Dallas Austin

The building shell for a privately owned airplane hangar in Boise, Idaho was supposed to be completed by January 31, 2024. Instead, the hangar collapsed, killing three and injuring several others. The owner of the general contractor for the project, Big D Builders (BDB), was decapitated in the collapse. Two BDB employees, who were on a manlift hoisted 40 feet in the air installing bolts to secure the building rafters at the time of the collapse, were also killed. On July 9, 2024, the families of the deceased workers filed a wrongful death lawsuit against BDB and three other construction compan

When is an owner liable for personal injuries sustained on its property? In Oxy USA WTP LP v. Bringas, the Houston Court of Appeals (First District) held that Oxy USA WTP LT (“Oxy”), the property owner, was not liable to a third-tier subcontractor under a premise liability, negligent activity or negligence per se theory. In Bringas, Bringas, a third-tier independent contractor to Oxy, was asked to swap out two slide-top waste bins with open-top waste bins at a remote, unmanned compressor station, the Barilla Draw, in the Permian Basin. Bringas opted to perform the work in near complete dar

Is a product manufacturer that complies with federally adopted standards liable for damages under Texas’s statutory product liability law? The Texas Supreme Court in American Honda Motor Company, Inc. v. Milburn, recently addressed a product liability case in which the main issues on appeal was whether Honda defectively designed a seatbelt system that caused severe injuries to Sarah Milburn and whether Texas’s product liability statute, contained in Chapter 82 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 82.008, shielded Honda from liability. Section 82.008 entitles a product man

What duty, if any, does an engineer have to warn of potential hazards associated with a conceptual design? The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, in Alviarez v. Goya Foods, Inc., recently held that no duty existed, granting summary judgment to the engineer. In 2012, Goya Foods Inc. announced plans to open a new facility in Brookshire, Texas and retained Ambitech Engineering Corporation (now part of Zachry Engineering Corp.) to (1) generate conceptual layouts for both the process and packaging areas of the new facility, and (2) with approval from

The Texas Supreme Court, in Texas Department of Insurance v. Stonewater Roofing, Ltd. Co., affirmed the licensing requirements for public adjusters and the prohibition of public adjusters to also act as repair contractors. How did the Court reach this opinion and what impact will it have on the construction industry? In Stonewater, a commercial customer of Stonewater Roofing Ltd. Co. (Stonewater) sued Stonewater for violating the Public Insurance Adjusters Act (“Act”), Texas Insurance Code Chapter 4102. Stonewater then filed a declaratory judgment action against the Texas Department of Ins