Brush costs company millions

Web posted November 13, 1998

By Frank Witsil
Staff Writer

A jury awarded Arcadian Fertilizer -- now PCS Nitrogen -- $3.78 million for damages caused by a scrub brush.

The verdict was announced Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia after seven days of trial. The jury found Hebron, Ohio-based MPW Industrial Services negligent for leaving behind a finger-size piece of a wire brush in a tube it was cleaning at PCS Nitrogen's local fertilizer plant.

``We're pleased the jury agreed with us,'' PCS Nitrogen spokeswoman Betty-Ann Heggie said. ``We'd say that the jury awarded damages that were consistent with what we were looking for.''

MPW Industrial Services' lawyers, Morton Forbes and John Foster, of Forbes & Bowman in Savannah, and company officials did not return calls to their offices late Thursday afternoon.

MPW Industrial Services can appeal the decision.

Arcadian hired MPW in 1993 to scrub mineral deposits off a series of tubes about 20 feet long that run through a device called a heat exchanger. The exchanger cools natural gas with water.

During the process, a piece of the brush broke off in the tube.

The piece caused a tube to rupture, which damaged the heat exchanger, the jury found. The plant had to shut down for several weeks while it was being repaired, costing the fertilizer-maker millions in lost production.

The jury awarded $2.8 million in damages and $980,000 in interest.

Frank Witsil can be reached at (706) 823-3352.