More Lawsuits Filed In Mississippi River Bridge Collapse
Monday, September 14th, 2009
On July 26, 2009, the State of Minnesota sued URS Corporation, the engineering firm that provided consulting work for the I-35W Bridge that collapsed on August 2, 2007, that resulted in 13 people being killed and 145 people being injured. Last year the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the likely cause of the bridge collapse was the failure of dangerously thin gusset plates supporting the structure and heavy loads on the bridge.
In litigation pleadings filed in Hennepin County District, URS claims that they were not hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation for a re-evaluation of the bridge’s original design and should not be responsible for design defects that lead to the motorists and passengers falling off the collapsed bridge into the Mississippi River.
The State of Minnesota’s lawsuit against URS seeks $37,000,000.00 in payments already made by the State through the Special Victims Fund and to reimburse the State for possible future payments to Progressive Contractors, Inc. employees who were working on the bridge on the day that the structure collapsed.