$7 Million in Damages Sought in Seacliff Oil Field Worker’s Death

Jason Hoskins, 22, was a loving husband, a doting stepfather and an excited father-to-be when he inhaled toxic fumes expelled from deep beneath a Seacliff oil field four years ago.

Within minutes, he and two other workers were dead. Three others were seriously injured.

To compensate Hoskins’ widow, his step-daughter and his unborn daughter, Vintage Petroleum Inc. must pay more than $7 million in damages, attorney Robert Norman said Friday.

“His unique love, compassion, moral support for Tiffany and Brittany, and what he would have been for Sierra, cannot be replaced,” Norman said. “That has been lost forever.”

Friday’s statements were among the closing arguments for Hoskins’ portion of the damage phase of the lengthy civil trial against Oklahoma-based Vintage Petroleum.

In a sharply worded decision last month, Ventura County Judge Barbara Lane ruled that the deaths of the three men--Hoskins, Ronald Johnson, and Sean Harris--could have been prevented had Vintage taken proper safety measures.

She said Vintage contributed to the accident by failing to assess geological risks at its Seacliff oil production plant. The deaths and injuries were caused by a gas leak.

The initial portion of the trial stretched five months.

In the damage phase, Lane is to decide how much Vintage must pay the survivors.

Hoskins’ case is the second of six that Lane will hear over the next month. She is not expected to make a ruling until all six cases have been presented, probably in late October or early November.

The gas leak occurred Aug. 10, 1994, at Vintage’s oil production plant in the foothills of Rincon Mountain. The men were in the process of turning the defunct 70-year-old well into a disposal well.

As they drilled, a burst of gas more than 2,000 feet down caused water in the drainage pipe to shoot back up, carrying with it noxious fumes.

Overcome, the three men suffered cardiac arrest almost immediately.

Hoskins’ wife, Tiffany, was in court Friday. His daughter Sierra, 4, played outside in the hallway. Friday was her birthday.

Hoskins never got to see her because he was killed when his wife was eight months pregnant. Her middle name is Jason, after her father.

Norman is asking for $1.14 million in economic damages--enough to support Hoskins’ widow and two daughters until they are 21. He is also asking for $2 million each in noneconomic damages for Tiffany, Brittany and Sierra Hoskins.

Vintage’s attorney, Bruce Finck, argued that Hoskins was a high school graduate working in a declining industry who had built up debts and never would have made much money.

He argued that Vintage should not have to compensate Tiffany Hoskins’ daughter Brittany, because she was not his blood relative and was never formally adopted.

Finck called Norman’s noneconomic figure “remarkable,” suggesting an award of $125,000 instead.

“In this ethereal, emotion-laden field we can build these hyperbolic arguments and get more money,” he said.

He said damages are intended to compensate, not reward.

“Think about the parents of ‘Private Ryan’ in World War II. What were they given for the deaths of their children?” Finck asked.

Norman scoffed at Finck’s comparison.

‘Vintage would surely have been more fortunate if Jason Hoskins had been an 85-year-old man with no family,” he said. “But that is not the case.”