Outrigger And Ground Failure
Pads that will not carry the bearing pressure, cribbing that is undersized, and setups over a soft spot nobody surveyed. This is the most common serious crane failure in the Basin.
West Texas Oilfield Injury Lawyer | Horton Legal
A crane on a lease is rarely operated by the company that owns it, rigged by the company that operates it, or standing on ground prepared by either of them. When it fails, that is four companies and one injured hand.
Outriggers punching through a caliche pad, a load that was never weighed against the chart, a sling that failed inspection nobody carried out, a boom into a power line. Alex Horton is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and he tries cases. If a crane put you in the hospital, call before the machine is repaired and back on a job.
Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Texas Super Lawyer for more than ten years. Former clerk at the Supreme Court of Texas. About Alex Horton
Crane cases look simple and almost never are. The machine did what physics said it would do. The argument is about who put it in a position where that was going to happen.
These are also the cases where the paper decides everything. Load charts, the lift plan, the inspection history and the data the crane recorded on the day are worth more than any witness account, and all of it is under the control of the companies you are about to sue. For everything else about oilfield claims in Ector County, start at the Odessa oilfield injury lawyer page.
Usually several companies at once, and the one that gets named first is often not the one that pays. The question is not who was holding the controls. It is who created the condition that made the failure possible, and who had the authority to stop the lift.
Ground conditions are the one people miss. Federal crane rules put responsibility for adequate ground conditions on the controlling entity, which on a lease is normally the operator or the general contractor rather than the crane company. Caliche looks solid and behaves very differently after rain or over a backfilled trench. An outrigger that punches through is frequently a pad problem dressed up as an operator error.
Then there is the lift itself. Was the load weighed or estimated. Was the configuration on the chart the configuration in the field. Was there a lift plan at all, and did anybody with authority sign it. Was a qualified signal person in place, and could the operator see the load through the whole swing.
Texas asks who had the right to control the work at the moment it went wrong, decided by what happened on location rather than by what the master service agreement says. Chapter 95 limits when a property owner answers for a contractor's injury and it turns on retained control and actual knowledge, which is exactly what a company man directing a lift looks like. More in who is liable for oilfield injuries in Texas and can I sue an oil company as a contractor in West Texas.
Pads that will not carry the bearing pressure, cribbing that is undersized, and setups over a soft spot nobody surveyed. This is the most common serious crane failure in the Basin.
Loads estimated rather than weighed, radius creeping out during the lift, and a configuration in the field that does not match the chart the operator was working from.
Sling, shackle and hook failures, loads that were never properly secured, and men working underneath because there was nowhere else to stand.
A boom inside the minimum clearance distance. These are usually fatal or catastrophic and the clearance rules are unambiguous, which makes liability easier and damages larger.
Pinch points between the counterweight and a structure, trailer or truck. Barricading the swing radius is a basic requirement and it is skipped constantly on a crowded pad.
Boom sections, jibs and counterweights coming apart or going together without a qualified director present. A disproportionate share of crane deaths happen while the machine is not lifting anything.
Frequently both, and you do not have to choose. Texas assigns a share of responsibility to everyone who contributed, so the useful question is not which one of them was at fault. It is what each of them was supposed to do and what they can prove they did.
The operator owns the lift once the load leaves the ground. Working within the chart for the actual configuration, refusing a lift that cannot be made safely, keeping the load in view or taking direction from a qualified signal person, and stopping when conditions change.
Operator certification is a federal requirement, and the employer has to evaluate the operator on the specific equipment and the type of work as well. A certificate on file is not the end of that question. Plenty of files turn on an operator who was certified in general and never evaluated on that machine.
The rigging contractor owns the connection. Selecting slings and hardware rated for the load and the angle, inspecting them before each shift and removing damaged gear from service, knowing the actual weight and the centre of gravity, and getting tag lines on anything that will rotate.
Sling angle is where these cases usually live. Tension rises sharply as the angle flattens, and a sling that is fine on paper fails in the field because nobody ran the number. The damaged sling normally disappears within days of the accident, which is why the preservation letter cannot wait.
If your employer carries no workers compensation, that helps you. Texas is the only state that lets a private employer opt out. A nonsubscriber gives up contributory negligence, assumption of risk and the fellow servant defense, and can be sued directly for negligence. See how to file a lawsuit against your oilfield employer.
More than most crews on a lease are given time to do. A violation is not automatically negligence in your civil case, but it is usually where the case starts, and the records these rules generate are the records that decide it.
Operators must be certified, and the employer must separately evaluate them on the equipment and the work they are actually doing. Two different records, and the second one is often missing.
A shift inspection before use, a documented monthly inspection, and a comprehensive annual inspection by a qualified person. The inspection file is the first thing we ask for and the first thing that turns out to be incomplete.
The controlling entity has to ensure the ground is adequate to support the crane, and has to inform the crane company of known hazards below the surface such as backfill, voids and buried utilities.
Minimum clearance distances apply to the boom and the load, with specific procedures required before working closer. Contact cases are almost always a planning failure rather than an operator error.
Signal persons must be qualified, and rigging must be inspected before each shift with damaged gear removed from service. Both generate records, and both are commonly skipped when a crew is behind.
Assembly and disassembly under a qualified director following the manufacturer's procedure, and the swing radius barricaded so nobody can walk into the counterweight.
The federal crane and derrick standards, the inspection requirements and the clearance rules are published by OSHA, and Texas well operations sit under the Railroad Commission of Texas. For the wider picture see top safety violations on oil rigs.
It changes who you sue, not what you are owed. The first thing to establish is what kind of rental it was, because bare rental and operated rental put the duties in completely different places.
The machine arrives and the renting company supplies the operator and runs the work. Most of the operational duties move to the renter, including the shift inspections, the lift planning and the supervision.
The lessor is not automatically clear. It still has to deliver a machine in safe condition with a current annual inspection, working safety devices and the correct load charts in the cab, and it can be liable for handing a crane to a renter it knew was not competent to run it.
The crane comes with a crew. The crane company keeps most of the duty, and the fight becomes borrowed servant. The renter will argue the operator was under its direction so comp is the only remedy. The crane company will argue the opposite.
It turns on who directed the details of the work in practice, not on what the rental agreement says. Do not answer questions about who was telling you what to do on the record before you have talked to a lawyer.
Either way, if the machine or a component failed rather than the people, the manufacturer is in play regardless of who rented it. And if the crane was maintained by a third party, so are they. The rental agreement and its indemnity language govern the companies. It does not govern your claim.
Nothing sits idle in the Basin. The machine gets fixed and dispatched, the damaged rigging goes in the bin, and the data overwrites on a fixed cycle. Preservation letters have to go to every company on that location in days.
The crane itself, the failed component, and the slings, shackles and hooks before anybody replaces them. Photographed, tagged and secured rather than described later.
Load moment indicator and telematics records, which show the actual load, radius and configuration second by second. This is the single most valuable piece of evidence in a crane case.
Load charts for the configuration used, the lift plan, the JSA, annual and monthly inspection reports, shift inspection sheets, and the incident report before anyone revises it.
Pad construction records, soil and bearing data, what was buried or backfilled underneath, and photographs of the setup before the location is regraded.
Operator certification and employer evaluation records, signal person qualification, rigger training, and who signed off on the lift.
The rental agreement, the master service agreements and the indemnity language between the operator and every contractor. This is where control is defined on paper.
A dropped load or a swing radius crush does not produce a sprain. These are crush injuries, traumatic amputations, spinal cord damage, head injuries and fatalities, and the value is built from future earning capacity, lifetime medical need, permanent impairment and disfigurement.
Where a company knew about a hazard and sent a crew in anyway, gross negligence puts exemplary damages on the table. If the accident was fatal, the wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children and parents and the survival claim belongs to the estate. Read can families sue for wrongful death after an oilfield accident before agreeing to anything.
The yards off Highway 191, the pipe racks along Loop 338 and the service company facilities out toward State Highway 302 are where equipment gets loaded, unloaded and moved every day. Add the rig moves, the tank settings and the facility construction on location, and the Basin runs more lift hours than almost anywhere in Texas.
Serious injuries here go to Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, the Level II trauma centre for the region, with the worst flown on to Lubbock or the Metroplex. Civil cases in Ector County are filed in the 161st, 244th and 358th District Courts.
We take crane cases from across the Basin, including Ector, Midland, Crane, Ward, Winkler, Andrews, Upton and Reagan counties. See also our Midland oilfield injury lawyer page and our San Angelo oilfield injury lawyer page, where the office is.
Texas generally gives you two years from the date of injury or death to file. If a governmental entity is involved, written notice can be due in as little as six months. The statute is at Chapter 16.
On a crane case the real deadline is far earlier, because the evidence is mobile. The machine leaves the location, the rigging is replaced, the telematics roll over and the pad is regraded. By the time two years is a concern the case has already been decided by what was preserved.
Tell the provider it was a work injury and describe the mechanism accurately. A vague chart note becomes a defense argument two years later.
Make, model, unit number and the company name on the boom. Who owned it, who was running it and who rigged the load. Photographs of the setup if anybody has them.
No recorded statement, no release, no arbitration agreement, no benefit plan enrollment. If you already signed something, bring it in rather than assuming it is settled.
The crane will be repaired and dispatched. Preservation letters have to reach the owner, the renter and the rigging company while the machine and the data still exist.
Very possibly. Comp blocks a claim against your own employer only. It does nothing to the crane owner, the crane company, the rigging contractor, the operator who controlled the pad, or the manufacturer of the failed component. A crane accident on a lease almost always involves companies other than your employer.
No, and it often helps you rather than hurting you, because the operator works for somebody. It is also worth testing. A large share of operator error findings turn out to be a ground condition problem, a load that was never weighed, or a chart that did not match the configuration in the field.
Not necessarily, and being partly at fault does not end the claim. Texas comparative fault lets you recover as long as you are not more than fifty percent responsible, with the award reduced by your share, and if your employer is a nonsubscriber it cannot raise your fault at all. Gear that was never inspected and weights that were never provided are not the rigger's failure.
Yes. A documented near miss on the same crane, the same pad or the same crew before your accident is some of the strongest evidence there is, because it shows the company knew. That is also what supports a claim for exemplary damages.
That depends entirely on the type of rental and it is one of the first things we establish. A lessor still has to deliver a machine in safe condition with a current annual inspection, working safety devices and the correct load charts in the cab. The rental agreement governs the companies, not your claim.
Nothing up front. We take oilfield crane cases on a contingency fee, so we are paid a percentage of what we recover and you owe no fee if there is no recovery. The firm advances case expenses, including the crane and metallurgy experts these cases require.
Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law. Free consultation, no fee unless we recover, and we come to you if you cannot travel. Bring anything the company has asked you to sign.