New Berlin turns down claim in elctrocution

New Berlin The New Berlin Common Council this week turned down a claim by the family of a man who was electrocuted when the aluminum siding he was holding while working on a house came into contact with a live electrical wire.

The family maintains the line was too close to the house.

Barbara L. Machkovich of Wales was seeking $579,921 in damages for the death of her husband, Earl F. Machkovich, who died March 10, 1994, while building a house at 1514 S. Sunny Slope Road. He was 52.

The City of New Berlin, along with the Wisconsin Electric Power Co. and its parent company, Wisconsin Energy Corp., are named in a personal injury lawsuit filed Jan. 24 in Milwaukee County Circuit Court in connection with the accident.

Filing a claim is required when seeking damages from a municipality in the state. Once a claim is denied, entities then can seek legal recourse against a municipality.

The attorney for the family is Willard P. Techmeier, the lawyer who won a $25.2 million lawsuit in 1992 for Matthew Brown, after the then-5-year-old Franklin boy got inside an unlocked transformer box and was severely burned. The boy lost parts of both arms and a section of his digestive tract. Electrical Code Cited

The complaint alleges that the power line that electrocuted Machkovich was closer to the house than allowed by the Wisconsin electrical code. According to Techmeier, the line was 3.1 feet from the house and should have been more than 10 feet away. It carried 4,800 volts of electricity, he said.

Techmeier, in an interview Thursday, claimed that the power company was notified twice by Barbara Machkovich about the electrical line and the need to move it. The couple's son, Jeffrey, allegedly came in contact with the line while working on the same job days before the fatal accident, Techmeier said.

He said he didn't know the circumstances of the son's accident, nor how he survived it. The father was a self-employed contractor.

In the lawsuit, Techmeier is claiming that the City of New Berlin and the power company knew, or should have known, that the power lines posed a safety hazard and no steps were taken to remedy the danger.

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