He was crushed shopping for granite in Charlotte. Widow’s lawsuit settled for $12 million.
A lawsuit tied to the death of a prominent Charlotte-area businessman crushed by tumbling half-ton slabs of decorative stone has been settled for $12 million, according to N.C. Lawyers Weekly.
On Sept. 20, 2019, Behzad “Al” Abedi-Asl, 63, was touring the Stone Basyx warehouse on Westinghouse Boulevard in southwest Charlotte when racks holding 1,000-pound slabs of stone shifted, sending at least 10 of the slabs toppling “in domino fashion” on top of Abedi-Asl, according to the 2021 lawsuit filed by his widow.
Abedi-Asl, a longtime executive at A.B. Carter, Gastonia’s venerable producer of textile industry parts and equipment, died within minutes under the stone, his wife Angela at his side, according to the complaint.
The couple, who had been hunting for granite or marble for a house they were building, had been invited into the warehouse by a Stone Basyx employee, the lawsuit claims.
The racks holding the slabs had been built by a Canadian manufacturer, CNS Fabrication.
The lawsuit, filed in Mecklenburg County by Charlotte attorney Adrienne Blocker, named both Stone Basyx and CNS as defendants.
It accused the companies of negligence, gross negligence, and negligent infliction of emotional distress, among other claims.
The complaint alleged that Stone Basyx, a Kernersville company, failed to properly assemble or install the racks, which were then overstocked with slabs that exceeded the equipment’s 13,000-pound capacity. The company also failed to warn customers of the potential danger.
The complaint accused CNS of shipping the unassembled racks without an owner’s manual, or proper instructions about weight-bearing limits and loading.
The October settlement was considered confidential and is not on file in the Mecklenburg County Courthouse. But it was reported last month by N.C. Lawyers Weekly. Abedi-Asl’s estate dismissed its complaint in late November, according to a court filing.
In an email to The Charlotte Observer, Charlotte attorney John Jeffries, who represented CNS, said his client “adamantly denied liability for the incident in question, but resolved any and all issues with the estate in 2022 pursuant to a confidential settlement agreement.”
“Therefore, neither I nor any other party or attorney involved, is at liberty to comment on or disclose any information about that settlement,” Jeffries wrote.
Charlotte attorney David Levy, who represented Stone Basyx, did not respond Friday to an Observer email seeking comment.
Blocker did not reply to a Friday phone call seeking comment. Michael DeMayo, her co-counsel and CEO of DeMayo Law Offices, said in a phone message that because of a confidentiality agreement, his firm was not able to discuss the case.
Abedi-Asl, who was born in Iran, came to the States in 1975 as a teenager, according to his obituary. He earned engineering degrees at the University of Tennessee before becoming a U.S. citizen in 1989. The father of two joined A.B. Carter in 1996 as vice president of manufacturing.
Blocker told Lawyers Weekly that Abedi-Asl and his wife built homes as a hobby and were frequent visitors to building-materials warehouses.
