$15 Million Verdict for Widow of Worker Killed When a Bleach Dryer Exploded Like Two Tons of TNT
After trial: The jury returned $15,000,000 on May 2, 2024 ($10,000,000 wrongful death, $5,000,000 conscious pain and suffering), with fault split 70 percent to Clearon and 30 percent to Optima Belle. No reversal, reduction or appeal has been reported.
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·Archived copy
- 2.Charleston Gazette-Mail·Archived copy
- 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·Archived copy
- 4.WOWK: the jury award to the family of the man who died in the 2020 Belle chemical plant explosion·Archived copy
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