$411.69 Million Verdict for Refinery Worker, 25, Struck on the Head by a Dropped Scaffold Bar
After trial: On appeal. The $411.69 million verdict is the largest single-plaintiff personal-injury verdict in Louisiana history as entered.
Won by Arnold & Itkin.
Jose Valdivia, 25, was building scaffolding at the Phillips 66 refinery in Lake Charles when a co-worker above him lost his grip on a steel scaffold bar. It struck him on the head and spine through a hard hat and full protective equipment. He is in a wheelchair with limited speech. Brock never reported the accident to OSHA.
What happened
On August 2, 2022 Jose Valdivia was 25 years old and building scaffolding at the Phillips 66 refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He was wearing a hard hat and full protective equipment.
A co-worker working above him lost his grip on a steel scaffold bar weighing roughly nineteen or twenty pounds. It fell and struck Valdivia on the head and spine.
He sustained a severe spinal cord injury and a brain injury. He uses a wheelchair, and his speech is limited.
Two facts shaped how the case was tried. Brock never reported the accident to OSHA. And Brock's insurers turned down more than one pre-trial demand that was inside their policy limits, which is the decision that put the case in front of a jury at all.
On February 28, 2025 a jury in the 19th Judicial District Court for East Baton Rouge Parish returned $411,687,387.36. The bulk of it looked forward rather than back: $109 million for future care, pain and emotional distress, and $154 million for future loss of enjoyment of life. Valdivia was 25 when the bar hit him, and the jury was pricing the rest of a life.
One detail is worth correcting because sources get it wrong repeatedly: the injury happened in Lake Charles, and the case was tried in Baton Rouge.
Valdivia was represented by Roland Christensen of Arnold and Itkin as lead counsel, with Alec Paradowski and Jonathan Mack, and by A.M. Clayton, Michael Fruge and Brilliant Clayton of Clayton Fruge and Ward in Port Allen as co-counsel.
The award is to one man. Some coverage frames it as a recovery for him and his family; the verdict is Jose Valdivia's alone.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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