$1.5 Million Settlement for Girl, 4, Burned in Richmond Sewer Gas Explosion
After trial: The City of Richmond agreed to the settlement, which the Richmond Circuit Court approved in December 2002. The amount is the reported settlement figure.
Won by Emroch & Kilduff.
A 4-year-old girl suffered burns to her legs in July 2000 when gas ignited in a Richmond sewer main. Her lawyers said the city had not fully repaired gas line leaks found nearby two months earlier. The city agreed to pay $1.5 million, and a Richmond Circuit Court judge approved the settlement in December 2002.
What happened
In July 2000, a 4-year-old girl was playing in Richmond, Virginia, with two boys, ages 5 and 6. The children were dropping lit matches into holes in a sewer manhole cover when gas that had collected in the sewer main exploded.
The girl's legs were burned. She needed skin grafts from her ankles to mid-calf, and her medical care ran to tens of thousands of dollars. The two boys had minor injuries.
Her lawyers, Walter H. Emroch and Thomas J. McNally of Emroch & Kilduff, built the case around the City of Richmond's work on a gas line near the site. They contended that city crews found leaks in that line in May 2000 and did not completely repair them, so gas escaped from the gas line into the sewer. They said tests showed explosive levels of gas in the sewer line when the city stopped working on the project on May 30, about two months before the blast. In their telling, the city knew the line was leaking and left the job with explosive levels of gas still in the sewer.
The city disputed that account. Its position was that the explosion came from a new leak that had never been reported, which meant the city had no chance to fix it. The children's own conduct did not decide the case: Virginia law usually bars recovery when a plaintiff's negligence contributes to the injury, but children this young are too young to be found negligent.
The case was resolved by agreement before trial. The city agreed to pay $1.5 million, and Richmond Circuit Court Judge Melvin R. Hughes Jr. approved the settlement on December 4, 2002, by which time the girl was 6. A court has to sign off on any settlement of a child's injury claim, which is why the agreement went before a judge. Under the terms reported by Virginia Lawyers Weekly, a trust company will manage the money until she turns 22.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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