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Editor: Rod Sullivan
Profession: Maritime Attorney

Category: Boating Accidents

The 11th Circuit will hear oral arguments today in the case of In re: Superior Construction Company.

I was privileged, along with four other attorneys, Campbell Ford, Mark Miller, Brian Flaherty, and Gary Bubb, to try a boating collision case in the United States District Court in Jacksonville. If some of you are wondering how the accident happened, allow me to give you a view from the inside. This is what happened to the Wright family on the evening of December 29, 2001.

Three of the passengers were sitting forward of the windscreen of Charles Brock's 26 ft. Bayliner, leaning against the raised deck which formed the overhead of the forward cabin. Betty Wright, the matriarch of the Wright family, was standing between the two front seats. From there she could see what was going on around her while at the same time watching the smaller children, some of whom were her grandchildren, who had gone below to keep out of the wind. Brock was at the helm.

When Brock hit the side of the barge, the boat was going 22 miles per hour. It could go as fast as 38 mph, but Brock had throttled down until the boat was just on a plane. One of three passengers on the bow jumped over the side a split second before impact. The other two were launched straight into the steel side of the barge. Brock had enough time to pull the steering wheel to starboard, because that is the direction in which it can make the sharpest turns, but doesn't remember anything after his head hit the boat's windshield. Mrs. Wright was thrown down into the forward cabin where she landed atop some of the children, including one four year old boy.

In all, eleven people left the dock that evening for a short trip on the Ortego and Cedar Rivers to look at the Christmas lights from Brock's boat. By the end of the evening, five of them would be in the hospital.

United States District Judge Harvey Schlesinger entered a $19.2 million verdict against the construction company which left the barge sitting that night in the shadow of the Blanding Boulevard bridge. Each of the news stations in Jacksonville, 4, 12, 25, 30 and 47 reported it as a drunk driving incident, but after hearing three weeks of testimony, Judge Schlesinger decided that it wasn't quite that simple.

No matter how much the evidence was examined, few could find anything that the driver had done wrong. His speed wasn't excessive, he was lined up to pass safely between the pilings which support the bridge, lights could be seen in the distance on the shoreline over the top of the barge, and there was nothing to indicate that the span wasn't completely clear from obstructions. Of the five people on the boat above deck, no one had seen the barge until the moment before impact.

So what had the construction company done which made them responsible for the accident? Well, the lighting plan they had begun with six months earlier illustrates why there had never been an accident before. Then, back in June, ten portable lights had been placed around the perimeter of the barge which illuminated its outline, and floodlights from a light tower on the bridge shone down on the deck of the barge. However, during six months of work, the ten new lights had dwindled, through theft and loss, to just three working ones. The light tower had broken down and with just three days left on the project, the project superintendent decided not to bring in a new one.

Even the lights which were in place were inadequate. Brand new, and just out of the box, they didn't comply with Coast Guard regulations for intensity. After just one week of use, they were down to one-half of the minimum brightness required by UL specifications. They sat on the deck, obstructed from view by construction equipment, and one was said to be the intensity of a bathroom night light.

Other people transiting the Cedar River on the day of the accident noticed how poorly lit the barge was. One local boater was getting ready to call the Coast Guard on his radio earlier that evening when he got distracted. He was so distraught about failing to make that call that he expressed to the boaters from the witness stand how badly he felt about not making the call. Another witness, a retired police officer, reported that he had almost hit the barge the day before.

Verdicts as large as this one are rare in boating accident cases. This case would never have gone all the way through trial but for the unwillingness of the construction company's insurance carrier to settle the claims. Day after day through the three weeks of trial, the insurer's representative sat in the back of the courtroom, saw how the evidence progressed, and still never made an offer to settle which would cover even the future medical expenses of the family, let alone pay them anything for their pain and suffering. The family were the victims of the negligence of the construction company, but the construction company is the victim of the negligence of their insurer. That case has yet to be resolved.