San Francisco prosecutors have charged a sewer contractor and three of its supervisors with involuntary manslaughter over a 2023 trench collapse that killed a laborer. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced the charges Oct. 19 against D’Arcy & Harty Construction Inc. and three employees: John Finbarr Darcy, 62, the company’s designated site safety representative; John William Tobin, 39, the project manager; and Filiberto Poblano Perez, 52, the crew foreman.
Each defendant faces one count of involuntary manslaughter under Penal Code 192(b) and four counts under Labor Code 6425(a), which covers a safety standard violation that causes an employee’s death. Darcy, Perez and the company have pleaded not guilty. The DA’s release doesn’t say whether Tobin has been arraigned.
What happened in the Oak Street trench collapse
According to court documents, the laborer was working on the morning of Sept. 28, 2023, in a trench near Oak and Divisadero streets. It was about 2.5 feet wide, 5 feet long and 8 feet deep. A vehicle drove past, the walls gave way and he was buried. He died of mechanical asphyxia. He was working for D’Arcy & Harty on a sewer tunnel rehabilitation project for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
The Cal/OSHA inspector who reviewed the death found the excavation wasn’t properly supported under Title 8. The short sides, one facing Oak Street and one facing a building, had no support at all. The long sides were only partly supported.
A cut that small doesn’t look dangerous from the street. That’s the trap. At 8 feet it was well past the 5-foot depth where California and federal rules require a protective system unless the cut is in stable rock, and passing traffic is exactly the kind of vibration and surcharge that brings unsupported walls down.
Why trench safety cases now reach supervisors personally
The detail prosecutors are likely to lean on is history. The DA says the company was the subject of a safety complaint about an inadequately supported trench on another project less than three weeks before the collapse. In a manslaughter case, prior notice goes straight to what the defendants knew.
The release conditions bite too. The court ordered the three individual defendants to surrender their passports, stay in California unless the court allows travel and not supervise employees or act in any role governing jobsite safety. They also can’t contact witnesses or each other. That takes three experienced field people out of supervision while the case runs.
California is moving the same direction by statute. AB 2321 takes effect Jan. 1 and makes a willful violation that injures a worker a crime, not only one that kills. Cal/OSHA is also proposing per-worker egregious penalties. Superintendents and foremen should read this case as a sign that “the company” isn’t the only defendant anymore.
The trench protection lesson
The charges came more than three years after the death, and the DA says the investigation is still active. Shoring a cut 5 feet long isn’t a big job. The case it produced has already run three years and reached four defendants.