Pennsylvania cement truck fatality and regulatory failure

Foreshadowed for next class. Manufacturer built 100,000 pressure vessels for cement trucks, applied no code (federal exemption + ASME exclusion), killed a worker. Tom flags it as the case for the following session. ## Figures referenced

We're getting into today, and I'll give you a case study probably tomorrow on cement trucks, and a pressure vessel that went on a cement truck, that neither the federal government said they worried about and the ASME code had as an exclusion. So the company decided to build 100,000 of these and didn't use the code, didn't use good practice, and they killed a guy. Because they didn't do what historically was known as good design practice — they said, oh, we don't come under any of these codes. We really have to get in here, about time.

The lecture's main case. 200-gallon aluminum water tank on cement truck, 55 PSI operating, no doubler plate on nozzles. Welder in a Pennsylvania repair shop pressurizes a previously-repaired tank with 100 PSI shop air instead of regulated 5 PSI, tank explodes, welder killed (found in four pieces 30 yards away). Forensic investigation reveals 100,000 deployed tanks with the same defect. Manufacturer had sought a DOT ruling and stopped; ASME code and Pennsylvania state law required compliance regardless. Code-of-ethics duty to public surfaces when retired ASME committee member Roger reports to the National Board.

Let me tell you about the aluminum gas tanks — water tanks, really — because it brings up the different bodies and how they regulate. This is an aluminum tank that goes on a cement truck. About a 200-gallon tank, if I remember. If you've ever seen the oil tank in someone's basement for heating, that's about a 275-gallon tank.

Treated within the parent cluster. Captures the professional-ethics arc — Roger the retired ASME committeeman discovering 100,000 uninspected tanks and reporting through the National Board despite tortious-interference exposure. ## Cases foreshadowed but not developed

The next thing that happens — the guy I'm working with, Roger, who's between 75 and 80, used to be one of the six or seven people on the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel main committee. They've got committees with hundreds of people, divided up, writing new portions of the code. But it all goes up to the main committee, which is six or seven old fogies who've been working in the history for 30 or 40 years. Roger had been one of those. Nice guy — love to have him as a grandfather. Roger looks at this — he's the code guy, not me, I'm the welder — and says this should have been, under Pennsylvania law, built to ASME code and inspected to the ASME code. The ASME tells you how to build it; state laws also require people inspect it every three years.

Backward reference ("we've talked in the cement truck case") establishing federal-trumps-state preemption principle. No new content added in this lecture. ## Foreshadowed cases (not developed)

Conflicts — which governs. In the cement truck case we talked about how the federal government always trumps the state governments. It gets complex about whether the federal government or the state government is going to have responsibility for things. In fact that's part of the presidential debates right now — not necessarily for codes and standards, but should health care be a state mandate or a federally sponsored program. Preemption is the part of the Constitution that says when there is a conflict between state law and federal law, federal law always takes precedent.