Raleigh law firm sues 8 companies in deadly downtown Durham gas explosion

Updated at 12:23 p.m. on June 23. See details in story.

A Raleigh law firm filed four lawsuits Monday over last year’s deadly Durham gas explosion: one for the family of a coffee-shop owner killed in the blast and three others on behalf of people who were injured.

The lawsuits claim eight companies were negligent in the events leading to the explosion, which killed two people and injured at least 25 others, according to a press release from attorney Bill Bystrynski of the firm Edwards Kirby.

The lawsuits, filed in Durham County Superior Court, seek an unspecified amount of money in damages.

They were filed on behalf of the family of Kong Lee, the owner of the Kaffeinate coffee shop that was destroyed in the blast, and three others:

▪ Richard Meyers, a bus driver who was pulling up near the coffee shop when it exploded

▪ Katrics Edwards, who was walking to the coffee shop at the time of the blast

▪ Jasper Poole, who was in the area to deliver flowers for a friend’s birthday

“This tragedy was caused by a cascade of errors,” said attorney David F. Kirby, a co-founder of the personal-injury law firm with John Edwards, the former U.S. senator and presidential candidate.

“The gas line would not have been ruptured if standard safety protocols were followed by all the contractors involved in the planning and execution of a major underground cable installation project in downtown Durham,” Kirby said in the release.

A Durham Fire Department investigation last summer found the April 10, 2019, explosion and fire occurred after a contractor accidentally ruptured a natural gas line five feet from Kaffeinate’s door and that gas flowed for one hour. It found no evidence that anyone from the contractor’s crew called 911.

Jay Rambeaut, a PSNC Energy worker who responded to the leak, died two weeks later.

Failed training, supervision and response alleged

According to the lawsuits, the companies supervising the work failed to ensure adequate training in workers’ native languages, failed to follow proper protocol for locating and digging around utilities, failed to communicate the urgency of the situation to responders, and misled people in the area about the gas leak.

It became clear to supervisors from Tower Engineering, Crown Castle and PS Splicing who had been supervising the work that “Optic Cable workers were not capable of safely or correctly conducting drilling operations without close supervision,” the lawsuit contends.

Tower Engineering and Crown Castle “pressured those conducting the drilling and installation operations to speed up their work,” it says. When the drill was moved to Duke Street on April 9, Optic Cable workers did not dig a hole to locate the utilities, it says. No one from Crown Castle or Tower Engineering required the hole to be dug, and PS Splicing did not have someone there to supervise the drilling, the lawsuit contends.

PS Splicing chief executive officer Don Smith was not available to supervise the work on April 10, it notes, and contacted Tower Engineering about sending someone out.

When the pipeline was ruptured, the lawsuit contends PS Splicing and the project supervisors failed to call 911 or 811. Workers did call Smith, who called 811 to report the leak when he arrived. He called 911 about 10 minutes later, the lawsuit says.

The building exploded shortly after 10 a.m., and Smith was seriously injured in the explosion.

The lawsuit accuses PSNC, among other claims, of not following protocol for dispatching first responders to the leak and not communicating the urgency of the situation to the responder sent to the scene. That responder did not have time to turn off the gas, it says.

The lawsuit also alleges that Optic Cable Technology “falsely told those inquiring that 911 had been called” and “falsely reassured those inquiring that they would be able to return to work in a matter of a few minutes.” It says firefighters who responded did evacuate the coffee shop, “but explicitly told patrons it was not an emergency.”

The companies were “negligent, reckless, and willful and wanton” in their conduct, the lawsuit concludes.

A lawsuit is just one version of events in a legal dispute.

Dominion Energy North Carolina spokeswoman Persida Montanez said in an email the company had not net received a copy of the lawsuits Monday evening. The company “will review them and respond in the proper forum when it is appropriate to do so,” she said.

“Dominion Energy expresses its deepest sympathy for the families of Kong Lee, our colleague Jay Rambeaut and those injured,” Montanez said.

State fined three companies

The N.C. Department of Labor fined PSNC Energy and two subcontractors $21,100 in the 2019 explosion, The News & Observer reported.

The largest fine, $14,000, went to Optic Cable technology Inc., the subcontractor laying fiber optic cable. According to the citations, the company failed to dig a test hole to determine the exact location of the underground pipe before drilling.

The Labor Department cited PSNC Energy — doing business as Dominion Energy North Carolina — for one alleged serious violation with a penalty of $5,000, and PS Splicing for one serious alleged violation with a penalty of $2,100.

All three companies are listed as defendants in the lawsuit. The others are Tower Engineering Professionals, a Raleigh company that was the project engineer; and Crown Castle Fiber and three related fiber technology companies that the lawsuit says were in charge of the project.

The Labor Department can charge up to $7,000 for serious violations, depending on “the gravity of the violation, the size of the business, the good faith of the employer and the history of previous violations,” Department of Labor spokeswoman Dolores Quesenberry has said. Fines are distributed to the public school systems.

All three companies are contesting their fines and have not made any payments yet, Quesenberry said in an email Tuesday.

“No statute or rule requires a specific time for concluding a contested case. It can take years for a contested case to officially close,” she said.

PSNC officials have appealed the fine, Montanez said, because they “respectfully disagree with the North Carolina Department of Labor’s conclusion that Dominion Energy did not have adequate procedures in place for our employees’ personal safety.”

“The NCDOL’s citation in no way attributes any fault for the gas leak or explosion to Dominion Energy or our employee,” she said. “Safety is a core value at Dominion Energy and we are committed to learning from this incident.”

This story was originally published June 22, 2020 at 3:05 PM.