EVERETT – The work career of Gary Lakey, who spent 30 years in the construction business, came to a sudden end one July morning in 2002.
Carbon monoxide seeped into the second-floor room where he was on the job for an addition to Edmonds Community College.
The source was equipment running inside the building.
“I felt ill and really tired,” Lakey said recently. “It was hard to concentrate.”
He asked two co-workers to drive him to the hospital, but they refused. Later, Lakey learned that the co-workers, too, suffered less severe effects of carbon monoxide poisoning from the same equipment.
He didn’t know the cause of the problem then, and neither did the doctors at Stevens Hospital, where he was treated.
The incident left him frequently tired and affected his balance. Lakey, 56, still has difficulty concentrating, and travel is difficult because motion affects him.
“It’s like it overloads me,” he said.
Lakey never returned to work, and after years of battling with the state Department of Labor and Industries, he is classified as disabled.
Now Lakey and his wife, Linda, believe they have gotten a semblance of justice.
They settled a Snohomish County Superior Court lawsuit with the general contractor on the job, Spee West Construction Co. of Edmonds. The settlement, announced in court as $575,000, came after a week of trial.
Costs associated with the lawsuit are likely to eat up most of that cash, Linda Lakey said.
“We were ready for it to be over,” Linda Lakey said. “The lawsuit was never about the money for Gary and I.”
The lawsuit was about making a point, she said, and setting an example that could lead contractors to make sure workers are kept safe from similar accidents.
It took the Lakeys months of research and traveling from doctor to doctor to identify what had happened and how. They alleged in the lawsuit that a scissor-lift brought into a mostly enclosed room malfunctioned.
Spee lawyers argued that there was ample ventilation and carbon monoxide poisoning was not the cause of Gary Lakey’s problems.
The Lakeys’ attorney, Paul Whelan of Seattle, told the couple that if a jury ruled in their favor, it was likely that the case would be appealed. Linda Lakey said she’s tired of the hassle and didn’t want more years of litigation.
“We made our point, but we wanted it over,” she said.
The bottom line, she said, is a series of lessons for everybody about the dangers of running machinery in closed spaces.
“Like most people, we thought with carbon monoxide poisoning you either die or get better,” Gary Lakey said. “That’s not always true.”
A carbon monoxide detector, on a job site or in a home, is an important tool to warn against dangerous levels of the gas, Linda Lakey said.
Symptoms such as feeling ill or dizziness could be a sign for someone to get to open air if there’s an internal combustion machine running nearby, she added. Through research, she said, she also learned that people can be poisoned over time if, for example, a home’s furnace is not working or venting properly.
The Lakeys said they believed it was important for them to pursue the lawsuit.
“We felt this general contractor and others need to be aware of what happened,” Linda Lakey said. “We had the ability to pursue it. A lot of people don’t.”
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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