Verdicts & Settlements

Jury Awards $969,000 to Lake Ariel Family

The family of a man electrocuted five years ago while changing a light bulb in the former Trane Co. building' In Dunmore was awarded $969,000 Friday by a Lackawanna County jury. The money will go to Mary Dalykas, Deacon Hill Road, RD 4, Lake Ariel and her three children because of the death of Donald Dalykas, 84, on April 13, 1993. Mr. Dalykas was a millwright, employed by Peritek, Inc., which had taken over the building just three months prior to the accident. The actual verdict for the Dalykas family;' which was represented by attorneys Robert W. Munley and David Faalk, was $1,781,000, but the jury found that he was 43 percent responsible for his own death. That reduced the award to the family by that percentage. The money will come from the Trane Co. for selling the building to Peritek with a "latent defect" in it. Peritek, as Mr. Dalykas' employer, previously had settled with the family under state Worker's Compensation laws. Trane, which was defended by attorney Daniel J. Ryan Jr., contended it had no liability because it no longer owned building. The company also stressed that Mr. Dalykas should have turned off the electricity before frying to change the bulb. The electrocution took place in a dip-painting room in the Keystone Industrial Park building. It was filled with large fixtures where manufactured items would be immersed in paint and then baked In ovens. The Dalykas' attorneys stressed how difficult it was to reach the lights that hung over those fixtures. They blamed Trane because it had renovated that part of the building In 1984, but left the danger. "The light as it existed was a trap," their pleadings said. Mr. Dalykas had been ordered to change a burnt-out light. He went into the room alone during his midnight shift. Workers arriving for the morning shift found his body on top of an oven, the suit said. The Dalykas' pleadings said he did not turn off the electricity because Trane never marked the circuit breaker so it was very difficult to determine what switch controlled the electric flow to the light he was changing.

By Ray Flanagan, The Scranton Times