In two cases, prosecutors tried to assign direct criminial responsibility for the crane collapses. A judge cleared William Rapetti, the master rigger on the crane that collapsed in March 2008, killing seven people, of all charges. In the second case, involving a fatal accident in May the same year, which killed two people, James Lomma was again cleared by a judge. A second defendant, Tibor Varganyi, chose to plead guilty and testify against Lomma, his boss. Lomma’s attorney predicted at the time of Varganyi’s plea that, if he had chosen to fight the prosecution, he too could have been cleared. The 65-year-old, who emigrated from Hungary 30 years ago and lacked US citizenship, faced up to 15 years in prison and had clear reason to want to stay on the right side of US authorities.
The prosecutors have had a more convincing run in a series of cases looking more broadly at cranes in the city. In none of these were they able to show a link to the fatal accidents. In the case of Edward Marquette, a crane inspector who should have checked the crane that collapsed on East 51st Street, they secured a conviction for filing false records, but could not convince a judge to find him guilty for failing to inspect the crane in question. Former acting chief inspector of cranes James Delayo, pleaded guilty to accepting bribes fromMichael Sackaris of Nu-Way Crane, in order to certify a series of cranes that he had not inspected. These two latter cases point to an issue that bedevils the New York crane and construction industry: a system of licensing of cranes and operators, that relies on a handful of inspectors, opens the door for corruption.
On one side of this, certification of operators, the city has taken the right course of action by replacing a local licensing scheme, which was for all intents and purposes only open to union members, with nationally recognised NCCCO certification. But other steps, such as insisting on local certification of cranes, may increase the risk of accidents.
By making it more onerous and expensive to bring new cranes into the city, authorities have guaranteed that New York will be continue to be served by an aging fleet of cranes. Fixing that issue would have been a better way for New York to make its crane industry safer, than this series of fruitless prosecutions.
