State lawmaker wants increased fines for delayed elevator inspection after athlete's death
ATLANTA - Nearly six months after the death of a young football player, a state lawmaker hopes to change Georgia law to incentivize property owners to stay current on elevator inspections.
JauMarcus McFarland, 18, died after he was pinned by an elevator August 31 inside the 444 Suites Student Housing on Highland Avenue. McFarland had recently moved to Atlanta to play football at Champion Prep Academy.
"He was crushed to death trying to get out of an elevator in front of all his peers and as tragic as that was, the worst part of that story was that that elevator hadn't been inspected by the state in over two years," said state Rep. Matthew Wilson, D-Brookhaven.
According to the Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner's Office, the elevator's operating permit expired in August 2020, meaning the elevator had not been inspected since August 2019.
Following an investigation, the state issued citations to the building's owners as well of fines of $12,000 after the incident. A spokesman said the elevator involved remains out of service pending a civil lawsuit by the victim's family.
The current fine for a delayed or missed inspection is $500 per elevator. It is up to the property owner to schedule an inspection. Under Rep. Wilson's bill, the fine would increase to $2,500 and after 60 days the insurance commissioner's office would be able to schedule an inspection.
"This legislation is designed to put more pressure on the property owner to comply with the inspection requirements," Rep. Wilson explained. "When they fail to do so, like they did in the McFarland case, the state is then required to then proactively step in and get more aggressive."
If, for some reason, a property owner does not allow the state-scheduled inspection to happen, he or she would face another round of $2,500 fines. A second missed state-scheduled inspection would lead to a $5,000 fine.
The insurance commissioner's office issued a statement to FOX 5 about the legislation:
"...our office has been hard at work replacing an old system instituted under a previous administration that was incapable of accurately tracking elevator inspections. Our new system, which took two years and over $600,000 to implement, went into effect on July 1, 2021, and will provide us with a full picture of outstanding elevator inspections statewide after a year of data collection.
"Knowing which elevators are the furthest behind on inspections will allow us to prioritize this work, given our limited resources (there are 34,000 elevators under our jurisdiction with a staff of 14 inspectors, who are also responsible for boilers and escalators). We’ve been hard at work, both internally and in partnership with the state legislature, to rebuild an agency that has been neglected for too long, but the fact is that we still do not have the resources to inspect every elevator in the state every year. Increasing fines on elevator owners or lessees, as this legislation aims to do, will not solve this problem. We hope Representative Wilson would instead focus on efforts to help fully staff our Safety Fire Division.
"The work we’ve done internally to more accurately track and prioritize older elevators and those with outstanding inspections is allowing us to chip away at the backlog we inherited. In addition, our office already has the authority to levy fines and other penalties, which we did to the tune of over $12,000 against the owners of the building at 444 Highland after last summer’s tragic accident that took the life of a young football player."
A House subcommittee held a hearing on the legislation last week, but did not vote on the measure.
Rep. Wilson is running for insurance commissioner in 2022 against current Commissioner John King.
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