Bechtel Energy denied liability in a wrongful death lawsuit over the scaffolding collapse at the Port Arthur LNG site.
PORT ARTHUR, Texas — The company at the center of a wrongful death lawsuit after a scaffolding collapse in Port Arthur is denying it was responsible.
Bechtel Energy responded to the lawsuit tied to the April 29 scaffolding collapse at the Port Arthur LNG construction site, which claimed the lives of three workers. The three men who were killed were from the Houston area.
The accident happened during overnight work while crews were building a large concrete LNG tank using a special type of scaffolding, known as jump form, that suddenly collapsed.
Bechtel filed its original answer in Jefferson County court on June 10, joining ConocoPhillips, Sempra Infrastructure, and Port Arthur LNG, who all filed theirs on May 27, in denying liability under Texas law. The lawsuit alleges the collapse was caused by unsafe working conditions, inadequate scaffolding, and failures in oversight and planning.
Also filed on June 10 was a court order dissolving the temporary restraining order that stopped the removal of materials at the accident site for more than a month.
Felipe Mendez, Felix Jose Lopez and Reginald Magee died in the incident. An attorney for the Mendez and Lopez families said the collapse was “tragic and preventable.”
The Mendez and Lopez families are seeking more than $1 million.
According to a report from KBMT, KHOU 11’s sister station in Beaumont, Craig Albert, Bechtel’s president and COO, called the April 29 collapse “a tragedy that should never have happened” in a statement in May.
“In the wake of this heartbreaking event, we are committed to understanding exactly what went wrong and ensuring we do everything possible to prevent it from ever happening again — at Bechtel or anywhere,” Albert said in a statement released May 11.
KHOU 11 reached out to Bechtel and the families’ attorney, but we didn’t immediately hear back.