Fight over Fern Hollow Bridge collapse records continues in court

The attorney representing the City of Pittsburgh called three witnesses on Tuesday to bolster its position that state and federal law prohibit it from turning over unredacted inspection reports to the victims on the Fern Hollow Bridge when it collapsed nearly two years ago.

But as the testimony concluded, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Philip A. Ignelzi told city attorney John Doherty that he didn’t think the city met its burden. Instead, Ignelzi summoned Doherty’s boss, Pittsburgh Solicitor Krysia Kubiak, to come to his eighth-floor courtroom.

She did, and Ignelzi took Kubiak and Doherty into chambers. A short time later, he invited one of the plaintiff’s lawyers to join them.

And a few minutes after that, they returned to the courtroom with at least a partial agreement.

The plaintiffs are to provide the city with a list of search terms to run through its email servers and 311 system to attempt to learn what complaints were made about the bridge and when, and to whom those complaints were relayed.

Once the city has identified documents relevant to the search, Ignelzi said, the city will have two to three weeks to turn them over to plaintiffs’ counsel.

In the meantime, the judge said he also intends to grant the plaintiffs’ request to issue subpoenas to three engineering firms believed to have worked on the bridge.

One of their goals: to identify potential defendants to sue besides the City of Pittsburgh, which is capped from paying any more than $500,000 in damages to all plaintiffs.

Time is pressing; the deadline to identify other defendants is the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 28, 2022, disaster.

The city doesn’t think the victims and their attorneys should be able to get the bridge records from engineering firms CDM Smith, Gannett Fleming and Michael Baker.

Doherty argued on Tuesday that federal and state law forbids the city from turning over the records being sought for use in lawsuits. The intent of the laws was to allow local governments to troubleshoot bridges and highways to fix hazards and prioritize work — all without fear that the information would be used against them in court.

But lawyers for injured victims Daryl Luciani, Matthew Evans, Clinton Runco and Joseph Engelmeier claim that the those laws either don’t apply to the specific records they want, or that the laws don’t apply because they’re seeking the records from third parties — the engineering firms — and not Pittsburgh or the state of Pennsylvania.

Peter Giglione, who represents Luciani, a bus driver for Pittsburgh Regional Transit, and his wife, claims that the city has tried to prevent him from getting information at every step of the way — from trying to block subpoenas, to unsuccessfully trying to force them to file complaints against the city before they’re ready, to refusing to identify the company responsible for cleaning bridge drains.

Doherty has questioned why some victims haven’t yet filed a complaint against the city, calling the wait “stunning” and noting that others caught in the collapse — Tyrone and Velva Perry, and Thomas Bench — have already sued the city. Doherty wrote in a court filing that Luciani appeared to be seeking “deeper pockets” to sue.

But as Tuesday’s hearing began, Judge Ignelzi said he was “a little disappointed” in how the city was handling itself.

“What is a little astounding to this court is the city keeps saying, ‘We need a complaint. We need a complaint. We need a complaint,” the judge said. “All a complaint is going to say is a bridge fell.”

Ignelzi said he thought the city would understand why the plaintiffs want to know what engineering firms were involved.

“I’d think the city would want to do everything to find the parties responsible,” the judge said. “These are taxpayers the city is dragging through a needless, bureaucratic process.”

The 447-foot-long Fern Hollow Bridge, which ran along Forbes Avenue over a deep ravine in Frick Park, collapsed before dawn. Six vehicles, including a bus driven by Luciani with two passengers, tumbled into the void. No one died, but numerous people were injured in the collapse.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board continue to investigate the catastrophe. They have paid particular attention to the bridge’s corroded legs, the uncoated, weathering steel from which it was made, and problems with clogged drains that prevented water from draining properly.

3 witnesses testify

On Tuesday, the city called a PennDOT bridge engineer, Pittsburgh’s chief engineer and the deputy director of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure to testify.

Jonathan Moses, the assistant chief bridge engineer in Pennsylvania, spent more than two hours on the stand. He testified that while the city of Pittsburgh owned the Fern Hollow Bridge, PennDOT had oversight authority.

“Any maintenance is the responsibility of the owner,” Moses said.

During cross-examination, Moses admitted that PennDOT released a redacted version of the 2021 Fern Hollow Bridge inspection report to one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys through the state Right to Know law. He noted that the names of the inspectors who conducted the bridge inspections are redacted from the reports to protect the inspectors’ safety.

But Doherty argued that what’s permitted through the Right to Know law is different than what federal statute provides.

Moses also noted that he recently attended a meeting during which he and others were told that if PennDOT does not own a document — such as the Fern Hollow Bridge inspection report — they must seek permission from the owner, or city, before they can share it.

Pittsburgh’s chief engineer Eric Stetzler testified that the city was aware there were clogged drains on the bridge. But from the time he took over his position in 2019, Stetzler said the city did not give a work order to any contractor to clear the drainage.

“The inspectors, themselves, are not actually tasked with rectifying those problems,” he said.

Jeff Skalican, the deputy director of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, said that out of more than $700 million in Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission Transportation Improvement Program funds for structurally deficient bridges for 2019 to 2022, Fern Hollow, which at the time was structurally deficient, was not among them.

“Why didn’t the Fern Hollow Bridge make the cut to be part of this specific TIP plan?” asked plaintiff’s attorney Jason Matzus.

“Well, the city has a lot of priorities and needs to keep our bridges safe,” Skalican responded.

“What other bridge collapsed?” Matzus continued.

“None.”

Matzus, who represents Runco, said that the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse is one of the worst infrastructure disasters in the state’s history. The lawsuits, he continued, are about public safety and transparency.

“Today was a big step in obtaining information that will allow us to identify all potential parties that were responsible for keeping the bridge from collapsing,” he said.