A Hydrogen Explosion at an AEP Plant in 2005 Produced Safety Recommendations Nobody Acted On. In 2007 Another One Killed a Tanker Driver, and the Jury Added $5 Million in Punitive Damages.
After trial: The weakest post-trial check in our West Virginia set, and worth saying so plainly. The jury returned the verdict on August 29, 2011 and judgment was entered on it along with attorney fees. No appellate decision, remittitur or post-trial reduction order could be located after searching the WV Supreme Court of Appeals decisions for 2011 through 2013 and contemporaneous news. That is absence of evidence rather than an affirmance, so treat the figure as entered rather than as tested on appeal. Not a medical professional liability case, so W. Va. Code 55-7B-8 does not apply, and the punitive award rests on the jury's express finding of conscious disregard for Timmons's safety.
Won by Bordas & Bordas, PLLC.
Lewis Timmons, 61, was transferring hydrogen from his tanker into the storage system at the Muskingum River power plant when the storage area exploded and killed him. The enclosure had a defective roof and undersized copper relief stacks that could not vent a release, and an earlier hydrogen explosion at an AEP facility had already produced safety recommendations the company never acted on.
What happened
Lewis Timmons was 61 and drove a tanker truck. On January 8, 2007 he was transferring hydrogen from his tanker into the compressed hydrogen storage system at the Muskingum River power plant. The storage area exploded and killed him.
The case his estate brought against Ohio Power and American Electric Power Service Corporation was that they already knew the enclosure was unsafe. The roof was defective. The copper relief stacks were undersized and weak, and could not vent a hydrogen release. And in December 2005 there had already been a hydrogen explosion at an AEP facility in Moundsville, which generated safety recommendations the company never acted on.
AEP's defense was that its outside inspector, General Hydrogen, had never reported the danger.
On August 29, 2011 the Marshall County jury found conscious disregard for Timmons's safety. That finding is what opened the door to punitive damages, and it awarded roughly $2,000,000 in compensatory damages and $5,000,000 in punitive damages, with attorney fees awarded to the estate on top, for $6,998,940.
One clarification, because accounts of this trial circulate a larger number. The same trial also carried a companion deliberate-intent claim brought by an AEP employee injured in the same blast, which is why some reports describe a combined trial total of almost $13 million. Only the $6,998,940 belongs to the Timmons estate, and this was not a single-plaintiff trial.
The estate, through administrator Brian Timmons, was represented by Geoffrey C. Brown and Christopher J. Regan of Bordas and Bordas, with Rodney Windom.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Courtroom View Network, an independent trial-coverage outlet, Sept. 9, 2011: the hydrogen explosion at the power plant and the resulting verdict, the Marshall County venue and Civil Action No. 08-C-102, the defective roof and undersized copper relief stacks, the December 2005 Moundsville explosion and the unacted-on safety recommendations, the conscious-disregard finding and the $5 million punitive award, the companion deliberate-intent claim, and counsel: Brown and Regan for the estate, Brian Swiger of Jackson Kelly for AEP
- 2.Courtroom View Network trial record for Timmons v. AEP, August 2011, confirming the docket and that Brian Timmons sued as administrator of the single decedent's estate
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