Rockwell to Settle Suit Over Fatal Blast

While federal investigators continue to probe a 1994 blast that killed two scientists at Rockwell International’s Santa Susanna Field Lab, the company said Tuesday it has agreed to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the men’s families.

The lawsuit was one of several legal problems facing Rockwell’s Rocketdyne division since the July 26, 1994, explosion killed company physicists Otto K. Heiney and Larry A. Pugh.

Rocketdyne has said that the men were igniting highly explosive chemicals and measuring the blast waves that day at Rocketdyne’s rugged Santa Susanna Field Laboratory, midway between Simi Valley and the division’s Canoga Park headquarters.

But after several successful explosions, as the men were mixing another batch of nitrocellulose and glycidal azide polymer, the chemicals blew up.

Since then, Rocketdyne has been under legal attack on several fronts:

* Cal/OSHA sought $200,000 in penalties against Rocketdyne for “willful-serious” violations of workplace safety rules in the explosion. The firm has appealed the citations and fines.

* Federal investigators are looking into whether Rockwell or its employees violated environmental or work-safety laws in the blast.

* On Dec. 14, the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley filed a lawsuit alleging that next-door Rocketdyne was polluting ground water, lowering the 3,100-acre institute’s property value.

* And last month, a Rockwell shareholder sued company directors in Orange County Superior Court, alleging that they recklessly disregarded environmental laws, thus exposing the company to potential damages in the millions of dollars.

Rockwell has declined to comment on the pending legal actions or the settlement.

“Since the accident, we’ve taken a number of actions to assist the families, but details are confidential,” said Rockwell spokesman Paul Sewell, reading a prepared statement. “We understand their lawsuits are being dismissed, but these details are also confidential.”

Morgan Smith, a San Francisco attorney representing the families, said his firm and Rocketdyne still are hashing out details of the settlement, although the bulk of it was agreed upon last month.