Confidential Settlements Resolve a $30 Million Wrongful Death Suit Over a Fatal Downtown D.C. Steam Pipe Explosion

Just before 9 a.m. on April 23, 2004, a high pressure steam pipe ruptured under the 700 block of 17th Street NW in downtown Washington, near the New Executive Office Building. The line was part of an underground system that carried heat and hot water to about a half dozen federal buildings. Two men working at a manhole on the steam and water lines were caught in the blast and seared by steam that reached 900 to 1,200 degrees. A third worker who ran toward them to help was burned less severely, treated at George Washington University Hospital, and released.

The two men were Francis Stotmeister, 51, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Joseph Hudert, 56, of Glen Burnie, Maryland. Stotmeister worked as a construction superintendent. Both were employed by private contractors working for the U.S. General Services Administration. One of the men suffered burns over roughly 90 percent of his body. Both later died of their injuries.

Stotmeister's family retained Koonz McKenney Johnson & DePaolis and filed a wrongful death suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking $30 million. Firm attorneys William Lightfoot and Marc Fiedler pursued the full chain of parties responsible for the work under the street: the federal government, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, and the contractors and subcontractors that designed, built, and maintained the system. Those defendants included Cherry Hill Construction, the Grunley-Walsh joint venture, Alion Science and Technology, M&M Welding & Fabricators, and Day & Zimmermann. Hudert's family filed a separate suit over the same explosion.

Liability was fought for years. With so many companies involved in the buried steam and water system, each defendant tried to shift responsibility onto the others for the pipe's condition and for the safety of the crew sent to work near it. The firm's case turned on how the system had been engineered, inspected, and maintained, and on the steps that should have kept workers clear of a line that was about to fail.

The case resolved through confidential settlements rather than a trial. The Stotmeister family reached agreements with the federal government, D.C. Water, and the contractor defendants, with the terms kept private. The companion Hudert claim, filed for more than $20 million, settled on undisclosed terms as well. Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan oversaw the litigation, which stayed on the federal docket into 2014 as the claims against the last contractors were worked out. The amounts the family recovered were never made public.