Cheap repair eyed in crane collapse trial

A money-hungry construction crane owner's decision to skimp on a vital repair job led to a collapse that killed two workers, a prosecutor said Tuesday as the owner went on trial in a manslaughter case he says is casting the 2008 accident as a crime.

"They were killed because of one man's greed," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eli Cherkasky said in his opening statement in James Lomma's trial, the only criminal trial stemming from the May 2008 collapse on the Upper East Side. "They were killed because one man valued his own profit over the safety of others."

But Lomma's lawyers said investigators and prosecutors were so focused on the broken weld that they misunderstood it: It was a consequence of the collapse, not the cause, the defense said.

"The government saw what they wanted to see and ignored everything else," defense lawyer James Kim said in his opening statement.

Prosecutors say Lomma pinched pennies on a crucial repair job that failed and caused the collapse, but the defense said Lomma acted responsibly in getting the repair done. It says expert witnesses have concluded the crane fell apart because it was pulled too high.

"What our experts say is that the weld was not the cause of this collapse," defense lawyer Paul Shechtman told a judge during legal arguments before the openings. Lomma and his companies, New York Crane & Equipment Corp. and J. F. Lomma Inc., have chosen to have a judge decide the verdict, instead of a jury.

The accident happened two months after another Manhattan crane collapse killed seven people, and the incidents together prompted scrutiny of crane safety nationwide.

The 200-foot-tall crane was starting work on the 14th floor of what was to be a 32-story apartment building when the top portions of the rig snapped off, crashed into a building across the street and plummeted to the ground. Donald C. Leo, 30, a second-generation crane operator, was in the crane's cab and was almost decapitated when it fell, Cherkasky said. On the ground, a sewer company worker, Ramadan Kurtaj, 27, was crushed in the rubble and died hours after being pulled out. A third construction worker, Simeon Alexis, was seriously injured.

Lomma and mechanic Tibor Varganyi arranged for a cheap welding job to replace a critical component in the crane, prosecutors said.

Varganyi, 65, has pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide. He's set for sentencing in April and could be spared jail time if he testifies, as expected, against Lomma, 66.

If convicted, Lomma could face up to 15 years in prison.