Forklift accident yields $8.9 million judgment

EDINBURG — An Hidalgo County jury awarded an $8.9 million judgment Friday to a Las Milpas woman whose husband died in a forklift accident last year.

The panel found Shell Oil Co., Nabors Drilling, and Bishop Lifting Products all partially responsible for the death of 51-year-old Sergio Rincon Sr. at a Shell-owned gas drilling site near the intersection of Jackson and Ridge roads in Pharr.

Rincon died April 10, 2009, after an improperly secured load slipped from a forklift and struck him in the head.

“Sergio Rincon lost his life because he was placed in a position of using equipment that was dangerous and came without instructions for its safe use,” said John Escamilla, who represented the Rincon family in their suit. “(The jury) has shown that people doing hard work deserve to have a safe environment.”

Representatives from Bermuda-based Nabors Drilling, which managed the site under a contract with Shell, described Friday’s verdict as fair.

“It’s a really tragic incident,” said Denny Smith, the company’s director of corporate development. “Obviously, a lot of things got hashed out in court, and (the accident) was something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

A Shell representative said both the oil company and Nabors reached a settlement agreement with the family prior to the verdict. Their inclusion in the jury's decision was largely a procedural matter, the spokesman said. Bishop Lifting Products could not be reached for comment.

Throughout the three-week trial, Escamilla argued that Bishop, which manufactured the forklift device that killed Rincon, did not provide any instructions for its proper use.

But Shell and Nabors also failed their employees by neglecting to give them any training on how to correctly use the device, he said.

Since the accident, Nabors has instituted new safety procedures and stopped using equipment from Bishop Lifting Products, Smith said.

“We spend tens of millions of dollars every year on training,” he said. “We have a fraction of the (accident) rate of the rest of the industry.”

Rincon is survived by his wife and two grown children. The family declined to discuss Friday’s verdict publicly.

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 587-9377.