The $281 Million Dimmit County Verdict for the Family of an Army Veteran Killed by a Drive Shaft That Flew Off a Fracking-Water 18-Wheeler, Reduced to $105.2 Million on Post-Trial Motions and Settled Confidentially in July 2014

Carlos Aguilar had come home. Thirty-one years old, a father of seven, he had finished two deployments with the Army, one to Iraq and one to Afghanistan, and was working in the Eagle Ford Shale oil patch of South Texas. On May 29, 2012, he was riding in a pickup on FM 133 in Dimmit County when an 18-wheeler owned by Heckmann Water Resources (CVR), Inc., a water-hauling company serving the shale's fracking operations, came apart at 67 miles per hour. A universal joint in the truck's drive train failed, the roughly 20-pound drive shaft tore loose, and it crashed through the windshield of Aguilar's pickup. He did not survive.

His parents, his wife, and his seven children sued Heckmann Water Resources and its driver, Ruben Osorio Gonzalez, in the District Court of Dimmit County within days of the crash. Gene S. Hagood, the Alvin trial lawyer whose practice is built on commercial truck cases, tried it with Laredo co-counsel John R. Solis and Jose Luis Castillo of Hernandez & Castillo. The case they put on was about maintenance, not a freak accident: the evidence showed the u-joint's cross piece had essentially melted from long-term insufficient lubrication or no lubrication at all, a failure the plaintiffs argued proper inspection and greasing would have caught long before the drive shaft let go on a two-lane farm road.

In early December 2013, the jury returned a unanimous verdict against Heckmann: $181 million in compensatory damages for the family and $100 million in punitive damages, about $281 million in all. Nuverra Environmental Solutions, Heckmann's publicly traded parent, put the total at $281.6 million in its securities filings. Regional press covered it as one of the largest wrongful death verdicts ever returned in Texas, and as a warning shot about maintenance standards in the oilfield trucking boom then running through the Eagle Ford Shale.

What happened next has to be stated just as plainly. When the court entered judgment on January 7, 2014, the award came down to $163.8 million, and after the first round of post-trial motions the court amended the judgment on April 1, 2014 to $105.2 million. Heckmann's insurers posted a $25 million surety bond to stay enforcement while the company pressed for a new trial and prepared to appeal. Before any appellate court ruled, the parties settled. The District Court of Dimmit County approved the settlement on July 15, 2014, covering all plaintiffs. The total is confidential, but Nuverra told its shareholders it paid $5.5 million of its own money toward the settlement, with its insurer paying the undisclosed remainder.

So the public record ends with a unanimous $281 million verdict, a $105.2 million judgment, and a confidential resolution. What the verdict itself established stands: a Dimmit County jury heard how Heckmann maintained the truck that killed Carlos Aguilar and unanimously found the company's conduct bad enough to warrant $100 million in punishment on top of full compensation for the parents, the widow, and the seven children he left behind.