Settlement Can’t Erase Lasting Scars of Injury

James Cooke won the lawsuit but feels as if he lost the war.

With the $5.3 million he received from the city of Los Angeles and two engineering consulting firms, Cooke bought a 1992 Mercedes-Benz. He, his wife and their two children recently moved into a five-bedroom, Mediterranean-style home in Villa Park, and Cooke feels secure about the family’s financial future.

But that is not enough.

What he lost--the ability to clench his fists, fully straighten or bend his arms at the elbow--is irreplaceable, said Cooke, one of two men severely burned while working at a Los Angeles sewage plant in 1988.

“If I could give it all back to go to the day of the accident and not go to work, I’d do it right now,” said Cooke, 36. “I have been one miserable person to deal with.

“There’s no amount of money that would pay for it,” he said. “I’ve got to live with it every day. I’m scarred for life.”

It has been four years since the accident and three months since the lawsuit was settled, but Cooke finds it difficult to move on. In 15 operations, doctors rebuilt his left ear, reconstructed his nose and grafted skin underneath his eyes so they can close. He suffered third-degree burns over 60% of his body when sewage ignited and exploded inside a machine.

Cooke, a veteran pipe fitter, arrived at the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant in Playa del Rey for the swing shift at 2 p.m. Oct. 3, 1988. He and millwright Don Berg were sent to examine one of the hydro-exactors--large machines that dry sewage so it can be turned into fuel--because plant managers had been having problems monitoring its temperature.

The men were removing a part when oxygen rushed inside and the contents caught fire.

“All the flames were coming out the hole, right at me,” Cooke said. “When I opened my eyes, it was just orange everywhere.”

The hydro-exactor was at least 25 degrees hotter than it should have been, investigators discovered. Their report did not place blame for the accident, however, calling the explosion a “flash fire” whose “origin cannot be determined with certainty.”

Since the accident, workers in the area have been required to wear fireproof uniforms and undergo extensive safety training, according to city spokesman Bob Hayes.

Equipment in the area has been modified to “minimize accident potential,” Hayes said, and supervisors have adopted a more rigorous shutdown procedure to ensure that systems are turned off and cooled before repairs begin.

Los Angeles owns and operates Hyperion, but the repairs were being handled by James M. Montgomery Consulting Engineers and the Ralph M. Parsons Co., both based in Pasadena. These three parties were the main defendants and accounted for $5 million of the settlement, according to Cooke’s attorney, C. Brent Scott of Laguna Niguel.

Various companies that manufactured the parts were also party to the lawsuit and paid Cooke another $300,000, he said.

Berg, a Norwalk resident who was 58 at the time of the accident and who sustained third-degree burns on a third of his body, won $900,000 in a separate settlement with the city and the two engineering firms.

Theodore P. Polich, the Los Angeles attorney who represented the city and the two engineering firms, declined to discuss the case, except to say there was “no admission of fault or responsibility” in the settlement.

With four years of physical therapy and legal battles finally at a close, Cooke said he is too bored to stay home. He tinkers in the garage but he cannot lift heavy things or reach high above his head. Since he can no longer fit pipes, he may go back to school for more training. He says he will probably get a desk job.

Having always been “an outdoors person,” Cooke is upset that he now must stay covered up in the sun.

But it is his disfigurement, more than his disability, that depresses him. “I was a nut about how I looked, and now I can’t do anything about it,” he said, noting that before the accident he would comb his hair just to go outside and cut the grass.

“I try to be neat now too,” he said, “but I look like a monster. I have a hard time meeting people.”

Scott, Cooke’s attorney, hopes that the large settlement will pressure government agencies and large corporations to make workplaces safer. Despite the legal victory, though, he speaks of the case as a tragedy.

“They had the world by the tail in 1988,” Scott said of the Cookes, whose children are now 7 and 4. “All of a sudden, boom! It’s changed.

“Their whole life is devastated,” he said. “They didn’t have to go through that.”