Settlement in Fern Hollow Bridge case collapses amid finger-pointing

The City of Pittsburgh is blaming everyone but itself for the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse.

In recent court filings, lawyers for the city have faulted the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the private engineering firms who conducted annual inspections — even the victims driving across the bridge in 2022 when it failed.

What’s more, they’ve proposed using any settlement money for the victims to pay for the city’s future legal costs arising from the collapse.

Pittsburgh’s strategy to deflect responsibility for the disaster — despite ample evidence that for years it neglected critical maintenance on the bridge — isn’t sitting well with the victims’ attorneys.

“Asserting my clients were somehow responsible for their own harm … is mind boggling,” said attoney Pete Giglione, who represents Daryl Luciani, the Pittsburgh Regional Transit driver whose bus fell into a Frick Park ravine that day.

The city’s claims lay out Pittsburgh’s possible trial defenses to the nine lawsuits against it. They come as the potential for a settlement with the victims, proposed month ago by the city, appears to be increasingly unlikely.

In September, Deputy Mayor Jake Pawlak announced that the city planned to settle the lawsuits for a total of $500,000 — the maximum allowed under Pennsylvania law.

That money was to go to the court and ultimately be divided based on the severity of the victims’ injuries.

The 447-foot long bridge that connected Regent Square and Squirrel Hill collapsed around 6:40 a.m. on Jan. 28, 2022, into a ravine. An articulated bus and four other vehicles fell about 100 feet, and another vehicle shot into the ravine. Several people were injured, but no one was killed.

“In terms of our intention, it has always been our position that we acknowledge the Fern Hollow Bridge was city-owned infrastructure and the city therefore had liability,” Pawlak told TribLive at the time. “We’re accepting our full responsibility to the court and then initiating a different process for assigning which of the plaintiffs gets what portion of that.”

However, the city’s court filing on the matter — made on the same day in September that it announced plans to settle — added a twist. It sought to place the $500,000 with the court and then deduct from it any legal fees it incurred as a result of the victims’ lawsuits against private engineering companies.

Attorneys for the victims fought back.

“They didn’t want to tell anybody there were strings attached to that,” Giglione said. “They knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted to claw back some of that money at the conclusion of the litigation.”

The victims objected to the idea, and following a November hearing, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Philip Ignelzi last month rejected the city’s offer.

Giglione said he has reached out to Associate City Solicitor John F. Doherty at least twice in an attempt to continue settlement discussions, but has received no response.

Pittsburgh’s explanation

On Tuesday, Pittsburgh Solicitor Krysia Kubiak claimed in an email to TribLive that the victims who sued would have received the whole $500,000 if they accepted the city’s settlement offer.

But Giglione disagreed.

“If this is the case, all that they had to do was say, on the record when I brought it up, or in writing to us, that they would not seek counsel fees or costs.”

Kubiak herself acknowledged in the same email that the city wanted to use the $500,000 to help cover any costs incurred by the city. As the victims’ lawsuits proceed against three engineering firms, it is possible that city workers could be deposed and records could be sought in discovery.

“If the plaintiffs still want the city to participate, then we should be able to recoup our costs,” Kubiak wrote. “Additionally, this structure discourages them from using the city too much in a case where the city is no longer a party.”

Kubiak said the law department was not trying to recoup any legal fees incurred before making its settlement offer.

The solicitor did not address a question from TribLive about Giglione’s allegation that it has ignored repeated offers to resolve the case.

She wrote, however, that the victims “rejected the city’s effort to bring the matter against it to a close…”

The plaintiffs have asked the judge to set new deadlines in the case and push the possible trial date back to next January at the earliest.

Adding insult to injury

In lengthy court filings this month, city attorneys have hinted at the defenses they might use at trial, including something called the open and obvious dangers doctrine.

That legal theory suggests that the victims should have known that the bridge was potentially dangerous when it broke apart before dawn on a snowy morning.

Case in point: Pittsburgh’s response to a lawsuit by Clinton Runco, a dentist who drove off the bridge abutment as he headed to his Squirrel Hill practice from his Monroeville home. Runco’s car came to rest on its roof. He broke his sternum, several ribs and his neck.

Pittsburgh lawyers wrote that Runco may have been careless and negligent by not paying attention to the road and failing to operate his brakes “in a careful and prudent manner.”

Runco’s attorney, Jason Matzus, called those allegations preposterous.

“I guess claiming that he should have had a parachute attached to his car is a bridge too far even for the city solicitor,” Matzus said.

Matzus called the city’s claims par for the course.

“It really illustrates the unconscionable way the city has chosen to defend the indefensible,” Matzus said. “They’ve done nothing but add insult to injury from the very moment this bridge collapse occurred, and their most recent filing continues the assault on these injury victims.”

Kubiak defended the city’s claims, noting that rules governing how court cases are handled require raising all potential legal defenses.

‘Almost laughable’

Pittsburgh City Council voted to approve a $500,000 settlement on Sept. 24.

Several City Council members interviewed by TribLive on Tuesday, however, said they had no idea that the solicitor’s office was trying to recover future legal fees.

“Ethically, is it the right thing to do?” said Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview. “It doesn’t seem like it on its face.”

Coghill said he was unaware of that plan and wondered how much money that would leave for victims.

He rejected the notion that any of the drivers could bear responsibility.

“That’s almost laughable,” he said. “You can’t question somebody’s judgment at the time.”

Councilwoman Barb Warwick, D-Greenfield, whose district includes the bridge, said such a stance sounds unreasonable.

She declined to comment on the city’s proposal to deduct its legal expenses from the settlement until she could first discuss the situation with the city solicitor.

Councilman Bob Charland, D-South Side, said he also had been unaware of the idea of yanking a portion of the settlement to cover legal expenses.

He said he was unsure “what is a common practice in courts,” but wondered whether the notion was spurred by the city’s tight financial margins.

The city’s law department this year saw a 46% decrease in its operating budget, and its budget for settlements dropped to under $1.3 million this year from nearly $7 million in 2024.

Relying on consultants

The city asserts in its recent court filings that PennDOT was responsible for ensuring bridges in Pennsylvania were inspected in compliance with national standards.

PennDOT was also the one that hired contractors to do the inspections, the city said.

Before the collapse, Pittsburgh did not have the resources, manpower, equipment, employee expertise or funds necessary to conduct the inspections, according to the city’s court filing.

As a result, the lawyers wrote, the city believed PennDOT would guide them on what to do if a bridge inspection resulted in a critical finding that the bridge was unsafe.

Year after year, the Fern Hollow bridge received concerning inspection reports, and it hd been rated as “poor” by the National Bridge Inventory Data since 2011. Among concerns, reports cited the bridge superstructure and areas under the bridge deck.

“Identifying the Fern Hollow bridge as structurally deficient does not equate to the bridge being deemed unsafe,” the city wrote. “The city relied upon the consultants to tell it if the bridge was a danger to the public, and the consultants did not tell the city the bridge was a danger to the public.”

In February, following a lengthy investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board said that the bridge collapse was avoidable and the result of years of inaction by city officials, and a lack of oversight by state and federal authorities.

“The ultimate responsibility for safety of this bridge is on the City of Pittsburgh, solely on the City of Pittsburgh. They own the bridge,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at the time. “It really was a cascade of failures from the local government to the state to the Federal Highway Administration.”

TribLive staff writer Julia Burdelski contributed to this report.