A jury in Midland on Friday returned a $5.9 million verdict against an oil field company from Glen Rose and an employee who killed four people while speeding to work in a rainstorm.
The verdict is believed to be the largest ever in a personal injury case in Midland County. It came in a suit brought by Neva Rogers, who lost three children in the crash. The fourth person killed was Rogers’ ex-husband, Kantrell Hires, a 36-year-old Coast Guard petty officer first class stationed in Corpus Christi.
Rogers was represented by Michael Lyons, Christopher Simmons, Christopher Carr and Stephen Higdon of Lyons & Simmons, a Dallas litigation firm.
The defendant company, DanCar Energy Construction LLC, was represented by Brent Cooper, a shareholder in Cooper & Scully, a Dallas-based trial and appellate firm.
Cooper said the multimillion-dollar verdict was unsupported by case law, and the money will never be paid.
“It’s a made-up number,” he said. “There’s no basis for recovery of such damages under settled Texas law.”
DanCar’s portion of what Cooper called the “real damages” in the case would amount to between $150,000 and $250,000, he said – less than what DanCar’s insurer offered Rogers to settle before trial. (Cooper declined, however, to specify what that offer was.)
“In a sense, we feel like we won,” he said. “We were quite happy with the outcome.”
He said settlement talks with Rogers continue but declined to elaborate.
DanCar Construction went out of business a couple of years ago, Cooper said. The company’s defense costs are being paid by its insurance carrier, Liberty Mutual.
Lyons said professional trial consultants advised his firm not to take the suit to trial – that the plaintiff, a black woman from Mobile County, Alabama, had little chance of prevailing in a suit against an oil field construction company in Midland, the heart of the West Texas energy industry. Midland County is generally regarded by trial lawyers as one of the state’s most conservative, pro-business jurisdictions. (The jury of seven women and five men included four Hispanic members, eight white members and no African American members.)
To be exact, Lyons said, the experts pegged his chance of victory at 5%.
“We were repeatedly told we didn’t have a prayer,” he said. “We knew it would be a steep uphill climb, but this lady lost three of her kids. We weren’t about to tell her we wouldn’t take her case because we might not make any money.”
The plaintiffs argued that DanCar – along with the driver, Luis Rangel Jr. – was responsible for the deaths because a company policy required workers to show up and sign in on bad-weather days in order to be paid – even if their supervisors then immediately sent them home because of the weather. The collision occurred during heavy rains around 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 14, 2017.
DanCar’s “show-up” rule, “contrary to reason and industry standards,” induced workers to be on the road when it wasn’t safe to drive, the lawsuit said.
“This was a case about a company policy that should never have been in place and needed to end before another parent had to experience the type of unthinkable tragedy Neva has endured,” Lyons said.
“I’m so proud that this jury told the industry this kind of policy is dangerous and this practice should end.”
Robert Hirschhorn of Cathy E. Bennett & Associates, a nationally renowned jury and trial consultant, worked with Lyons & Simmons on the case. He called the plaintiffs’ theory – bad policy leads to bad driving – a variant on the infamous Domino’s Pizza 30-minute delivery debacle. For years, the pizza giant promised to deliver every pizza within 30 minutes, or the customer got it for free. (This was later modified to a $3 discount.)
The marketing gimmick was dropped in 1993 after Domino’s was hit with a series of lawsuits contending that the 30-minute pledge was responsible for traffic accidents across the country, as delivery drivers sped recklessly to beat the clock. In one case, a jury in St. Louis awarded more than $78 million to a woman who sustained head and spinal injuries when a Domino’s driver ran a red light and hit her car.
Hirschhorn said it was “ridiculous” for DanCar to make employees show up in foul weather, whether or not the weather would permit them to do their jobs.
“That’s like a school district telling students they have to report to school in an ice storm so they can be sent home because there’s an ice storm,” he said.
Cooper, the defense lawyer, disputed the plaintiffs’ contention that DanCar had a formal policy requiring workers to show up and sign in, even in inclement weather.
“Employees were told that if they had questions about the weather, they could call in and get instructions over the phone about whether they needed to report,” he said.
Rangel, furthermore, was scheduled to work indoors on the day of the crash. “The weather had nothing to do with anything,” Cooper said.
According to court records and news accounts, the fatal wreck occurred on State Highway 158 about 6 miles southeast of Midland. Hires, the Coast Guardsman, was traveling with three of his four children by Rogers, his ex-wife: Kristian, 16, Kaleb, 14, and Alexander, 12. Hires had remarried just a month earlier and was on his way to help his new bride – who was pregnant with their child – move her things to his home in Portland, Texas, outside Corpus Christi.
Their 2004 Chevy Impala was headed west. Rangel was alone in his 2007 Ford F-150 pickup, heading east on his way to work.
Driving at a high speed – perhaps as high as 90 mph – Rangel lost control of his truck on the wet pavement. The pickup skidded or hydroplaned across the highway’s double-yellow line into the westbound lanes, slamming into Hires’ sedan.
Rogers said she was told her ex-husband and sons Kaleb and Alexander were killed on impact. Kristian died later in surgery.
Rangel was treated for minor injuries at Midland Memorial Hospital. Investigators said there was no evidence he was drunk or high on drugs at the time of the crash
Rangel was charged with four counts of criminally negligent homicide, convicted by a Midland jury and sentenced in 2019 to five years’ probation.
“As long as he meets the terms of his probation, he will never serve time,” Lyons said. “It’s another reason we wanted to give Neva Rogers her day in court.”
For his closing argument Friday morning, Lyons wore a pink dress shirt.
Addressing the jurors, he said: “I know all of you are wondering, why in the heck is this lawyer wearing a pink shirt?”
He reminded them that Mother’s Day was coming up Sunday. The pink shirt, he said, was to honor his mom and moms everywhere; moms who would be surrounded by their children on this special day.
“It will be different for Neva,” he said. “Neva will be left thinking about her three children who are gone forever. She will never have the opportunity to see them grow up, have children of their own and have the pride of seeing their accomplishments in life.”
The jury deliberated six hours before awarding Neva Rogers $5.9 million.