Crane King teeters Deadline looms to pay $1.5M – or else
Construction magnate James Lomma has earned a new nickname — King of Contempt.
The self-described King of Cranes has 11 days to pay $1.5 million into an escrow account or face $10,000 in daily fines for violating a bankruptcy-court order.
Lomma’s Kodiak tower crane collapsed on an Upper East Side job site nine years ago Tuesday, killing the machine’s operator, Donald Leo Jr., 30, of Staten Island, and laborer Ramadan Kurtaj, 27, an immigrant from Kosovo who lived in The Bronx.
Lomma declared bankruptcy in January 2016, a day after the victims’ families tried to collect a $96 million jury verdict over their deaths. The jury found in 2015 that Lomma had prioritized profit over safety by using an untested Chinese company to fix a cracked bearing on the 240-foot-tall crane.
Brooklyn bankruptcy court Chief Judge Carla Craig had ordered Lomma to put profits from rentals of his 350plus cranes into an escrow account pending an appeal of the verdict.
Instead, he was caught funneling $1.5 million into company coffers.
“There’s ample records to support the conclusion that he’s in contempt of the confirmation order,” Craig said during a hearing last week.
At the proceeding, Lomma took the stand and claimed he didn’t realize the money had been rerouted into his company until it was too late.
“Whether he knew what was happening when the money came in or not, it was his business to keep on top of that,” the judge said.
In attempting to explain why Lomma’s employees had deposited the receivables, he testified that he was having cashflow problems.
But his lawyer seemed to contradict that claim earlier in the hearing.
“We’re still the leading crane company in the city of New York,” Lomma’s lawyer, Kevin Nash boasted. “That’s not going to change.”
Lomma’s cranes have been used to build the new World Trade Center and the Hudson Yards redevelopment.
Neil Berger, a lawyer representing Lomma’s creditors, had asked the judge to impose a $20,000 daily sanction.
“Mr. Lomma, 18 months into this case, doesn’t understand that this is not business as usual. This is not a game of cat and mouse,” Berger said.
Kurtaj’s cousin, Xhevahire Sinanij, applauded the heavy fine.
“Our family is thankful the judge found him in contempt. He thinks he’s above the law. He needs to be taught a lesson,” Sinanij said.
“We never ever thought it would take nine years to get justice,” she added.
Lomma’s attorney, Kevin Nash, told The Post his client hopes to come up with the $1.5 million before the June 9 deadline to avoid paying the fine.