$7.5 Million Settlement for Family of Electrician Killed in Norfolk Propane Explosion

On July 30, 2010, William 'Billy' Nichols was working in the basement of an unfinished condominium unit at the Village at River's Edge development in Norfolk, Massachusetts. The 46-year-old electrician from Blackstone had no warning before the building exploded around him. Workers at the site later told investigators they never smelled gas before the blast, a detail that would become central to the legal case against the companies responsible.

Firefighters spent more than 90 minutes pulling Nichols from the burning debris. He was airlifted to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where he died that evening from burns covering 80 percent of his body.

Attorney Marc Breakstone of Breakstone, White and Gluck filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the Nichols family in January 2011 in Suffolk Superior Court. The complaint named two defendants: EnergyUSA Propane, which had recently serviced the tank, and Smolinsky Brothers Plumbing and Heating, the Wrentham-based contractor responsible for the gas connections inside the building.

Breakstone's theory of liability centered on a technical failure that investigators confirmed: EnergyUSA had under-filled a new propane tank, leaving it roughly four-fifths empty when industry standards required the opposite. Propane itself is odorless; suppliers are required to inject a sulfur-based chemical odorant, ethyl mercaptan, precisely so that leaks can be detected by smell. When a tank is under-filled, the lighter odorant molecules concentrate at the top of the tank and are among the first to leave when the valve is opened. On a new, nearly empty tank, the odorant can dissipate before enough gas has escaped to create any detectable odor. The second defendant, Smolinsky, was alleged to have failed to properly tighten a furnace connection, creating the path for gas to escape.

The result was an invisible accumulation of propane in the basement with no smell to warn the men working there.

The Nichols family's case settled on approximately July 9, 2012. Two other workers who survived the blast but sustained permanent injuries had already resolved their own claims. All three cases combined for a total of $22.5 million. The Nichols family's share, $7.5 million, was announced publicly by Breakstone on behalf of the family.

The explosion also prompted state regulators to propose new requirements for propane handling and delivery personnel, including mandatory training tied to proper tank-filling procedures.