Texas Watch—Consumer Protection. Corporate Accountability. Citizen Advocacy.

Port Elevator v. Casados
Barring negligence suits for temp workers
Case No. 10-0523; Opinion issued January 27, 2012

ISSUE
Is workers’ compensation (comp) the exclusive remedy when a temporary worker suffers a fatal, work-related injury, thereby barring suit against an employer?

FACTS
Rafael Casados worked for Staff Force, Inc. (Staff Force), a temporary staffing agency. In April 2005, Staff Force provided Casados to perform general labor for Port Elevator-Brownsville, LLC (Port Elevator) at its grain storage facility. During his third day on the job, Casados suffered a fatal, work-related injury.

Staff Force carried comp insurance through Dallas Fire Insurance Company. Port Elevator carried comp insurance through Texas Mutual Insurance Company. Texas Mutual denied coverage, claiming Casados was a Staff Force employee and not a Port Elevator employee. Casados’s parents emphasized that Port Elevator intended to – and did – exclude Casados from comp coverage because (1) it did not pay premiums for temporary workers like Casados; (2) Casados was a temporary employee whose job classification was not listed in Port Elevator’s policy; and (3) Texas Mutual denied coverage.

Casados’s parents sued Port Elevator for negligence, negligence per se, and gross negligence. The jury found Port Elevator negligent – but not grossly negligent – and the court awarded $515,167.09 to Casado’s estate for pain, mental anguish, and pre-judgment interest and $2,189,967.76 to Casados’s parents for mental anguish, loss of companionship and society, and pre-judgment interest. The court of appeals affirmed.

HOLDING
Justice Guzman wrote for a unanimous court. The Court held that because Port Elevator had a comp policy, Casados was an employee who suffered a work-related injury, and the jury did not find Port Elevator grossly negligent, the exclusive remedy is against the employer’s insurer under the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act, not the employer. The Court reversed the appellate court and rendered judgment for Port Elevator.

IMPACT
An employer can fail to pay premiums for temporary workers, fail to list a temporary worker’s job classification in their comp policy, have a court award millions of dollars in damages against them as a consequence of their negligence, and yet still receive the legal protections of comp’s “exclusive remedy” in the end. Workers’ lives are cheapened, and the lack of accountability engendered by the Court’s opinion will only further endanger workers across our state.

As drilling for oil and gas has surged in Texas, so have injuries and deaths at drilling rigs and well sites. It has become a significant concern to Federal regulators and to the industry. But there are promising efforts to reduce accidents. One of those was hatched in South Texas.

The number of workers killed in Texas “mining”, as the Department of Labor classifies oil and gas drilling, has risen in the past decade. Deaths rose from 35 in 2003 to a high of 49 in 2007 and totaled 45 in 2010.

Read More: StateImpact Texas

On the day the Deepwater Horizon sank in the Gulf of Mexico, BP officials warned in an internal email conversation that if the well was not protected by the blow-out preventer at the drill site, crude oil could burst into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 3.4 million gallons a day, an amount a million gallons higher than what the U.S. government ultimately estimated spilled daily from the site.

The memo, which BP agreed to release Friday as part of federal court proceedings, suggests BP managers recognized the potential of the disaster in its early hours, and the company officials sought to make sure that the model-developed information wasn’t shared with those outside the company. The emails also suggest BP was having heated discussions with Coast Guard officials over the potential of the oil spill.

The memo was released as part of the court proceedings to determine the division of responsibility for the nation’s worst offshore oil disaster, which began when the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, 2010, killing 11 men about 50 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast. The first phase of the trial is set to start Feb. 27.

Read More: NPR

The Texas Supreme Court has a profound effect on the everyday lives of Texans. It is the court of last resort for non-criminal matters in the state. But according to a scathing report released this week by the advocacy group Texas Watch, over the last 10 years, the majority of Texas Supreme Court decisions have favored corporate interests over consumers. And the panel of judges, according to the report, has repeatedly overstepped its authority by overturning jury verdicts and interpreting the law to benefit the rich.

Listen: Texas Public Radio (Texas Matters, Segment 3)

Last August, ThinkProgress highlighted a Texas Watch report showing that the Texas Supreme Court “sided with consumers in 27 percent of cases involving an individual against a corporation or government agency — and it reversed jury verdicts in 72 percent of cases.” A new report by that same organization shows that the court’s favoritism towards corporations is now even worse.

Read More: ThinkProgress

Listen to Court Watch director Alex Winslow talk about Court Watch’s latest report with Kristen Flowers of KTRH radio in Houston.

“Texas families deserve a fair shake when they go to the courthouse. And, when they make it to the highest court in the land, they’re just not getting that fair shake.”

Woe is the injured consumer or medical patient in Texas who brings a lawsuit against a big corporation or the government. A new report out from the nonprofit advocacy group Texas Watch has taken a hard look at more than 600 decisions by the Texas Supreme Court over the past decade and found that consumers and plaintiffs are routinely taking it on the chin. And consumers are losing far more often in the court than they were before short-lived GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry became governor.

Since 2005, consumers have lost nearly 80 percent of Texas Supreme Court cases in which a consumer was pitted against a big corporation or the government. Most of the time, the consumer plaintiffs had already prevailed before a jury—the high court overturned jury verdicts in 74 percent of consumer cases, with very little dissent.

Texas Watch attributes the massive scale-tilting to the fact that the court is now dominated by judges who were appointed by Perry starting in 2000. Six of the nine judges on the all-Republican court were initially appointed by Perry. In Texas, the judges are elected, but when a vacancy occurs, a governor can appoint a judge to fill out the remaining term, a move that all but guarantees the judge will prevail in the general election. And in Texas, Republican judges who’ve wanted to retire have often done so mid-term, allowing Perry to appoint their replacements.

Read More: Mother Jones

The Texas Supreme Court over the last decade has morphed into an activist court driven by ideoloy and acting to benefit corporate interests, according to a report released today by consumer advocacy group Texas Watch.

The scathing report is the result of a review of 264 court decisions over the past 10 years and paints a picture of a court concerned only with giving more power to the powerful and trampling on the interests of Texas families in the process. The 9-judge panel, all Republican, “employs twisted logic and eviscerates long-standing precedent to achieve poltiical ends,” the report says.

Texas Watch found that when Gov. Rick Perry began making appointments in 2000, his picks made the court decidely more pro-business than it had been under George W. Bush, “subverting the rule of law from within and effectively turning the granite walls of the court into a mausoleum for plaintiffs.”

Read More: The Dallas Morning News

Our new report about the Texas Supreme Court’s pro-defendant record is already getting attention from the media. Check out the story from the Texas Tribune and take a listen to Texas Watch’s executive director Alex Winslow discuss the report’s findings with Scott Braddock on News 92fm this morning. Read More »