Records: State renews deal with firm fined for falsifying reports
The state recently renewed a contract for bridge inspection vehicles with a Virginia company that was embroiled in a seven-year criminal court battle with the federal government that ended last month with a $137,500 fine over alleged falsified inspection reports connected with the death of a Connecticut man.
The company now also plans to file a lawsuit against the state Department of Transportation for suspending the use of its equipment for 10 months following the fatal accident and another incident the day before in Connecticut, documents show.
William Shook, 43, of Middlefield, died on Aug. 26, 2015 after the vehicle he was using to inspect a bridge on Interstate-84 in West Hartford unexpectedly overturned, trapping him between a Jersey barrier and the truck, a federal investigation report stated.
Shook was an employee of the Virginia-based McClain & Company, which rents bridge inspection vehicles to several states, including Connecticut.
The day before Shook’s death, two McClain & Company employees had to be rescued by the New London Fire Department after a piece of equipment loosed while they were suspended in the bucket of one of the bridge inspection trucks, according to an internal memo obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media Group.
In the days that followed, the Connecticut branch of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened an investigation into the death, records show. Federal authorities claimed in court documents released last month that McClain & Company paid a third party to provide OSHA with falsified inspection reports of its vehicles and used some of the fake documents to show that the truck involved in Shook’s death had been properly inspected. However, records show the vehicle had not been inspected.
Despite the allegations and the years of federal criminal litigation that followed, the state Department of Administrative Services in May renewed the contract with McClain & Company even though the DOT once issued a moratorium on the use of its equipment and the Federal Highway Administration suspended the company for three months. The company is now operating under a compliance agreement with the FHA, records show.
In a letter to the state’s claims commissioner, an attorney representing McClain & Company contended the moratorium hurt the business and “caused it to suffer significant” damages.
As a result, the company was seeking the right to sue the DOT, the letter said.
A spokesperson for DAS declined to comment due to pending litigation. The state claims commissioner recently gave approval for the lawsuit, according to a spokesperson for Attorney General William Tong’s office, which will represent the state agency in the litigation.
In 2016, OSHA fined McClain & Company $11,500 for two violations deemed “serious” and “willful” related to Shook’s
death, agency documents show. During the investigation, the FHA suspended McClain & Company from providing bridge inspection rental vehicles to any state that received federal transportation funding for three months, agency documents stated.
Daniel McClain, owner of the company, his employee Kenneth Mix, and Carol “Casey” Smith, president of the Virginia firm hired to inspect the vehicles, have pleaded guilty in federal court to misdemeanor charges connected with falsifying the inspection reports and were issued fines.
McClain’s attorney Scott Orenstein said in a March letter to the claims commissioner that an employee simply sent OSHA reports that were “dated as of the date the paperwork was prepared as opposed to when the inspections were actually conducted.” Orenstein also said the DOT “had no authority to issue the moratorium.”
Orenstein said the DOT moratorium on using McClain & Company by any state agency or contractor was in effect from Aug. 26, 2015 to June 24, 2016 — two months after OSHA had concluded its investigation.
A plea agreement for Smith indicates he admitted that he hadn’t conducted the inspections and didn’t know whether the vehicles met federal safety requirements. Smith was paid $76,000 by McClain & Company for 123 inspection certificates from 2012 to 2015 for vehicles he never inspected, the plea agreement said.
Federal authorities announced last month that McClain & Company was required to pay a $137,500 fine to settle the criminal allegations of falsified documents filed against the business.
In a statement issued after the settlement was announced, McClain denied any wrongdoing and said he agreed to settle to prevent further cost of federal litigation, which has spanned nearly seven years. But he had not admitted guilt as part of the agreement.
“We settled with the government because their investigation has been going on for years, they were bleeding us dry,” McClain said in the statement.
McClain said the allegations described by the Connecticut U.S. Attorney’s Office were not facts and that his own investigation
concluded the accident was “most likely caused by operator error.”
“McClain & Co. has and has always had a robust safety program and a fine safety record,” McClain said. “The company has been in business since 1998. Apart from this one tragic fatality, no employee or other user of McClain & Co. equipment has ever been seriously injured while using our equipment.”
Following her husband’s death, Danielle Shook sued Smith and the Virginia company that provided the falsified inspection reports and received a settlement in federal court, records show. The amount of the settlement is confidential, her attorney said. She was unable to be reached for comment, he said.
The DAS contract with McClain & Co. for $300,000 runs from May 2022 to May 2025.