Oilfield worker awarded $30M
State law to limit how much can be collected; ballot initiative to seek to eliminate that cap
A Colorado jury has awarded $30 million to an oilfield worker who was severely injured when a fracking tank exploded in Weld County four years ago, but he’ll be unable to collect the full amount because state law limits how much companies are required to pay in damages when they lose lawsuits.
Last week’s verdict in federal court comes as a group called Coloradans for Accountability, supported by the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, is organizing a ballot initiative to put before voters in November that would eliminate the cap on non-economic damages in personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits.
“This is something that has 100% benefit to insurance companies and defendants, and zero benefit to anyone who has been hurt,” Steven Straughen, the oilfield worker injured in the 2019 blast, said in an interview Tuesday. “This is a biased law by a huge margin.”
Straughen, a married father of two and a U.S. Air Force veteran who lives in Idaho, was working at the time of the explosion as a well tester for a contractor who assigned him to a well pad in Greeley. He was working on a fracking tank in December 2019 when he and a co-worker heard a pop and noticed smoke leaking from another tank. Straughen asked his colleague to climb on top of one of the tanks to shut its vent valves.
But the tank Straughen was standing on exploded, catapulting him 27 feet through the air. The blast also sent his co-worker flying off the other tank and onto the top of another.
The explosion and the subsequent fall caused a fractured pelvis, spine, ankle and hip, and a
mild traumatic brain injury. Straughen spent months in a hospital and then a rehabilitation center. He ultimately had his right foot amputated because of ongoing pain.
The injuries caused permanent mobility issues, something that has been difficult for a man who had hiked in Nepal, snowboarded and sailed competitively. Now, he has to go to bed after running a snowblower on his driveway.
“There’s plenty of days where I have a bit of a stagger because of my hip and back and pelvis,” he said.
The hardest thing, Staughen said, has been not being able to participate in action sports with his children — a 6-yearold girl and a 4-year-old boy. And he is limited in how he can help his wife with overall child care, he said.
“I spent the first year assuming I would get 100% better,” he said. “It took me most of that first year to realize that wouldn’t be the case. That number keeps dropping. I’m at the point now where I hope to be 30% to 40% of me. I often wonder if this is as good as I will get. We’ll see. I have to keep trying. I can’t quit.”
After the explosion, an investigation determined the company that had delivered the fracking tanks — BHS Inc., a Wyomingbased company with offices in Vernal, Utah — placed faulty, damaged equipment on the Weld County site. The tank that exploded had holes in it so that it was not air-tight and was leaking dangerous vapors, said Kurt Zaner, a lawyer with the Zaner Harden firm in Denver who represented Straughen.
Straughen filed a federal personal injury lawsuit against BHS Inc. and, on Thursday, after a nine-day trial in U.S. District Court in Denver, a jury delivered a $30 million verdict in favor of Straughen and his wife Ashley.
Efforts to reach representatives of BHS Inc. on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Of the jury’s $30 million verdict, $10 million was awarded for economic damages and $5 million for physical impairment and disfigurement. Neither of those portions is capped by state law.
The jury also awarded Straughen $15 million for pain and suffering, but Colorado law caps those damages, considered noneconomic because they are intended to compensate Straughen for things such as his inability to pursue snowboarding and solo sailing adventures or play backyard ball with his children.
The cap is $600,000, Zaner said. So the $15 million is “money that will just go away,” he said. “The law has taken away the justice that was rendered.”
The cap was set in the 1980s when tort reform was on the agenda at legislatures across the country, said Zaner, who is supporting the ballot measure. It’s time for change that reflects a higher cost of living and different political sensibilities in Colorado, he said.
Proposed language for a ballot question has been submitted to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office and is awaiting its first hearing before the board that determines whether initiatives qualify for the ballot.
“People who are living here today can decide this instead of legislators back in the 1980s,” he said.
Straughen now works in IT, something he can do from a desk. The jury’s award will buy him time with his children, Straughen said, because doctors predict he ultimately will be dependent on a wheelchair.
“It allows me to spend time with my kids and do things with them while I still can,” he said.