekly wage while you are off work, payment of your medical expenses, and a lump sum for permanency associated with the injury. 

Additionally, if there is some reason to believe that the negligence of some person other than your employer or a co-worker, then the injured worker can also file a third-party liability suit against the persons or entities responsible for their injuries.  In the third party liability suit, the injured worker can seek the full measure of the damages available to him.

In this situation, the collapse appears to be due to placing several heavy roof trusses on top of the wall of the church building when walls were not properly braced to bear the weight of the trusses.  The facts of this accident appear to support the liability of at least two other entities:

1.  The general contractor on the job site.  The general contractor is responsible for assuring overall safety on the job site and to make sure that safe construction practices are being followed.  The truss-setting operation is obviously an important part of the erection of the building, and the general contractor would likely have been closely involved in this and should have recognized that the lack of bracing for the walls was a serious safety hazard.

2.  The crane operator.  Crane operators are responsible for not only delivering the load on target, but making sure that the load is being delivered to a safe place.  The crane operator should have recognized that the absence of bracing for the walls was a safety hazard and should have refused to make the lift until the load could be delivered safely.

Handling third party liability construction accidents such as this is a complex undertaking from the standpoint of investigating the facts of what occurred.  Further, the relationship between the worker's compensation case and the third party liability suit is extremely complex from a legal standpoint.  Therefore, we strongly recommend that any construction worker injured in an accident hire an experienced Chicago personal injury lawyer to assist them.