Chautauqua County is getting sued over a fatal July 2024 accident at its landfill on Webster Road in the town of Pomfret. P-J photo by M.J. Stafford

The son of the man killed in a July accident at the Chautauqua County Landfill has officially sued the county.

William Bartoo suffered fatal injuries at the landfill on Webster Road in Pomfret when a truck driven by his wife, Sharon, backed into him after she lifted her foot from the brake. He was thrown into the nearby garbage pit and the truck fell in, too, pushing aside a 2,500-pound steel barrier.

William Bartoo suffered severe injuries and died a couple weeks after the accident. Wesley Bartoo, William Bartoo’s son, was named administrator of the estate of his father on Oct. 7, according to the lawsuit filed Feb. 7 in the Chautauqua County branch of the New York State Supreme Court.

Wesley Bartoo is suing the county as a whole, its Department of Public Facilities Solid Waste Division, the county’s Landfill Commission, and the Webster Road landfill itself.

The lawsuit filing was not unexpected, as Wesley Bartoo’s lawyers served the county with a notice of claim over the accident in September. The county successfully sought a court to force Wesley and Sharon Bartoo to turn over for inspection the vehicle involved in William Bartoo’s accident.

The latest court filing alleges that William Bartoo’s fatal injuries happened due to “the negligent, careless, reckless and/or unlawful conduct on the part of defendants… in the ownership, operation, maintenance, management, construction, control and design of the said premises.” The garbage pit area and its allegedly “dangerous and hazardous condition” is a specific focus.

The fatal landfill accident deprived William Bartoo’s next of kin of his “support, maintenance, nurture, comfort, advice, aid and society,” the lawsuit continues.

Wesley Bartoo now seeks a judgment against the defendants “in an amount that exceeds the jurisdictional limits of all lower courts that would otherwise have jurisdiction,” and anything else “as the court may deem just and proper.”