Editorial: Pittsburgh’s Fern Hollow settlement filing is hard to swallow
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Doing something audaciously bold is said to take gall.
The saying comes from the word “gall,” referring to bile — in reality, secretions of the liver but generally any bitter, caustic, hard-to-swallow substance produced by the body. It “takes gall” to take some actions because, like swallowing bile, you have to ignore the harsh flavor of what you are doing.
The city of Pittsburgh has real gall.
Eleven months ago, the final report on the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse showed it was not an act of God. It was not dumb luck. It was the logical consequence of years of neglect. If you allow metal to rust and deteriorate over time without support or maintenance, that metal eventually will fail.
On Jan. 28, 2022, that is what happened, with the 447-foot-long bridge plummeting into the ravine. The bridge took a bus and four vehicles with it. A fifth drove off an abutment during the fall.
If there was an act of God, it was the fact that no one was killed. Four people, however, were injured.
It was an act of government that caused the collapse in not doing the regular work to keep it safely functional. It is a further act of government that insulates Pittsburgh from most of the fallout. Because of state law, the city’s payout cannot exceed $500,000. That is not for each of the eight victims but in total.
Pittsburgh cannot be held responsible for the law — a law that all but encourages a municipality to shrug and continue neglect. That’s on state lawmakers.
It can — and should — be held responsible for its disgusting actions in recent court filings. The city’s lawyers assign blame to everyone but the city. It was the fault of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. It was private engineers.
It was even said to be the fault of the victims themselves. Dentist Clinton Runco was careless and negligent in operating his vehicle such that it ended up in the ravine, upside down, breaking his sternum, ribs and neck, the city’s lawyers asserted. Tsk, tsk. Do better, sir. In fact, why weren’t all of the victims expecting the bridge to collapse? None of this would have happened had they just stayed home.
That’s bad enough, but it’s the kind of thing lawyers often do in defense of a client. For instance, in 2014, then-Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s staff blamed a state prison clerk for the woman’s rape at the hands of an inmate.
The salt in this wound is that, after offering to settle for $500,000, the city’s filing asked for something else. It wanted to deduct legal fees Pittsburgh could incur because of the victims’ suits against the private engineering companies.
To give the victims such a small pie to share, despite the city’s obvious negligence, and to then ask for its own slice is bitter and hard to swallow.
Yes, Pittsburgh is having financial issues. Yes, lawsuits are expensive. But so is a broken neck. So are the lingering injuries from falling into a gorge. And perhaps these are things the city should think about when it is neglecting to maintain critical infrastructure. Sometimes the cost on the back end is prohibitive.
But to blame the victims while staking claims to their settlement? That takes real gall.