Owner of collapsed, burned Midtown Manhattan crane also owned cranes that killed nine in twin 2008 disasters
A name painted in big, bold yellow letters on the side of a crane that collapsed high above Midtown on Wednesday – LOMMA – was also attached to a pair of Manhattan crane disasters in 2008 that took the lives of nine people.
James F. Lomma, who died in 2019, was the owner of New York Crane & Equipment, the company that owned the crane that caught fire and collapsed at 550 10th Ave. near W. 41st St.
One of the 2008 collapses involving another New York Crane machine landed Lomma in Manhattan Supreme Court on manslaughter charges, and brought a civil lawsuit that helped push him into bankruptcy.
A judge found Lomma not guilty in 2012 of the manslaughter charges brought in the deaths of Donald Leo and Ramadan Kurtaj, who died in a May 30, 2008, crane collapse at 333 E. 91st St.
Leo was operating the crane when it fell 200 feet from its tower. Kurtaj, a construction worker, was on the ground when the crane collapsed on him.
New York Crane also owned a 300-foot crane that collapsed on March 15, 2008, killing seven people at 303 E. 51st Street.
Construction workers Anthony Mazza, Santy Gallone, Brad Cohen, Aaron Stephens, Clifford Canzona, and Wayne Bliedner were killed, along with Odin Torres, a tourist from Florida.
In that case, master rigger William Rapetti was acquitted in Manhattan Supreme Court of seven counts of manslaughter.
Rapetti was accused of using too few slings to attach a steel collar to beams on the condo being built. His lawyer argued that the accident was the fault of a poorly constructed and repaired tie-in beam.
Though Lomma was acquitted of criminal charges, he faced a lawsuit from the Leo and Kurtai families that resulted in a trial in 2015 that ran for nearly 11 months – said at the time to have been the longest trial ever held in Manhattan Supreme Court. The trial ended with a jury ordering Lomma to pay $96 million. An appellate court later reduced the award to $35 million.
In January 2016, Lomma filed for bankruptcy, saying he only had $10 million in assets.
Lomma, a lifelong Staten Islander, died in July 2019 at age 73. “His cranes helped build most of the major cities in our country and around the world,” said his obituary in the Staten Island Advance.
Though James F. Lomma is gone – and the lawsuits against him have ended – his name lives on in the companies he founded, including J.F. Lomma Inc. of Kearney, N.J. and New York Crane & Equipment of Long Island City, Queens.
Equipment owned by both companies is emblazoned with the Lomma name.
The companies’ current ownership is not evident from public records.
When reached Wednesday, staffers at New York Crane did not immediately comment on the Midtown collapse.
Bernadette Panzella, who represented Leo’s family in the lawsuit over the E. 91st St. collapse, said the trial showed that Lomma maintained his equipment poorly.
Panzella and other lawyers for the Leo and Kurtaj families argued that Lomma hired a Chinese company to make a major repair to the collapsed crane on the cheap.
“The lack of maintenance on these cranes was well documented at his trial,” Panzella said.
Cross Country Construction LLC was the operator of the crane that collapsed Wednesday, and Valjato Engineering was the crane engineer, city officials said.
Cross Country did not respond to a request for comment. A woman who picked up the phone at Valjato said: “We’re not at liberty to discuss.”
The general contractor at the site is Brooklyn-based Monadnock Construction, said Building Department officials.
“We are fully cooperating with all regulatory agencies and are available for any assistance that is needed,” Monadnock said in a statement.
“It’s never good when a crane collapses,” said Panzella. “It’s not going to be a good result.”
Cranes are a danger to the public as well as construction workers, she added.
“To this day I do not walk under the scaffolding of a building that has a crane attached,” said Panzella. “I cross a lot of streets and get my steps in.”