$20 Million Settlement After a Coworker Called an Elevator While a 65-Year-Old Mechanic Was Standing on Top of It

Lennox Hinckson was 65 years old and had spent decades working as an elevator mechanic, most recently as an employee of Alimak Elevator Co., a contractor Holcim hired to maintain the elevators at its cement plant in Holly Hill, South Carolina. On December 3, 2019, Hinckson was up on top of an elevator car inside the plant, adjusting the limit switch, a component that helps govern where the car stops and travels while someone is working on it from outside the cab.

While Hinckson was still up there, a Holcim employee on a floor below called the elevator. The car answered the call and began to descend, with Hinckson caught on top of it. He suffered catastrophic crush injuries and fell approximately 60 feet. He did not survive.

Hinckson's estate, through personal representative Sonia Antoine, sued Holcim (U.S.), Inc. in the South Carolina Court of Common Pleas for Orangeburg County, where the plant is located, in a case captioned Antoine v. Holcim (U.S.), Inc. The suit alleged that Holcim failed to follow its own standard safety protocols for the third-party contractors who service equipment at the plant, including failing to post warning signage marking that repair work was underway on the elevator. Those protocols exist for a specific reason: to make sure a piece of machinery someone is standing on top of, or working inside of, cannot be activated by a coworker elsewhere in the building who has no way of knowing he is there.

Hinckson's attorneys, David Yarborough and Perry Buckner of Yarborough Applegate, worked with Greg DeLuca of DeLuca Maucher in Goose Creek and David Williams of Williams and Williams in Orangeburg to pursue wrongful death and negligence claims against Holcim. Rather than go to trial, the parties settled the case for $20 million, a sum Yarborough Applegate has described as one of the larger wrongful death settlements reported in South Carolina for a single decedent.

Hinckson left behind four adult children and two grandchildren. Because the case settled before trial, no jury ever issued a public finding on exactly how Holcim's contractor safety program broke down that day, and the settlement did not include an admission of fault. But a $20 million resolution, reached without a trial, reflects how exposed Holcim's position had become once the facts, a coworker calling an elevator car with a 65-year-old mechanic standing on top of it, were established during discovery.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration, which has jurisdiction over cement plant operations, investigated Hinckson's death alongside the Orangeburg County Sheriff's Office. His death was ruled accidental.