Shell Workers Killed in 1980 Chevron Harbor Fire; Hawaii Jury Awards $27.7 Million
After a Chevron-USA tank-farm explosion at Honolulu Harbor burned two Shell Oil employees who later died of their injuries, a Hawaii Circuit Court jury awarded their families a combined $27.7 million in January 1983, then the largest civil verdict in state history.
What happened
On August 15, 1980, a massive explosion tore through a petroleum storage tank at the Chevron-USA tank farm along Nimitz Highway near Pier 30 in Honolulu Harbor. Flames and thick black smoke climbed hundreds of feet above the waterfront. The Honolulu Fire Department, assisted by crews from Hickam Air Force Base and Honolulu International Airport, spent more than five hours bringing the blaze under control. What made the incident especially deadly was not only the scale of the fire but where it spread.
Herman Ah Yat and Antonio Lozano were Shell Oil Co. employees working at a facility immediately adjacent to the Chevron tank farm when the explosion occurred. Both men suffered severe burns. They were transported for emergency treatment, but neither recovered. Ah Yat and Lozano died in the weeks following the blast, leaving behind families who held Chevron responsible for the conditions that allowed the fire to reach a neighboring worksite.
Their families retained Paul F. Cronin of the firm now known as Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Kekina and Fairbanks. The central legal claim was that Chevron's negligence in operating its Honolulu Harbor tank farm caused the explosion, and that its effects reached the adjacent Shell worksite where Ah Yat and Lozano had been doing their jobs. Proving that causal chain across a property line called for detailed evidence on tank maintenance, fire-suppression systems, and what Chevron knew about the risks posed by its facility to workers on neighboring property.
The case went to trial in the Circuit Court, First Circuit, State of Hawaii, in Honolulu. Proceedings ran for eight weeks. Chevron had proposed $1.8 million as the appropriate total compensation for survivors of both victims.
After three days of deliberations, the jury returned its verdict in January 1983. It awarded the family of Herman Ah Yat more than $14 million. Antonio Lozano's survivors received $13 million. The combined award, covering both general and punitive damages, came to $27.7 million.
No civil jury in Hawaii had ever returned a verdict of that size. It exceeded Chevron's own compensation figure by more than 15 to one. Available sources do not show the award was reduced on appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Kekina & Fairbanks
All Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Kekina & Fairbanks proven verdicts →A federal bench trial awarded $24.7 million to a Navy family after Tripler Army Medical Center physicians failed to administer IV antibiotics for roughly 48 hours following a post-delivery infection, leaving the patient with permanent kidney failure.
A federal judge awarded $16.5 million to the family of a newborn who suffered permanent brain damage after an Army pediatrician at Tripler Army Medical Center administered carbon dioxide instead of oxygen for 42 minutes following his birth. It was the largest single personal-injury judgment for an individual in Hawaii history at the time.
The City and County of Honolulu agreed in October 2021 to pay $10 million to settle a wrongful-death claim brought by the family of cardiothoracic anesthesiologist William Travis Lau, who was struck and killed on a Kakaako sidewalk when a drunk driver fleeing an HPD high-speed pursuit veered off Ala Moana Boulevard in January 2019.
In August 2007, U.S. District Judge David Ezra found Tripler Army Medical Center negligent in monitoring a hospitalized infant whose breathing failed in May 2004, leaving him with severe, permanent brain damage. After a nonjury trial under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the court entered judgment of more than $9.4 million for the boy and his parents. Attorney L. Richard Fried, Jr. represented the family.
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