Family of Carolina woman killed in falling utility pole to receive $30 million settlement

COLUMBIA, SC (AP) — The family of a South Carolina woman struck in the head and killed by a 70-year-old utility pole will receive $30 million in a wrongful-death settlement reached Thursday.

Electric company Dominion Energy, which installed a light on the pole, and communications company Comporium, which owned a downed pole line in downtown Wagener that was no longer in use, both signed the settlement, which settled a deadly lawsuit accidentally introduced by Jeunelle. Robinson’s family, according to documents filed in Aiken County.

Last August, a truck clipped the wire, pulling it like a rubber band until it snapped the poles and launched one into the air, hitting Robinson, who was eating lunch during her break as a social studies teacher at Wagener-Salley High School, authorities. said. The truck was a legal height, they said.

Surveillance video from a nearby store shows Robinson, 31, trying to avoid something before the pole hit her, violently toppling her body. She died a short time later in hospital.

“We appreciate the management of Dominion and Comporium for working with us to ensure that Jeunelle’s family will not have to relive this tragedy in court unnecessarily,” the family’s attorney, Justin Bamberg, said in a statement.

The settlement agreement does not detail how much each company will have to pay in the $30 million settlement, and Bamberg’s law office said it would not be released.

The exact age of the pillars is not known as the records are no longer available. No markings have been made on them for over 60 years. However, the 69-year-old Wagener mayor said shortly after Robinson’s death that he recognized a bottle cap he had put on one of the poles as a boy.

A little more than a month before Robinson’s death, Dominion announced a plan to begin replacing equipment that was more than 60 years old in Wagener, a town of 600 about 35 miles (55 kilometers) south -west of Colombia.

Bamberg said he hopes Dominion and Comporium will use the tragedy to draw attention to inspecting and replacing old utility poles and other infrastructure that are potentially dangerous, especially in small towns.

Dominion spokeswoman Rhonda Maree O’Banion said in a statement that the company was pleased to resolve the case and extended its deepest sympathies to Robinson’s family.

Comporium is pleased to have settled the lawsuit and “our prayers are with Ms. Robinson’s family and the many lives she has touched since this accident occurred,” Chief Operating Officer Matthew Dosch said in a statement.

The family plans to use a portion of the settlement to create the “Jeunelle Robinson Teacher Hope Fund” to provide school supplies and other items to teachers across the country.

They recalled how Robinson worked her way up from substitute to high school teaching job and how she often spent her money and time on her students.

“He loved the class. He loved his students,” Robinson’s father, Donovan Julian, said in March when the lawsuit was filed. “It was a light taken too soon. It was a joy.”

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