$16 Million Verdict for Electrocuted Flooring Worker, Colorado's Largest Premises Liability Award

In September 2015, Brian Warembourg was installing flooring in a house under construction in Berthoud, Colorado. He was 33 and worked for a flooring company. When the power cut out, he walked over to a temporary electrical box that a subcontractor, Excel Electric, had set up on the site. He reached in to toggle the circuit breakers, and the box exploded.

The blast sent current through his body. Warembourg survived, but the electrocution left him with permanent, disabling injuries, including Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a nerve condition that floods the body with constant pain. At trial his team estimated he faced more than $4 million in future medical costs alone.

Warembourg hired Kurt Zaner of Zaner Harden Law, who sued Excel under the Colorado Premises Liability Act. There was a problem with the evidence. In the months after the injury, Excel had gotten rid of the electrical box, the single most important piece of proof in the case. The trial court found that the company had destroyed evidence and instructed the jury it could draw an adverse inference from that fact. To show jurors what had happened, Zaner had a look-alike box rebuilt and demonstrated how toggling the breakers could trigger the explosion.

The Boulder County jury found Excel 100 percent at fault and awarded $16 million, including roughly $5.3 million in noneconomic damages. It was the largest premises liability verdict in Colorado history.

Excel appealed, challenging the destroyed-evidence sanction and the size of the award. On July 9, 2020, the Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in full, rejecting the company's arguments on the spoliation instruction and on the damages caps it said should apply. The decision became a reference point in Colorado for when a party has to preserve evidence and what happens when it does not. Shortly after the opinion came down, the parties settled the case for about $15.7 million.