Houston Jury Awards $209.2 Million in Terra Energy Hantavirus Death
Won by Arnold & Itkin.
A Harris County jury awarded Laura Schneider and her three children $209.2 million after finding that Terra Energy Partners hid a known hantavirus danger that killed her husband, Karl.
What happened
In September 2019, Karl Schneider left New Hampshire for a remote Terra Energy Partners site in western Colorado. He would live and work there around the clock as a company man until his two-week hitch ended. That part of the state carries a rare but deadly hazard: hantavirus, a virus spread by mice through their droppings, urine, and saliva, with a fatality rate near 35 percent. Karl contracted it on the job and died. He was 38 years old.
When Terra acquired the Colorado assets in a $910 million deal, the previous owner handed over a written safety procedure built specifically around hantavirus. The document explained how to prevent exposure, control rodent populations, and recognize early symptoms. According to the case Karl's family later brought, Terra kept that procedure to itself. Workers were never warned about the virus, never trained to spot its early signs, and were housed in quarters where rodent infestations went unchecked.
Karl left behind his wife, Laura Schneider, and the couple's three children. Before trial, Terra offered the family $200,000 to settle the claim.
The case went to trial in Harris County District Court in Houston. Arnold & Itkin attorneys Caj Boatright, Roland Christensen, and Kurt Arnold, working with co-counsel from Johnson Garcia, represented the Schneiders over roughly two weeks of testimony. They walked the jury through what Terra knew and when: that the company held a hantavirus safety procedure, understood the danger in the area, and still placed men like Karl in infested housing without a warning or a single training session. The family argued the conduct went well past ordinary negligence.
In July 2023, the jury returned a verdict of $209,292,019. The award broke down into $103.6 million in compensatory damages for the family's loss and roughly $105.6 million in punitive damages against the company, a punitive figure that required the jury to find the conduct rose to gross negligence. The result ranked as the tenth largest jury verdict in Texas for the year, one of three top ten Texas verdicts Arnold & Itkin won in 2023.
After the verdict, Terra Energy Partners and Laura Schneider reached a post-trial settlement. The terms were not made public.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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