US EditionThe Cross-Examination That Cost a Chemical Plant Operator $1.6B
The jury found Upton Assets 100% responsible and awarded more than $1.6 billion in damages to the families of two workers killed in the blast.
- On Friday, a Starr County, Texas jury awarded more than $1.6 billion against Upton Assets, LLC, finding the company grossly negligent in a 2023 explosion that killed workers Reinaldo Garcia Pena and Angel Alaffa at its Pecos Liquids Handling Facility.
- Trial testimony established that Upton Assets bypassed formal safety bids and hired eight workers without providing safety manuals or training, prompting the company's own expert to concede it was a "systemic failure of safety."
- Damages for the Garcia family totaled $203 million in compensatory awards, while the Alaffa family received more than $200 million, with $609 million in punitive damages awarded to each family.
- Lead counsel Rob Ammons of The Ammons Law Firm stated that oil companies unable to follow safety rules have no business operating in Texas, calling it the largest workplace wrongful death award in U.S. history.
- All 12 jurors assigned 100 percent of the responsibility for both deaths to Upton Assets, rejecting the company's arguments that other parties were to blame for the preventable explosion.
29 Articles
29 Articles
Mason City Globe Gazette
MARTINEZ REILLY, PLLC: Texas Jury Returns Landmark $1.6 Billion Total Verdict for Workers Rights against Hazardous Chemicals Facility in Explosion which Killed Two Workers
Texas jury reaches a landmark verdict against the owner of an oil refinery in Pecos, Texas.
The Cross-Examination That Cost a Chemical Plant Operator $1.6B
A Texas jury awarded $1.6 billion to the families of two Rio Grande Valley workers killed in a 2023 explosion at an oil and gas facility whose owner had allegedly ignored virtually every federal safety requirement and then spent years blaming the victims.
PR Newswire
The Huntsville ItemThe Ammons Law Firm: Texas Jury Returns $1.6 Billion Unanimous Verdict Against Owner of Hazardous-Chemicals Facility Where Two Workers Were Killed in Explosion
/PRNewswire/ -- In one of the largest workplace wrongful death verdicts in U.S. history, a Starr County, Texas jury awarded more than $1.6 billion to the...
Upton Assets Slammed with $1.6B Verdict in Deadly Explosion Case
A Starr County jury unanimously awarded $1.6 billion to the families of two men who died in an explosion at a Pecos hazardous-chemicals plant in 2023. The 12-member jury answered the 16-question verdict form late Friday after the two-week trial in Judge Jose Luis Garza’s courtroom. The post Upton Assets Slammed with $1.6B Verdict in Deadly Explosion Case appeared first on The Texas Lawbook.
A jury in Starr County, Texas, awarded more than $1.6 billion to the families of two workers who died in an explosion in 2023 at a natural gas liquid management plant in the west of the state. The case focuses on the death of Reinaldo García Peña, who died alongside another worker after an explosion recorded on October 7, 2023 at a facility located in Pecos, Texas, dedicated to the management of highly flammable materials.
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