Gas Station Workers Reach $18.5M Settlement Over Fatal Tank Explosion

The agreement resolves claims that two companies involved in the filling and construction of the fuel storage tank that combusted ignored industry standards and their own safety protocols.

Victims of a 2018 gas station explosion reached an $18.5 million global settlement Wednesday with a pair of companies they claimed caused the incident.

The agreement resolves claims that two companies involved in the filling and construction of the fuel storage tank that combusted ignored industry standards and their own safety protocols, leading to the death of one of the station’s co-owners and the injury of a worker.

“Had they done what they were supposed to, we would have never been here,” contended Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky partner Adam Pantano.

Pantano and fellow Saltz Mongeluzzi partner Jordan Howell represented the injured worker, Frank Tomasiello. Stampone O’Brien Dilsheimer Holloway partner Kevin O’Brien represented the estate of the deceased station co-owner, Joseph Vigilante.

The resolution comes after about four years of litigation and comes less than a month before the cases were slated to go to trial in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

According to plaintiffs counsel, those years of litigation entailed some significant digging, with new information emerging up until the day of the settlement.

“Oftentimes in explosion cases, you have federal agencies that do really thorough investigations,” Howell said. “In this one we were just told essentially, ‘It was an accidental explosion involving a shop vac.’ We got nothing else.”

But the plaintiffs claimed further investigation revealed that the incident was the result of a chain of failures from various companies associated with the station—namely Ewing Oil Co. Inc. and Monridge Construction Co.

The plaintiffs asserted that on the day of the explosion, at a Liberty Gas Station in Bensalem, Ewing Oil had significantly had exceeded tank capacity guidelines by overfilling a tank by 325 gallons of gasoline.

Ewing, however, contended that the capacity standard referenced by the plaintiffs “is meant to prevent liquid fuel spills and has nothing to do with preventing or controlling pressures within gasoline storage tanks.”

The plaintiffs further alleged that Monridge Construction Co. designed and installed the gas station’s tank system with faulty ventilation and without a vapor detection system. Monridge Construction countered that there was no evidence tying the explosion to the work it had performed installing tanks at the station.

William Schaefer of Hendrzak & Lloyd—representing Ewing Oil—did not respond to requests for comment, and Joseph Oberlies of Connor, Weber & Oberlies—representing Monridge Construction—declined to comment.

Under the terms of the settlement, Ewing Oil is set to pay $13 million, and Monridge Construction is set to pay $5.5 million. According to plaintiffs counsel, the mediator overseeing the matter apportioned 78% of the settlement to Tomasiello and 22% to the estate of Vigilante.

O’Brien said a large part of plaintiffs counsel’s success in the matter hinged on the lawyers’ quick response to the incident, arriving on the scene the day the explosion occurred and not simply accepting the government’s initial explanation.

“If you just accepted this was an accident from the government, people would say, “Hey, I guess there’s nothing we could do,’” he said.