Mr. Torres was a young man who moved to Texas from Mexico to make a better life for his family. He and his brothers and sister in the United States supported his mother, father and mentally disabled younger brother in Mexico. He was an exceptionally hard worker and a skilled metal fabricator.
One morning, Mr. Torres has tasked with welding a pressure relief valve on a mobile petrochemical scrubber for the Defendant. The tank was supposed to have been cleaned of any flammable residue prior to being delivered to the fabrication shop. Mr. Torres’s role that morning was to catch slag beneath the cutting torch, which required him to place his arm into the tank during the cut.
Vapors left in the piping of the scrubber from its last job ignited about half way through the cut. The resulting pressure from the explosion released through the open hole at the top of the scrubber is where Mr. Torres was poised with his arm in the hole. The explosion was so powerful that it blew out all the lights in the shop next door. Mr. Torres was killed in the explosion at nineteen years old.
Result: Confidential Settlement for Plaintiff