Two injured workers suing GlobalFoundries

Construction on the Technology Development Center at GlobalFoundries is shown in this 2014 photo.

Two construction workers have filed federal lawsuits against computer chip giant GlobalFoundries over injuries sustained in unrelated accidents at the Fab 8 construction site.

Michael Jay and Bruce Tweedie are each seeking $5 million in damages, claiming the company was negligent in allowing conditions that led to separate construction accidents at the $10 billion Fab 8 site, where construction has been continuous since 2009, with dozens of contractors and subcontractors and more than 2,000 construction workers on site at times. There have seldom been fewer than 1,000 workers.

Both lawsuits were filed in late August in U.S. District Court in Albany. Both men are being represented by Harris, Conway & Donovan of Albany.

Jay is suing both GlobalFoundries and Turner Construction, a national heavy construction contractor that is one of the primary general contractors at the site.

Jay was an employee of J.W. Danforth Construction of Buffalo, a subcontractor Turner hired to do heating, ventilation and air conditioner duct work for an expansion of Fab 8’s manufacturing “clean room.” The lawsuit states that Jay was injured March 10, 2014, when materials being lowered to him from an elevated height fell.

In the other lawsuit, Bruce Tweedie and his wife, Amber Hillman, are suing over injuries Tweedie sustained Jan. 13, 2015.

Tweedie, who court papers said is a resident of Nevada, worked for Dynamic Systems Inc. of Austin, Texas, which had a subcontract for the construction and installation of pipelines within the semiconductor manufacturing facility. The papers said that he was supplying material from a cart to a co-worker when he fell into an open floor area. He says barricades or other safety devices should have been in place to prevent such a fall.

The latest lawsuits bring to eight the number of construction-related federal lawsuits that have been filed against GlobalFoundries over accidents at Fab 8, with only one settled so far, according to federal court records.

One of the other cases was brought by the widow of Michael Hauf of Clinton County, a Danforth Construction foreman who was killed by a falling air handler on June 26, 2014, and is the only person to have died during the construction of Fab 8.

GlobalFoundries, which is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, does not comment by policy on pending litigation.

Heavy construction is now winding down at the Fab 8 site in the Luther Forest Technology Campus, though the installation of manufacturing equipment continues.