Widow of Technician Crushed by Boom Lift in Industrial Freezer Settles Product Claims

A 39-year-old service technician was working inside an industrial freezer at a processing facility when he became trapped by the aerial boom lift he was operating. The lift's control panel and an overhead obstruction closed around him, pinning him in place. He was working alone and could not free himself. He died of mechanical asphyxiation and was not found inside the freezer until the following day.

His widow brought the claims on behalf of his estate. She sued the manufacturer of the boom lift, the dealer that rented it, and the processing facility where he was working. The case settled on July 21, 2025, for $10.25 million.

The product claim centered on the machine's design. The widow contended the manufacturer and dealer were negligent and strictly liable because the lift was defective and unreasonably dangerous. Her position was that a feasible alternative design existed in the form of an anti-entrapment device, and that one would have prevented her husband's death.

The claims against the facility were framed separately, as negligence, because the facility controlled the workplace rather than the machine. She alleged that it failed to assign a coworker to be with him while he worked in the freezer and that it allowed dangerous conditions to exist there.

The defendants denied liability. They raised comparative negligence, statutory employment and employer fault as defenses, which meant the estate faced real arguments over who bore responsibility and over the limits on claims arising from a workplace death. Settling resolved all of those disputes without a trial, and the estate received a $10.25 million recovery from claims that three separate defendants contested.

South Carolina Lawyers Weekly reported the result in December 2025 as a settlement summary. The published account withholds the case name and the court. It identifies the plaintiff's lawyers as David Lail and Liam Duffy of Yarborough Applegate in Charleston, working with David L. Kwass of Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky in Philadelphia. The terms beyond the total were not made public.