The company’s “treatment of the boom cable is just one example of what appears to be an institutional disregard for the requirements of the Act,” the judge wrote.

Despite operator log notations that the boom cable needed replacing, “there is no documentary evidence to indicate when the cable was ordered, purchased, or received; rather, the only evidence presented at trial was that the new boom cable was at the worksite at the time of the accident …,” he wrote.

“Having the replacement boom cable at the worksite and not installing it would support a further finding that [the company], while having heightened awareness of the regulation, decided it was not important enough to stop work to do the installation,” he wrote.

The company had “a fairly clear set of work rules” applying to crane use and a “fairly robust training program,” he wrote, but it “utterly failed to take steps to discover violations.”

Mountain States and affiliated companies Britton Bridge LLC, Jones Brothers LLC and HMA Contractors LLC, which for some time shared an office in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., earlier were cited by the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration for fatalities resulting from workplace safety violations in 2005, 2010 and 2011.

The companies later signed a compliance agreement with the Tennessee Dept. of Transportation to beef up on-site safety programs and presently are able to bid on and contract for TDOT jobs.