Damages in Fatal Oil Rig Accident Are Upheld

An appellate court has upheld a decision ordering Oklahoma-based Vintage Petroleum to pay more than $6 million in damages to workers and their families for an oil field accident that claimed three lives.

Attorneys for the injured workers and families of those killed said they hope this week’s ruling by the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Ventura will finally bring an end to the 6-year-old case.

“It is the correct decision,” said Ventura attorney Richard M. Norman, who argued the case before the appellate court earlier this month. “I didn’t think the appeal had a great deal of merit to it.”

Norman said Vintage’s attorneys contacted several of the plaintiffs’ lawyers Wednesday morning and indicated they have not decided whether to seek a hearing before the state Supreme Court.

“My prediction is, and I hope I am wrong, that they are going to drag it out,” Norman said. “It’s what they have done all along.”

Last summer, Vintage appealed a ruling by Ventura County Superior Court Judge Barbara Lane, who found the oil company was liable for the deaths and injuries sustained by a seven-man crew working at its Seacliff oil production site.

The accident occurred Aug. 10, 1994, as the crew was converting a 50-year-old oil well into a waste-water disposal site.

During the drilling, the workers hit a pocket of poisonous gas 2,138 feet below the surface, which caused a geyser of methane-laced water to shoot 15 feet above the wellhead.

The men tried to contain the muddy water using a five-gallon bucket, but were quickly overcome by the deadly gas.

Jason Hoskins, 22, Sean Harris, 26, and Ronald Johnson, 24, died. Workers Jerry Walker, Toby Thrower and Derek Abbott were hospitalized with severe injuries.

Those surviving workers and the relatives of those killed filed separate lawsuits against Vintage, claiming the company’s negligence led to the accident.

The cases were later consolidated and after a five-month trial Lane found Vintage “100%” responsible for the leak because, among other things, it had failed to assess geologic risks at the site. She also found that a field supervisor hired by Vintage to oversee the well project was negligent for failing to follow safety measures that could have saved the men’s lives.

In subsequent months, Lane ordered Vintage to pay varying amounts of damages to the families of those killed and the surviving workers, who testified that they suffer debilitating headaches and other brain injuries as a result of the gas explosion.

Combined, the damages totaled more than $6 million. But those awards were frozen when Vintage filed its appeal last June. It argued that Lane made at least two key errors in evaluating the contractual relationship between Vintage and the men at the scene.

Specifically, Vintage’s attorneys argued that on-site supervisor Jon Crawford was the negligent party who should be held individually liable because he was an independent contractor hired to oversee this one job.

But in its ruling, the appellate court found that Lane made no such errors and was correct in concluding that Crawford was an agent of Vintage.

“It was Vintage’s well, and Crawford represented Vintage,” Presiding Judge Arthur Gilbert wrote in the decision.

Vintage has less than two weeks to petition for a rehearing before the appellate court, and until Aug. 5 to petition the state Supreme Court for a hearing.