By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

A Jasper County jury began hearing testimony Tuesday in the trial of a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by family members of a man who was killed when a large storage box toppled onto him two years ago in Galena, Kan.

Michael Ellis Sr. was killed Oct. 7, 2007, while moving his family’s belongings onto leased property at 1503 and 1505 W. Seventh St. in Galena. Ellis was driving a tractor that was pulling the metal storage box off a flatbed tow truck onto a concrete slab when the container toppled forward, crushing him.

His widow, Wilma Ellis, of Afton, Okla., and adult son and daughter, Michael Ellis Jr. and Laura Drake, are suing John Meyer of John Meyer Truck and Foreign Salvage of Joplin. Meyer had agreed to lease the property to the Ellises and was assisting the deceased in moving the storage box there on his flatbed tow truck.

Ordinary care

The Ellises allege that Meyer failed to exercise ordinary care in assisting Michael Ellis Sr. on that day.

Shelly Dreyer, attorney for the plaintiffs, told jurors during opening statements in Jasper County Circuit Court that Meyer never hooked up the truck’s backup winch to the box before the bed of the truck was raised in an effort to slide the box onto the concrete pad. Dreyer said Ellis had no experience with tow trucks and could not anticipate the accident that took his life.

She said the problem was that the container did not slide off the truck when the bed was raised. So the men hooked a chain to a tractor that Meyer also provided to Ellis, and Ellis attempted to pull the box off the truck.

Dreyer said an accident reconstruction expert who the defense intends to call to testify at the trial initially believed that Meyer got in the truck at that point and pulled it forward, causing the box to topple onto Ellis and the tractor. She said the defense’s expert later changed to an opinion that the box had come off the truck bed and was being dragged across the pad by the tractor when the weight of its contents shifted forward and it fell on the victim.

Dreyer said two sheriff’s deputies who responded to the scene reported hearing Meyer acknowledge that he had moved the truck.

“The evidence will be that Mr. Meyer did have an active role in this,” she said.

Truck moved?

Defense attorney James Nordstrom said the plaintiffs’ claim that Meyer moved the truck forward, causing the box to topple over, is not accurate. He said a police officer’s report states that it appeared to the officer that the tractor kept pulling the box once it was off the truck. The officer’s report does not mention anything about Meyer being in the truck or moving it, Nordstrom said.

He said his client was not in the truck at the time but was standing beside it. He said that if Meyer had been in the truck, he would not have been able to witness the container tipping over as he did, because the raised bed of the truck would have blocked the view of anyone in its cab.