A Twenty-Pound Steel Scaffold Bar Slipped From a Co-Worker's Hands and Hit Him on the Head. He Was 25, in a Hard Hat, and a Baton Rouge Jury Awarded $411.6 Million.
After trial: This is a verdict on appeal and not a recovery. It is the largest single-plaintiff personal-injury verdict in Louisiana history as entered, and no JNOV, remittitur or reversal has been found, but Brock has stated it will appeal on workers' compensation exclusivity grounds and the appeal is live. The insurance behind it is also contested: excess insurers Everest Insurance (Ireland) DAC and Ascot Syndicate 1414 filed a coverage action in the Southern District of New York in July 2025 (1:25-cv-05886). Louisiana does not cap damages in an ordinary tort case, so no statutory reduction applies, but Louisiana appellate courts review general damages de novo on the record and routinely reduce them. Treat the figure as the jury's number, not as money paid.
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.
- 1.Legal Newsline / Louisiana Record: the injured refinery construction worker's record $411 million verdict in the 19th Judicial District for the Parish of East Baton Rouge, case number C-731101; the falling scaffold bar, the $109 million for future care, pain and emotional distress and $154 million for future loss of enjoyment of life, Brock's failure to report to OSHA, the rejected within-limits demands, and the counsel line naming Roland Christensen with Alec Paradowski and Jonathan Mack of Arnold and Itkin and Tony Clayton, Michael Fruge and Brilliant Clayton of Clayton Fruge Ward
- 2.Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal, 2025 CW 0114: the caption Jose Valdivia VS Brock Industrial Services, LLC, Brock Services, LLC and Phillips 66 Company, confirming a single named plaintiff
- 3.WBRZ: the Louisiana worker awarded $411 million for the workplace injury, and Brock's stated plan to appeal on workers' compensation exclusivity grounds
- 4.Bloomberg Law: excess insurers Everest Insurance (Ireland) DAC and Ascot Syndicate 1414 sue over coverage for the $411 million verdict, S.D.N.Y. 1:25-cv-05886, July 2025
More proven verdicts from Arnold & Itkin
All Arnold & Itkin proven verdicts →A Cobb County, Georgia jury found that Monsanto's Roundup caused John Barnes's non-Hodgkin lymphoma and awarded him $2.065 billion, with Arnold & Itkin's Kyle Findley serving as lead trial lawyer.
A Dallas County jury found developer Greystar liable for the 2019 tower crane collapse that killed 29-year-old Kiersten Smith in her apartment, returning an $860 million verdict that Jason and Cory Itkin helped win for her family.
A Harris County jury awarded Mary Johnson $557 million against Union Pacific for a 2016 Houston train strike that cost her a leg, several fingers, and left her with a brain injury, a figure the trial court later cut and an appeals court reversed for a new trial.
A Fort Bend County jury awarded $222 million to the widow of Jesse Henson, a power-plant repairman scalded to death by superheated steam from a relief valve serviced by Team Industrial Services, a judgment a Texas appeals court later reversed before dismissing the case on the ground that it belonged in Kansas.
Related workplace injury verdicts
After nearly 30 years of litigation, Markovits Stock and DeMarco secured a $742 million-plus-interest settlement for approximately 23,000 Navistar retirees whose healthcare and life insurance benefits had been repeatedly reduced.
Paul Napoli served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel for nearly 10,000 firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who developed respiratory diseases after working at Ground Zero, securing a settlement worth up to $712.5 million against the city and its contractors.
Sullivan Papain served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel in the World Trade Center Disaster Site Litigation, helping secure a settlement of more than $712 million for roughly 10,000 police officers, firefighters, and construction workers who developed serious respiratory and other illnesses after working in the toxic ruins of the World Trade Center.
On September 7, 2019, Ulysses Cruz, a 48-year-old United Airlines ramp worker serving as a wing walker at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, was struck from behind by an Allied Aviation Fueling Company of Houston van whose driver said the morning sun was in his eyes. Cruz was paralyzed from the chest down and suffered a stroke two days later that cost him the use of his dominant right arm. After a two-week trial before Judge Ravi Sandill, a Harris County jury on October 25, 2021 found Allied 70 percent and driver Reginald Willis 30 percent at fault and awarded Cruz, his wife and their two children $352.7 million in compensatory damages. Judge Sandill conditioned denial of a new trial on a $117.5 million remittitur of noneconomic damages, which the family accepted, and an amended judgment of about $235.3 million was signed February 7, 2022. Allied appealed, the parties reached a confidential mediated settlement, and on July 18, 2023 the First Court of Appeals vacated the judgment and dismissed the case at the parties' joint request.