Jeffrey Wischer, William DeGrave and Jerome Starr were suspended in a manbasket from another crane at the time of the accident.
The final agreement in principle means that the women will receive far less than what a Milwaukee County Circuit Court jury awarded them during a trial in December 2000.
In the original court case, the jury returned a verdict and attributed 97% of the liability to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of America. The widows contended that Mitsubishi, through its site supervisor Victor Grotlisch, negligently allowed the roof lift to be made in conditions that were too windy.
Howard Shapiro, chief expert witness for the widows, said that the lift should not have been made on the day of the accident in winds above 11mph.
New York-based Shapiro, a noted industry expert, said that no one at the job site did wind-sail calculations to determine the effect of the wind on the load being lifted.
The federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), said wind was the principal cause of the accident, although its findings were not allowed into evidence at the civil damages trial.
