Tales from Kentucky Lawyers by William Lynwood Montell

Author:William Lynwood Montell [Montell, William Lynwood]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

173. “UNWILLING TO ENTER THE MINE”

We do a lot of coal-related work. We represent coal companies, and sometimes we represent utility companies against coal companies. I had a case one time in which I was representing Orange and Rockland Utilities, a large utility company based in New York, but right in the corner where New York and New Jersey come together.…

This case occurred on the day that the Oklahoma City Federal Building was bombed. We had a long-term supply contract involving the coal quality issue, in which the coal company had produced coal where my utility company said that it didn’t meet certain specifications. The grindability was not adequate. Grindability deals with how soft or how hard the coal is. So we were to inspect the mining conditions in these two mines. One of the things we wanted to see was the roof conditions, because it was important to show that there was bad top, or bad roof conditions, in this mine, which had impact on certain mining aspects which affected the litigation.

I had an assistant general counsel from New York, who was a woman. And I had an outside female lawyer, who was my co-counsel, from a New York City law firm. And these two women were all charged up about having to go into a deep mine. When you go into a deep mine, you generally have to go in flat on your back on one of these tracks. I’ve gone into deep mines all my life. My family was in the coal business in western Pennsylvania, so I am very familiar with coal mining, deep or strip, or whatever, but especially deep mining.

So in this case, we had to go back seven and one-half miles into this coal mine to look at these mining conditions. I got some overalls, steel-toed boots, self-rescuers (which is a device you have to have in a deep mine), safety glasses, and hats, all of which represented the whole, complete gear works.

The female counsel from New York was a very aggressive trial lawyer, a hard-charging woman. Well, I got them all outfitted, and we got to the first mine site. I had an engineer with me, and he and I got ready to go down under in the mine and look at the mining conditions. The two women are there and they’re really happy to be there outfitted in their overalls, their safety helmets and everything else. The mine manager gives us the mine safety talk, which is an essential thing that has to be done for the strangers going into the mine. Then we leave the mining office and walk down this path. As we get closer to the mine opening, the two women see that the mine opening is only so high, and that there’s this little track that we’re going to have to lie down on to get into the mine. These women said, “Well, we’ll just wait here.”

So they opted not to go into the mine even though I had them completely equipped, completely ready to go in.

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