News
Family of Woman Killed in Downtown Blast Sues NorthWestern Energy
October 21, 2009
The family of the only person who died in the March 5 natural-gas explosion that destroyed half a city block in downtown Bozeman filed a wrongful death lawsuit Thursday against NorthWestern Energy.
BOZEMAN, MONTANA – Tara Reistad Bowman’s husband, Christopher Bowman, filed the suit against NorthWestern and the company’s system integrity manager, Leonard Leveaux, in Gallatin County District Court.
Bowman’s suit alleges NorthWestern and Leveaux, were negligent and acted with malice because they did not take steps to ensure the safety of the fractured pipe joint responsible for the explosion.
The crack in a threaded joint on a 2-inch service line, behind Montana Trails Gallery, where Tara Bowman, 36, was working at 8:12 a.m., “had deteriorated, becoming brittle, dangerous and defective,” prior to the explosion, attorney Mike Cok wrote in the court filing.
The crack allowed “natural gas to escape and enter the building,” causing the blast, the suit alleges.
The energy company said it is not clear whether the crack caused the blast or was a result of it and denied any liability for the incident.
NorthWestern Energy Chief Executive Officer Bob Rowe said on Aust. 24, that it may never be known when the crack actually occurred.
In commenting that same day on the investigation into the cause of the explosion, North Western said in a prepared statement, “there was nothing evident from the condition of the service line or (threaded) fitting that suggested they were defective or had been assembled or installed improperly.
“The portion of the fracture surface in the pipe threads was bright and shiny, indicating that it was a very recent fracture which occurred either shortly before or as a result of the explosion,” the utility company said.
But Cok and his clients believe otherwise. Cok has already filed two other lawsuits making similar arguments on behalf of the American Legion Post 14 and the owners of LillyLu and Tolstedt Architects.
The suits claim that older-design threaded joints, such as the one that caused the blast, are inherently more susceptible to failure than newer ones, that the company knew that and should have replaced the joint.
The pipeline was “unreasonably dangerous to the user and the ultimate consumers,” Bowman’s suit states.
Furthermore, it contends that NorthWestern failed to meet federally mandated standards and “failed to properly maintain, inspect, install, test, operate, repair, replace and service the pipeline and threaded joint in the alley” behind the gallery.
The suit also claims that in his role with North Western, Leveaux, “was aware of a number of failures of threaded portions of service lines, some of which resulted in explosions and fires and prepared reports to governmental agencies describe those events.”
NorthWestern knew conditions of the pipe created “a high probability of injury” and deliberately acted with intentional disregard to those facts, the lawsuit states.
The suit asks for an unspecified award for wrongful death, compensatory and punitive damages.”
“Defendants are responsible to the state of Tara Bowman for all damages including lost earning, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, emotional distress and loss of course of life.”
Claudia Raplock, spokeswoman for NorthWestern Energy, said Thursday evening that the company had not yet seen the lawsuit.
“As is typical, we don’t comment on pending litigation,” she said.