Robert Podorsky, a 57-year-old engineer, was testing the soil at a construction site when a worker who allegedly was an illegal immigrant without a driver's license ran him over with a piece of heavy machinery.

The driver failed to stop and continued traveling across the site as Podorsky lay crushed, face down in the dirt, according to a lawsuit filed by his family May 15 in federal court in Atlanta. He died hours later at a local hospital on the night of April 28, 2006.

Now his family is suing Georgia Power Co., the company that had hired the subcontractor who employed the allegedly illegal and unlicensed worker. The subcontractor, Brad Cole Construction Co., had been hired to do grading work at Plant Bowen, a coal-fired power plant in Cartersville, says the suit.

"I was shocked and alarmed that a person who is here illegally - and we don't know anything about his background or his training - is operating a heavy piece of equipment without so much as a driver's license in the middle of a power plant," said Donald Evans, one of the attorneys representing Podorsky's family.

The immigrant has since disappeared, according to attorneys working on the case.