The Supreme Court in Texas has come down with a ruling against the family of an overworked trucker killed in the crash of his rig 8 years ago.
The Journal of Petroleum Technology reported the court ruled the way it did because the family could not prove the company knew the accident would happen.
Fabian Escobedo worked as a driver for Mo-Vac Service Co. Inc., a trucking and warehousing company serving the oil patch from several Texas cities, spending 12 years hauling liquids to and from drilling sites in 18-wheeler tanker trucks.
He was killed on May 30, 2012, when his rig ran off the highway and rolled over at 3 a.m. while he was on his way back to the company’s warehouse in Dilley, Texas; his family later filed suit, claiming that “fatigue from being forced to work grueling hours” caused his death, according to documents in Mo-Vac Service Company, Inc. v. Primitivo Escobedo, San Juanita Escobedo, and Martha Escobedo, et. al., filed in Austin.
Because Mo-Vac is a subscriber to the Texas workers compensation system the lawsuit “can succeed only by proving that Mo-Vac intentionally caused Escobedo’s accident in the sense that it believed the accident was ‘substantially certain to result’ from his being overworked,” the ruling states.
Source: Journal of Petroleum Technology
