GE worker’s widow files suit over death

BANGOR – The widow of a Corinth man who died two years ago at the General Electric plant in Bangor has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Penobscot County Superior Court.

Vinal L. Speed, 53, died June 21, 2003, five days after he was injured at General Electric Power Systems on Griffin Road.

An employee of the plant for 29 years, Speed was conducting a tool change when a spindle activated in reverse at high speed struck him in his left arm and the back of his skull.

Speed’s widow, Johannah Speed of Corinth, is seeking an unspecified amount of damages that includes medical bills and funeral expenses. In addition, she is seeking damages for pain and suffering and loss of consortium.

In addition to the Schenectady, N.Y.-based GE, Speed is suing Giddings & Lewis of Fond du Lac, Wis., the company that designed, tested and sold the machine her husband was operating when he was fatally injured.

Phillip Bixby, the Portland attorney representing Giddings & Lewis, declined Friday to comment on the lawsuit.

Efforts to reach an attorney for GE were unsuccessful.

Answers to the complaint are not expected to be filed until August.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration six months after Vinal Speed’s death issued two serious citations against the Bangor plant and a $9,000 fine was assessed against the company.

OSHA issues a serious citation for conditions that, if left uncorrected, could pose a hazard to employees’ safety or health.

That standard requires employers to shut down and lock out a machine’s power source before maintenance or other work is performed on the machine, according to information provided earlier this week by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Public Affairs in Boston.

The citations against GE addressed the lack of an energy isolation device on the machine that Vinal Speed was using and the Bangor plant’s failure to develop a procedure for hazardous energy control when operators performed manual tool changes on that machine.

GE paid the fine, corrected the hazards and took steps to prevent a similar incident from happening again, according to OSHA.