Rig Explosion Judgment Stands After Oasis Petroleum's Costs Appeal Fails

In November 2011, Kyle Harris was working on a North Dakota oil rig operated by Oasis Petroleum, Inc. when an explosion caused by leaking natural gas tore through the site. Harris was there as an employee of Frontier Pressure Testing, LLC. In the complaint he later filed, quoted in a federal court order in the case, he described second and third degree burns and a concussive blast injury to his head and brain, and said he could reasonably expect a permanent loss of function in his hand and permanent injury to his brain.

Harris sued Oasis and several other companies in North Dakota state court in 2015, alleging negligence, gross negligence and infliction of emotional distress. Oasis removed the case to federal court, arguing that a North Dakota codefendant had been added only to defeat its right to a federal forum. A federal magistrate judge rejected that argument in January 2016, noting that Oasis had not disputed the facts of the incident or Harris's injuries and finding that the codefendant could plausibly be held liable under state law. The district judge adopted that recommendation the following month and the case went back to state court. Every defendant besides Oasis was eventually dismissed on summary judgment, leaving Oasis alone at trial.

The case went before a Williams County jury in May 2022. Harris was represented by Jeffrey S. Weikum of Bismarck, named as his counsel of record from the earliest federal filings through the appeal. The jury found that $5,012,500 would compensate Harris for his injuries and set interest at 3 percent a year. It also apportioned fault: 15 percent to Oasis, 65 percent to Frontier and 20 percent to Harris himself. Frontier was not a defendant, but it was listed on the special verdict form as one of the potential actors at fault, which is how North Dakota juries account for the share of someone who is not a party.

North Dakota's comparative fault law makes each party liable only for its own share of the damages, so the district court reduced Oasis's obligation to a $751,800 principal judgment reflecting its 15 percent. The court added $105,208.92 in prejudgment interest and, in a second amended judgment entered in January 2023, awarded Harris $524,213.10 in costs and disbursements. The total judgment against Oasis came to $1,381,297.02.

Oasis moved to alter the judgment and then appealed, arguing that Harris could not be a 'prevailing party' entitled to costs when the jury had found him more at fault than Oasis was. The North Dakota Supreme Court disagreed in a decision issued May 2, 2024. It held that Harris had prevailed on the central question at trial, whether Oasis was negligent and a proximate cause of his injuries, and that his own 20 percent share of fault did not change that. The court also confirmed that North Dakota's comparative fault statute has no provision for reducing a prevailing plaintiff's costs by his percentage of fault, so the full disbursement award stood.

The affirmance closed out litigation that ran nearly nine years from the day Harris was hurt. The judgment reflects only Oasis's several share of the harm. Frontier was never a defendant and no judgment was entered against it, so the 65 percent of fault the jury put on Harris's employer formed no part of what Oasis owed.