Texas: Court Affirms Judgment on $680,000 Verdict Against Non-Subscribing Employer

In a personal injury case involving a workers’ compensation nonsubscriber, a Texas appellate court affirmed, for the most part, a judgment favoring an employee who sustained injuries when he was struck by a bundle of large-gauge wire used to make springs at the employer’s facility. The jury found the employer liable for negligence and awarded the plaintiff employee approximately $780,000. The appellate court modified the trial court’s judgment to delete $100,000 for future mental anguish, but otherwise affirmed. The court noted testimony from other employees that similar accidents had occurred in the past. The employer had two reels for containing the wire—a company-made reel and another reel manufactured by Spectral Systems. The latter had two safety mechanisms to prevent the sort of accident that occurred; the company-made reel did not. The court said reasonable jurors could have concluded that the defendant did not act as a reasonable employer when it allowed the plaintiff to work on the company-made reel that lacked any safety features and was recognized as being unsafe by several Katy Springs employees.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Katy Springs & Mfg., Inc. v. Favalora, 2015 Tex. App. LEXIS 9027 (Aug. 27, 2015) [2015 Tex. App. LEXIS 9027 (Aug. 27, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 102.01 [102.01]

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.

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