Judge Dismisses $7.5M Lawsuit Over Dredge Pipe Injuries

OCEAN CITY — A federal judge last week dismissed a $7.5 million case filed by a truck driver who was crushed when a massive dredge pipe rolled off of his flatbed on a lot in the downtown area.

In September 2014, Florida-based Goodloe Marine was working on a project contracted by the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge navigational channels in and around the Ocean City area. A South Carolina truck driver delivered a load of 30 dredge pipes, each 50-foot long and 16 inches in diameter and weighing 1,600 pounds to Goodloe Marine’s staging area on a vacant lot along the bay at 1st Street.

While the Goodloe Marine employee was offloading the massive pipes with a fork-lift-type loader, one of the pipes rolled off the flat-bed truck, crushing the truck driver, Roger Childress III, who was on the ground removing straps from the bundles of pipes. Childress, who suffered traumatic and lasting injuries as a result of being pinned and crushed by one of the massive pipes, filed a civil suit in federal court seeking $7.5 million asserting Goodloe Marine and its employee onsite who was offloading the pipes were negligent.

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