They Were Running the First Batches of a New Drying Process. The Dryer Exploded With the Force of Two Tons of TNT and Killed Him.
After trial: The jury returned $15,000,000 on May 2, 2024, split $10,000,000 wrongful death and $5,000,000 for conscious pain and suffering, with fault apportioned 70 percent to Clearon and 30 percent to Optima Belle. Two qualifications. No appellate reversal or reduction has been found, but that rests on the absence of a reported appeal rather than on an affirmance: the WV Intermediate Court of Appeals and Supreme Court of Appeals dockets and news through 2026 were searched and nothing surfaced, and an appeal by two corporate defendants would not be surprising. Second, under W. Va. Code 55-7-24 judgment was almost certainly entered severally, roughly $10.5 million against Clearon and $4.5 million against Optima, so the per-defendant amounts should not be described as joint; both are solvent corporate defendants, so unlike some West Virginia apportionment cases the total recovery is unaffected. Not a medical professional liability case, so W. Va. Code 55-7B-8 does not apply.
Won by Segal & Amos, PLLC.
John Mark Gillenwater, 42, was working the first runs of a new process to dry a chlorinated bleach compound at the Optima Belle plant in the Kanawha Valley. The dryer exploded with a force experts likened to two tons of TNT. A jury found the process should never have been run as designed and awarded his widow $15 million.
What happened
On the evening of December 8, 2020 John Mark Gillenwater was at work at the Optima Belle plant in Belle, West Virginia, in the chemical corridor of the Kanawha Valley. He was 42.
The plant was running the first batches of a new drying process meant to pull moisture out of a chlorinated dry bleach compound. Clearon Corporation owned the material and had contracted the drying work out to Optima.
The dryer exploded. Witnesses and experts likened the force to two tons of TNT. Gillenwater was killed, and he did not die instantly: the jury heard evidence that he was in pain before anyone could reach him.
The case was not that something unforeseeable went wrong. It was that the process should never have been run the way it was designed to run, and the jury agreed, apportioning 70 percent of the fault to Clearon, which owned the compound and specified the job, and 30 percent to Optima, which ran it.
On May 2, 2024 the Kanawha County jury awarded $15,000,000, split as $10,000,000 for the wrongful death and $5,000,000 for the conscious pain and suffering Gillenwater endured before he died.
His widow, Tina Gillenwater of Hurricane, was the sole plaintiff. She was represented by Scott S. Segal, who led the case, and Edward Amos II, then of The Segal Law Firm and now practising as Segal and Amos.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.West Virginia MetroNews, May 3, 2024: the Kanawha County civil jury award following the death caused by the 2020 Belle plant explosion; the December 8, 2020 explosion during the first runs of the new drying process for a chlorinated dry bleach compound, the force likened to two tons of TNT, the 70/30 apportionment between Clearon and Optima, the $10 million and $5 million split, and Scott Segal as Tina Gillenwater's counsel
- 2.Charleston Gazette-Mail: the jury award after the death caused by the Kanawha County chemical explosion, confirming the widow as sole plaintiff
- 3.WCHS: the jury awards $15 million to the family of the man killed in the 2020 Kanawha chemical plant explosion, confirming the entered verdict
- 4.WOWK: the jury award to the family of the man who died in the 2020 Belle chemical plant explosion
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