Charges Urged in Subway Sinkhole : Transit: State officials want city to file misdemeanor case based on allegations that workers were endangered.

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Nov. 30, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Five months after a giant chunk of Hollywood Boulevard collapsed atop a subway tunnel, state safety officials said Wednesday they are recommending that criminal charges be brought over the alleged endangerment of work crews at the scene of the disaster.

Closing out its investigation, the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health will file a report today with the Los Angeles city attorney’s office seeking misdemeanor charges over an incident that proved a national embarrassment for local subway planners, according to Michael Mason, chief counsel for Cal/OSHA’s investigative arm.

Mason refused to say who the agency believes should be charged, but he acknowledged that Cal/OSHA officials had focused their investigation on the main contractor that was building the Hollywood subway tunnel, Shea-Kiewit-Kenny, and its project manager, Norm Hutchins.

The state inquiry has centered on allegations that SKK endangered the lives of project workers on the morning of June 22, usurping the authority of safety officials as the street above the tunnel near Barnsdall Park showed signs that it was about to collapse. About 20 workers later were forced to flee the construction site amid a rush of dirt and water.

The incident left a house-sized sinkhole along Hollywood Boulevard that was publicized on newscasts coast to coast and caused damage of more than $6 million to the subway under construction below. The latest in a series of missteps on the $5.8-billion Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway, the sinkhole has intensified efforts to shut down the construction project altogether.

Hutchins, the SKK project manager, has withstood the brunt of the attacks over the sinkhole. Authorities have pursued allegations that Hutchins, in trying to save the tunnel that morning as it first began to give way, lied to state safety officials about whether there were still workers left in the hole.

But Thomas McGuire, an attorney for SKK, said Wednesday that “at best, this was all a misunderstanding.” He said SKK officials did everything they could to safely evacuate the tunnel. And the confusion over Hutchins’ role, he said, was a result of tunneling semantics. McGuire said the workers were in fact cleared out of the tunnel itself when Hutchins gave his assurances to safety officials that morning, but that some remained in the separate underground shaft at that time.

McGuire said Mason called him Wednesday to inform him that Cal/OSHA would be seeking criminal charges. But he said he was not told who would be charged, adding: “I have no idea what the content of the report is. They haven’t shared that with me.”

Michael Nasatir, an attorney for Hutchins, said it was premature for the state to disclose its recommendations publicly before the city attorney has made a final decision on whether to file charges. But Nasatir said he is confident no criminal wrongdoing will be found.

“Norm has done nothing wrong,” he said. “He was more a hero that day than anything else.”

Officials with the city attorney’s office could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

Cal/OSHA officials had consulted recently with the Los Angeles district attorney’s office about criminal charges. But they ultimately decided that felony charges could not be supported, opting instead to send the case to the city attorney for consideration of less severe prosecution.

“In this case, based on the facts presented, the only viable criminal charges were in the misdemeanor area,” Mason said. While he refused to discuss any details of the case, he said the biggest obstacle in seeking felony charges was the fact that no one was killed.

McGuire said attorneys for SKK plan to meet with the city attorney’s office in December to seek a fair hearing on the case. “Obviously whenever something like this happens, there’s a certain amount of concern,” he said. “And of course anything that takes place at the MTA these days is automatically under a political microscope. But we’re confident that in a case where there were absolutely no injuries, that the city attorney will find there is nothing that warrants criminal charges.”