© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
(Feb. 18) – Gainesville-based Texas Trailer Corporation did nothing wrong when it tested and flunked a prototype sand container created by two Central Texas businesses for use in the hydraulic fracturing industry, a Cooke County jury ruled last week.
Though the Feb. 13 verdict was a triumph in itself for Texas Trailer’s lawyers, Rob Sayles and Sawyer Neely, they scored a giant pre-trial victory last month during summary judgment when State District Judge Janelle Haverkamp dismissed the $8 million in lost profits that the plaintiffs, San Antonio-based SandCan and Seguin-based EPMP, were seeking.
That left the jury to decide whether SandCan and EPMP deserved a much smaller damages amount (between $150,000 or $160,000), which jurors rejected, Sayles said.
Jurors also determined that Texas Trailer did not breach any contract with the plaintiffs or act with negligence when it tested the sand container.
“We’re very pleased with the verdict from the jury and are happy that they agree with our position that our client was not responsible for the testing that failed,” said Sayles, who, along with Neely, practices at the Dallas litigation boutique, Sayles Werbner.
SandCan and EPMP’s attorneys, Matt Bishop and Clare Pace of Martin & Drought in San Antonio, could not be reached for comment.
EPMP and SandCan sued Texas Trailer in 2013 after their prototype sand container failed during an inspection that they had hired Texas Trailer to conduct. EPMP and SandCan claimed it was Texas Trailer’s fault that the sand container, which was built to transport sand for hydraulic oil and gas fracturing, had failed the testing. They also claimed that they accumulated significant lost profits during the six-month limbo that it took them to obtain certification for the sand container.
Had the sand container been certified during the Texas Trailer testing, SandCan and EPMP would have obtained those significant profits through an agreement they were “on the verge” of finalizing to sell multiple sand containers to a large oil and gas company, according to an expert witness for the plaintiffs who Sayles said testified during discovery.
But when Sayles and Neely conducted their own investigation, they found that the oil and gas company had “no relationship” with EPMP and SandCan and had never drafted any contracts with them.
They also discovered – and got the jury to agree – that the blame for the failed testing was on another company: American Bureau of Shipping. Sayles said ABS was responsible for determining the standards the sand container needed to meet to pass certification. The mistake ABS made, Sayles said, was in the weight standard that the sand container had to bear to pass certification, because it was far too heavy.
When the sand container failed the test, Sayles said SandCan and EPMP “pointed a finger at ABS for approximately eight to nine months” in an arbitration battle, and when that failed, “they then turned the tables and sued Texas Trailer.”
Sayles said the trial lasted for four days and the jury returned a verdict after 45 minutes of deliberation.
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