Construction company owner settles with OSHA after fatal Brownville wall collapse

By Marie Weidmayer, Bangor Daily News Staff

The owner of a Maine construction company reached a settlement with the federal government after a fatal wall collapse at a construction site in Brownville last summer.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found Patriot Paving Group, located in Glenburn and owned by Clifford Lane, committed five “willful” violations during the first day of construction at Railroad Avenue in Brownville on June 25, 2024.

Lane reached a settlement Jan. 24 with OSHA where he will pay $57,600 of the original $161,325 fine.

“I just decided to pay the money and get it done and over with,” Lane said. “Not that I want to, but they see you trying to survive so they give you basically no choice.”

An unbraced retaining wall collapsed and killed 67-year-old Stephen Lane, the brother of the owner. Stephen Lane died “doing what he loves working with his family,” his obituary said.

The federal investigation found the company, also known as Freedom Paving Group, made the decision to ignore “repeated warnings” from an onsite expert and the paving company’s site safety plan before the fatal collapse, OSHA said.

The violations include not bracing the retaining wall and exposing employees to hazards; failing to remove employees from the trench after it was determined to be hazardous; and not training or instructing three employees in the hazards associated with trench activities.

OSHA did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. 

Lane chose to ignore the warnings, Samuel Kondrup, OSHA Area Director in Augusta, said when the fines were announced Dec. 26, 2024.

“There is no excuse for so callously endangering workers’ lives,” Kondrup said.

Lane accused OSHA of not sending an engineer to the scene during the investigation. When he met with an OSHA representative, the person “pretty much didn’t want to hear anything that we said,” Lane said. 

Fighting the decision in court would have been expensive and unlikely to make a difference, Lane said. OSHA also refused to share the details of the investigation with Lane unless the case went to court, he added.

Two engineering firms found Freedom Paving was “100 percent not at fault” and that a poorly built wall was the issue, Lane said.

The wall that collapsed was more than 7 feet tall and built in 2002, Lane said. There was only one piece of rebar in the wall, which was anchored to another wall only a couple inches wide, he said.

“I’ve been doing this for 43 years and I’ve never seen a wall like that in my life,” Lane said.

More testing should have been done before the June construction when Freedom Paving started digging a roughly 4-foot deep trench for drainage pipes, Lane said.

In the seven months since the fatal collapse, Freedom Paving hasn’t been able to bid on jobs because its bonds are tied up with that project and they cannot get new ones, Lane said. He’s had to sell off assets to keep his business afloat in the months since.

Taking the settlement was really his only option because not working has “pretty much bankrupted” him, Lane said. 

“I’m trying to scramble to survive right now,” Lane said.