Jury clears demolition company in lawsuit over fatal roof collapse

A jury in Texas state court cleared Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition LLC, Hutchins, Texas, in a recent lawsuit against the company brought by the family of a construction worker killed in a roof collapse, a report by the Courtroom View Network (CVN) says. The lawsuit sought $750,000 for pecuniary loss, loss of companionship and mental anguish.
 

The jury deliberated for less than a day before returning a unanimous verdict in favor of the demolition company, the report says. The jury agreed that Nabors Demolition held no responsibility for the death of Antonio Rayo in 2014 while he was working on a project at Las Colina elementary school, where a brick façade was being taken down by an excavator machine.
 

Rayo’s family sued the demolition company, claiming they failed to follow standard safety procedures by not ensuring there was no one in the building before the demolition began, and that a warning blast didn’t give workers enough time to reach safety, the Courtroom View Network says.
 

According to the report, Nabors argued that it couldn’t be found negligent because the company had procedures in place to prevent such an accident. Ray was tasked with keeping people out of the demolition area during the project, and he entered the building shortly before the demolition began.
 

 “These policies had worked for years, but Plaintiffs’ decedent did not comply with them,” the company argued in a court filing, the report says. “When a defendant adopts policies to guard against the specific risk at issue and uniformly applies them, and those policies have a history of effectiveness, the defendant simply cannot be grossly negligent – even if the procedures were somehow inadequate.”
 

The Rayo family’s complaint originally included claims for negligence, gross negligence, wrongful death, survival damages, premises liability and res ipsa loquitur, according to the report, but the company defeated most of those claims with a summary judgment motion and the trial was limited to Nabors’ alleged gross negligence.

Attorneys for the parties did not respond to CVN’s requests for comment.