Widow awarded $8.8M in wrongful death suit

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After a two-week trial in a case involving a man who died while working at North Charleston’s Boeing Co.’s Dreamliner 787 plant, a federal jury awarded $8.8 million to the man’s estate, his attorneys have reported.

In 2013, 38-year-old David Priester Jr. was standing on an automated slider attached to an elevated mobile platform when he fell 18 feet onto a concrete floor. He died from brain injuries suffered in the fall.

Priester and several other employees were standing on the platform while placing plastic in the seams of a 787 plane. Following a “routine rotation” of the fuselage, Priester’s attorneys said, the sliders redeployed so they would fit next to the plane. While 17 sliders deployed as the computer system commanded, one slider failed to do so. This malfunction created a larger-than-intended space through which Priester fell.

Unbeknownst to Boeing (which was not a named defendant) and its employees, defendant SAR Automation, with which Boeing had contracted to commission and install the new platform, had modified the platform’s computer system from its original design intent, Priester’s attorneys said.

According to the lawsuit, SAR failed to install software that would have installed safety features, horns, and emergency lighting that would have warned employees of dangerous gaps.

“In a modern manufacturing environment where hard-working employees depend on automated systems, manufacturers need to be held accountable if they do not complete software design installations necessary to prevent killing workers,” said one of Priester’s attorneys, Kevin Dean of Motley Rice in Mount Pleasant.

Professional engineers Bartley Eckhardt and Daryl Ebersole, who is also a certified fire and explosion investigator, of Robson Forensic testified as experts at trial. According to Motley Rice, Ebersole addressed “computer programming, logic and safety issues with automated sliders on defect,” while Eckhardt commented on American National Standards Institute standards, “overall negligence of SAR, and defect in Logic.”

Perry Woodside III, Ph.D., of the certified public accounting firm Dixon Hughes Goodman in Charleston, testified as an expert regarding the financial loss arising from Priester’s death.

Follow Heath Hamacher on Twitter @SCLWHamacher

VERDICT REPORT – WRONGFUL DEATH

Amount: $8.8 million

Case name: Lisa J. Priester, individually, and as a Personal Representative of the Estate of David A. Priester, Jr., vs. SAR Automation, L.P.

Court: U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina

Case No.: 2:14-cv-01108-DCN

Judge: David Norton

Date of settlement: Aug. 24

Most helpful experts: Daryl Ebersole, P.E., CFEI, and Bartley Eckhardt, P.E., of Robson Forensic, and Perry Woodside III of Dixon Hughes Goodman in Charleston

Attorneys for plaintiff: Kevin Dean, Anne McGinness Kearse, and Taylor Lacy of Motley Rice in Mount Pleasant

Attorneys for defendants: Mark Wall and Stephanie Brown of Wall Templeton & Haldrup in Charleston