Progressive Contractors Inc., the company that was resurfacing the Interstate 35W bridge when it fell two years ago, has reached settlements with collapse survivors and the state of Minnesota.
Terms of the settlement with survivors, approved Friday by a judge, are confidential. Kyle Hart, an attorney for PCI, said the company's insurers "tendered the limits of PCI's liability insurance at the time," while Chris Messerly, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, indicated that it was not a huge sum compared with what might be sought in suits against other players in the disaster.
Hart said that the company believes that the National Transportation Safety Board's findings "cleared PCI of any wrongdoing" in the Aug. 1, 2007, collapse and "this settlement allows PCI to put this matter behind it."
Messerly, who is representing 103 people as part of a consortium of lawyers working pro bono, said the settlement "falls far short of fully compensating the survivors and families of those who did not survive," but the plaintiffs believe that the agreement "is in their best interests under the circumstances."
"This was a secondary defendant without a lot of assets and resources," he said, adding that PCI is "not the primary wrongdoer."
Suits involving URS, a consultant that advised the Minnesota Department of Transportation on the bridge's structural condition, and Jacobs Engineering, the successor to the company that designed the bridge in the 1960s, are still pending, with a trial before Judge Deborah Hedlund set for March 2011. URS and the state are suing each other, while the survivors are suing URS and Jacobs. The state is also suing Jacobs.
A spokesman for URS said Friday that the firm had no comment.
The various suits against PCI alleged that its placement of 287 tons of gravel, equipment and other materials on the bridge's center span contributed to the collapse, which killed 13 people and injured 145. In its final ruling, made a year ago, the NTSB said the 40-year-old bridge fell because some of its steel plates were half the thickness they should have been. The board also cited the weight of the construction materials as a likely factor.