COLUMBUS, Ohio – A woman whose husband was crushed to death by an elevator in a closed hotel near the OSU campus won’t receive state compensation after Ohio’s Court of Claims denied her negligence claim last week.
The university said James Higgins, 52, and another worker were working on the elevators at the former Holiday Inn in preparation for the hotel’s conversion to the Lane Avenue Residence Hall in 2009.
The court ruling last week found no evidence that Higgins was required or directed to enter the elevator pit where he was killed.
His widow, Nadia’s, attorney didn’t immediately return a call Monday.
Nadia Higgins originally sued her husband’s employer, Oracle Elevator Co., and Campus Partners for Community Urban Redevelopment claiming negligence. The state was later named as a third defendant, which stopped the case in the common pleas court and moved it to the Court of Claims.
On April 13, 2009, Higgins and another Oracle Elevator Company employee were removing wood paneling from elevator cars in the former hotel, property owned by Community Urban Redevelopment and leased to the university.
An uncooperative bolt caused Higgins to see if something outside the elevator was preventing removing it. When he went into a second elevator pit, he was crushed.
In the Court of Claims decision, Judge Patrick McGrath rejected Higgins’ claim against Oracle he said there was no evidence Higgins was required to enter the elevator pit. McGrath also denied the claim because a “pit stop switch,” which prevents an elevator from moving when it’s turned off, “cannot be considered an ‘equipment safety guard’ under the state statute to prove an employer’s liability.” McGrath also wrote that Higgins failed to present any evidence that an electrical jumper that bypassed the pit stop switch belonged to the elevator company
Once the Court of Claims completes its review of the state portion of the case it will be sent back to the common pleas court for a determination of the rest of the private parties case, a Supreme Court spokesman says.