NEW YORK, Feb 22 (Reuters) - When twin crane collapses in Manhattan killed nine people within a two-month span in 2008, they led to a top-to-bottom overhaul of New York City's inspection procedures and prompted lawsuits against the city and various contractors.

But it remains to be seen whether attempts to hold construction executives and companies criminally responsible for the accidents will succeed.

This week, prosecutors began trying James Lomma, the construction company owner whose crane collapsed in the second incident in May 2008, killing two workers.

As in previous construction death cases -- including the first crane collapse and a 2007 fatal fire in the former Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan -- prosecutors were faced with the challenge of persuading a judge that the defendant deserved to shoulder the lion's share of the blame, even as the defense's expert witnesses promised to point fingers elsewhere.

"In a criminal case, you're picking one actor, unless you're charging a conspiracy," said Howard Hershenhorn, who represented the widow of the crane operator who died in the first collapse. "It's very difficult to find one actor. There are so many factors."

Lomma and his two companies, New York Crane and Equipment Corp. and J.F. Lomma Inc., face manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges, among others. The top charge, manslaughter, carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

Prosecutors say Lomma made the deliberate decision to fix a key part of the crane on the cheap by using a Chinese company without proper vetting.

"Two men were killed, and they were killed because of one man's greed," Assistant District Attorney Eli Cherkasky told Acting Supreme Court Justice Daniel Conviser on Tuesday during opening arguments.

But Lomma's attorneys said that the blame lied with workers at the site who used the crane improperly and accused investigators of ignoring evidence that the replacement part was not the chief culprit.

"This case is about a rush to judgment," James Kim, one of Lomma's attorneys, said in court Tuesday.

ASSIGNING BLAME

The case share similarities with other tough prosecutions involving deaths at construction sites: competing theories regarding the causes of the accident, expert testimony on complicated technical standards, and defendants who say that others should bear the brunt of the blame.

In 2010, a crane rigger, William Rapetti, and his company were acquitted of manslaughter and other charges in connection with the first collapse that killed seven people in March 2008.

Last year, three supervisors at the former Deutsche Bank building, where two firefighters perished in a blaze that prosecutors said was exacerbated by a broken standpipe, were acquitted of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

The company that employed the building's toxin-cleanup director was acquitted of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, though it was convicted of reckless endangerment.

In the crane rigging case, Rapetti cast the blame on city negligence and on other workers who failed to secure the crane. And in the Deutsche Bank case, the defendants argued that city inspectors bore responsibility for the fatal fire.

While prosecutions in fatal construction accidents can be daunting, the Manhattan district attorney's office has successfully prosecuted a number of corruption and fraud cases involving the construction industry. In 2010, the president of Testwell Laboratories was sentenced to at least seven years in prison for faking concrete tests and creating phony invoices.

CIVIL REMEDIES

Finding success in civil cases is often more likely, Hershenhorn said, both because of the lower burden of proof and because apportioning blame between a number of different defendants is easier in a civil context.

His client and several others killed by the collapse settled with several defendants, including the general contractor and the owner of the building under construction, for an undisclosed amount. A number of other lawsuits related to the accident remain pending.

In his opening statement, Cherkasky dismissed the idea that the case would be more appropriate in a civil setting.

"This is not a civil case," he said. "The defendants' actions in this case were criminal in every sense of the word."

The massive crane collapsed on Manhattan's Upper East Side on May 30, 2008, killing Donald Leo, the crane operator, and Ramadan Kurtaj, a worker on the street who was hit by falling debris.

The district attorney's office declined to comment on the case Wednesday.

The case is People of New York v. James Lomma et al., New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 00852/10.

For the prosecution: Assistant District Attorneys Deborah Hickey and Eli Cherkasky

For Lomma: Andrew Lankler and James Kim of Lankler Gallagher

For the companies: Paul Shechtman of Zuckerman Spaeder

(Reporting by Joseph Ax)

Follow us on Twitter: @ReutersLegal