Did the 1984 Wilberg Mine disaster, which claimed the lives of 27 coal miners and cost Utah Power & Light Co. and its insurers millions, result from unsafe coal-mining practices or defective machinery?
That's the question an eight-member 4th District Court jury began considering Monday during opening statements in an $86 million civil lawsuit that could put to rest just how the fire started and who was at fault. The trial is expected to take six to seven weeks.UP&L brought the lawsuit in hopes of being compensated for the $22 million it paid in an out-of-court settlement to widows and children of those who were trapped in the Dec. 19, 1984, mine fire.
Five days after the fire, the mine was sealed to starve the fire of oxygen. The victims' bodies were recovered later after the mine was reopened.
UP&L hopes to win another $64 million to reimburse insurance companies that covered UP&L losses as a result of the fire. One attorney called the lawsuit the largest attempted recovery of damages in the history of American mining.
UP&L hopes to win another $64 million to reimburse insurance companies that covered UP&L losses as a result of the fire. One attorney called the lawsuit the largest attempted recovery of damages in the history of American mining.
The trial, by necessity, is being held in a ballroom at the Provo Excelsior Hotel to accommodate the more than two dozen attorneys involved.
UP&L attorneys Monday maintained the company lost millions by having to purchase coal elsewhere for its power plants after the mine was shut down following the fire, and that it paid millions in mine-recovery costs, equipment losses and increased insurance premiums.
Who's being sued
Named in the lawsuit are Ingersoll-Rand of New Jersey, which manufactured what UP&L attorney Paul Felt called a "defective air compressor" that a federal Mine Safety and Health Administration report concludes started the fire.
UP&L also is suing Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp., which produced underground aluminum ventilation structures known as "overcasts." Several of the overcasts, which he said Kaiser failed to adequately test, buckled and collapsed from the heat of the fire, blocking escape routes.
In addition, UP&L has named the Emery Mining Corp., which the power company had hired to run the mining operations in 1979. Ingersoll-Rand and Kaiser are suing Emery Mining as well, and the mining company, in turn, has filed countersuits.
UP&L's argument
Felt called the mine fire a "Dante's Inferno" in which the miners never had a chance. He said UP&L welcomes the opportunity to finally prove to a jury who was responsible for the fire.
Of all entities involved, Felt said, UP&L is the least at fault despite the fact that the company owned the mine and hired Emery Mining.
Roland Stevens, representing several property insurance companies that covered UP&L losses, said trial evidence will show that the fire's origin can be traced to a faulty compressor that should not have been used in coal mining because it was susceptible to catching fire and because it lacked backup safety features.
"Ingersoll-Rand knew this when they sold us the machine, but they didn't tell us," he said. Neither Ingersoll-Rand nor Kaiser "considered the safety aspects at all of placing their products in a coal mine."
Opposing statements
John Calimafde, attorney for Ingersoll-Rand, dismissed the plaintiffs' explanation of the fire as "based entirely on speculation." What caused the fire, he said, was not his company's compressor, but rather the "reckless and gross negligence" of Emery Mining, which he called a puppet of UP&L.
In Emery Mining's quest to break a world production record the day of the fire, management assumed an attitude of "Damn the safety devices. They will only slow us down," Calimafde said. "The record must be broken."
He told jurors that miners had bypassed a safety switch designed to turn off the compressor in case of overheating and that they had damaged and removed the compressor's on-off switch.
The Mine Safety report concluded that the compressor overheated after running unattended for nearly three days because it was inadvertently turned on. Calimafde disputed that finding, but said Emery Mining's generally poor practices turned the compressor into a "mechanical paraplegic" and that management knew the danger of running the compressor improperly.