Fatal Oilfield Accident Lawyer: What Families Need to Know About Wrongful Death Claims

Key Takeaways for Families After a Fatal Oilfield Accident

The first weeks after a death on a rig, at a refinery or along a pipeline tend to bring calls from several directions at once: the employer, an insurer, sometimes a federal agency. It helps to know that these are different tracks, each with its own rules.

• Workers' compensation death benefits and a wrongful death claim are legally distinct. In some circumstances a family may pursue both, because one runs through the employer and the other is aimed at a different party.
• No single national rule decides a wrongful death case. Limitation periods, who may bring the action and what damages the law allows all differ by state.
• The employer must report a work-related death to OSHA within eight hours under 29 C.F.R. § 1904.39(a)(1). That is the employer's obligation. It is not a deadline for the family.
• The Chemical Safety Board investigates certain accidental chemical releases and issues safety recommendations. It does not decide who is legally at fault.
• An energy worksite often has several companies on it at once. The question of who controlled the equipment, the site and the work usually shapes everything else.

For a family, the practical point is that the employer's insurer may not be the whole picture. What a family may weigh first is simply whether they understand which of these tracks applies to them, and that is a question a conversation with an attorney can help clarify.

What a Wrongful Death Claim Is — and How It Differs from Workers' Compensation

A wrongful death claim is a civil lawsuit that state law allows certain family members, or a representative acting for them, to bring when a person's death is caused by another's wrongful act, neglect or fault. It asks a court to decide whether a party's conduct caused the death and what losses the family suffered as a result.

Workers' compensation death benefits work differently. Workers' compensation is generally a no-fault system: benefits are paid through the employer's coverage without anyone having to prove the employer was careless. In exchange, that coverage generally shields the employer from being sued directly for the worker's death. The details, including who receives death benefits and how they are figured, differ by state, and this page does not set out any state's benefit rules.

The shield usually protects the employer, not everyone else. A third-party claim is a claim against someone other than the employer, such as an equipment manufacturer, the owner of the site or lease, or a separate contractor working on location. Where one of those parties may have contributed to the death, a wrongful death claim against it may exist alongside workers' compensation benefits.

For a grieving family, this means a workers' comp letter is not necessarily the end of the legal question. What a family may want to consider is which companies besides the employer were involved in the work, the equipment or the site that day.

How Fatal Oilfield Accidents Happen: The Settings and Causes Courts Examine

Fatal energy-industry accidents happen in a handful of recurring settings: drilling and production sites, refineries, chemical and processing plants, pipelines and tank farms. The drilling rig accidents and pipeline site injuries that this site discusses elsewhere share many of the same mechanisms.

In general terms, the categories that come up in these deaths include:

• blowouts and other well-control failures;
• fires and explosions;
• falls from height, such as from a derrick or elevated platform;
• struck-by and caught-in incidents involving moving pipe, cables or machinery;
• equipment and machinery failures;
• toxic gas and chemical exposure; and
• transportation accidents on lease roads and between sites, a subject covered further on the page about oilfield truck accidents.

Naming a category is not the same as knowing what caused a particular death. A fire does not by itself show a defect, and a fall does not by itself show anyone's negligence. The mechanism matters because it points toward which legal theories might apply and which companies controlled the conditions involved.

According to its own description, the Chemical Safety Board conducts root cause investigations of chemical accidents, and it notes that root causes "are usually deficiencies in safety management systems," while other causes "can involve equipment failures, human errors, unforeseen chemical reactions or other hazards" (About the CSB).

Families often want to know what happened before anything else. Records such as the employer's incident report, any OSHA inspection file and, where one exists, a CSB report are part of how that picture comes together over time.

Who May Be Responsible — and Why the Answer Is Not Always the Employer

On many energy worksites, the company that employed the worker is only one of several on location. Depending on the facts, potential defendants may include:

• the site operator that directed the work;
• the property or lease owner;
• the manufacturer of equipment or a component involved;
• a company that sold or supplied that equipment;
• a general contractor or another subcontractor working on site; and
• a maintenance or inspection company responsible for the equipment.

Different legal theories may apply to each. Negligence has four parts: a duty to act with reasonable care, a breach of that duty, causation linking the breach to the death, and damages. Premises liability is a form of that duty owed by a property owner or operator to people lawfully on the property. Products liability is a claim that a defective product caused the death; whether a product was defective, and whether any defect caused the death, depends on the facts and the state's law.

Contractor relationships add another layer. A general contractor or site operator may owe a duty of care to workers employed by subcontractors, depending on the state's law and how much control it had over the work. The page on oilfield contractor injuries goes further into these relationships.

For a family, these distinctions matter because the employer shield generally does not reach other companies. The facts worth gathering are who owned the site, who supplied the equipment and who employed the worker.

Evidence That Often Matters in Fatal Oilfield Accident Cases

Evidence in an energy-industry death tends to sit with several companies and agencies at once. If you were the worker's spouse or parent, the records that usually matter include:

• any OSHA inspection file and citations issued after the death;
• a CSB investigation report, where the accident involved a chemical release the CSB investigated;
• the employer's OSHA Form 300 injury and illness log and any internal incident investigation report;
• the equipment, machinery or product involved, in the condition it was in after the accident;
• equipment maintenance and inspection records;
• photographs and video from the scene, including images taken by co-workers or recorded by site cameras;
• the names and contact information of people who were there;
• employment records, contractor agreements and site safety plans; and
• the medical examiner's or coroner's records and the autopsy report.

Physical equipment carries particular weight in many of these cases. A failed valve, a fitting or a piece of rigging may be the central evidence in a products liability claim, and what can later be shown depends on whether it was kept and how it was handled.

Families often gather what they can reach: the paperwork the employer sent, text messages from co-workers, names written down at the funeral. None of that settles who was at fault. It does give a starting point for understanding what records exist and who holds the rest.

Who May Bring a Wrongful Death Action — and for Whose Benefit

Wrongful death statutes decide who may file the case and for whom any recovery is meant, and those rules differ by state. A close relative who is not named in the applicable statute may not be able to bring the action at all. The state where the accident happened typically governs which statute applies, although that is not always the end of the question.

Two examples show how differently states write these rules. Each is that state's own law, not the rule anywhere else.

Under section 71.004 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, the action is "for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the deceased." Those individuals may bring the action, or one or more of them may bring it for the benefit of all. If none of them has begun the action within three calendar months after the death, the executor or administrator "shall bring and prosecute the action unless requested not to by all those individuals."

Washington's law is structured differently. Under section 4.20.010 of the Revised Code of Washington, the deceased person's personal representative may maintain the action. Under section 4.20.020 of the Revised Code of Washington, the action is for the benefit of the spouse, state registered domestic partner, and child or children, including stepchildren. If there are none, it may be maintained for the benefit of the parents or siblings.

A statute of limitations, the deadline for filing suit, also differs by state. As one example, section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code provides that suit in an action for injury resulting in death must be brought not later than two years after the day the cause of action accrues, and that the cause of action "accrues on the death of the injured person." The same chapter contains other provisions that can affect timing, including one that excludes time a person entitled to sue is under a legal disability. Other states set their own periods and exceptions.

For a family, the practical questions are which state's statute applies and whether the people who want to act are the ones that statute names.

Damages a Wrongful Death Claim May Address

Wrongful death statutes describe the kinds of losses a family may seek, not a figure. In general terms, the categories include economic losses, such as the financial support the worker provided, lost earnings, and funeral and burial expenses, and non-economic losses, such as the loss of companionship, care, guidance and consortium. Which categories are available, and how they are measured, differ by state.

Washington's statute is one example of how a state frames this. Section 4.20.010 refers to "the economic and noneconomic damages sustained by the beneficiaries," in amounts a trier of fact determines "to be just under all the circumstances of the case." That is Washington's language, not a national standard.

Fault rules also shape damages. Comparative fault is a rule that reduces, and in some states can bar, recovery based on the share of fault assigned to the person who was injured or killed. Again as one state's example, section 4.22.005 of the Revised Code of Washington provides that contributory fault chargeable to the claimant "diminishes proportionately the amount awarded as compensatory damages" but "does not bar recovery." Other states use different rules.

Whether any damages are available, and in what amount, depends on the facts and the applicable state's law; no outcome is assured. This page gives no financial or medical advice. What a family may weigh is what the law in their state allows them to seek, and what it asks them to show.

How Government Investigations Relate to a Family's Legal Case

Families are often told that "OSHA is looking into it" and reasonably wonder whether that investigation will answer their questions. It answers some, but not the legal one.

The process often starts with the employer's duty under 29 C.F.R. § 1904.39(a)(1): within eight hours after an employee's death from a work-related incident, the employer must report the fatality to OSHA. The regulation allows that report by telephone or in person to the nearest OSHA Area Office, by telephone to OSHA's central number, or electronically through OSHA's website. Where OSHA inspects and issues a citation, that citation is a regulatory matter. It is not a finding of civil liability.

The Chemical Safety Board has a different role. It describes itself as "an independent nonregulatory federal agency" charged with investigating "the cause or probable cause of any accidental chemical release that results in a fatality, serious injury or substantial property damage." It states that it "does not issue fines or citations, but makes safety recommendations" to companies, industry groups, regulators and others. Its investigators interview witnesses, obtain documents, send chemical samples and equipment to independent laboratories, and examine company safety records and operating procedures; final reports may be adopted by a written vote of the Board or in a formal public meeting.

These records can be useful because they reflect a close look at what happened. Still, a citation or a CSB recommendation does not establish that any company is liable. A wrongful death claim requires its own showing of duty, breach, causation and damages. Government findings are one source of information within that larger question.

Questions Worth Asking Before Moving Forward With a Wrongful Death Claim

At some point, a family reaches the moment of deciding whether to look into a claim at all. The questions at that stage tend to be the same:

• Which state's law governs? Usually it is the state where the accident happened, but not always.
• Which companies besides the employer were on location, owned the site or supplied the equipment?
• Is an OSHA or CSB investigation ongoing or finished, and what records are available so far?
• What evidence has been kept, and what is still held by others?
• What limitation period applies under that state's law, and when did it begin to run?

None of these has a general answer. They turn on the specific accident, the companies involved and the state's statutes, which is why this page does not try to answer them for any one family. It also does not set out every state's deadlines or any state's workers' compensation death benefits. The wider oilfield accident claims page covers injuries in which the worker survived.

If you are at this point and want to talk through which state's law may apply and which companies were involved, you can request a case evaluation and discuss those questions with our attorney.