By Rene Romo
The Albuquerque Journal
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — After deliberating for less than four hours, a Roswell jury decided that El Paso Natural Gas Co. is not liable for the emotional distress firefighters and emergency personnel suffered while responding to a pipeline explosion that killed 12 people, many of them children, in 2000.
Richard Wheatley, the Houston-based spokesman for El Paso Corp., the parent company of El Paso Natural Gas, said the corporation “deeply respects, and is grateful to, the brave men and women who risk their lives every day as firefighters.
“Emergency response personnel have very difficult jobs,” Wheatley said Monday, “but they are well aware of the risks inherent in their profession.”
The verdict was reached Saturday.
The lawsuit, filed in 2003 by 26 firefighters and emergency technicians, stemmed from the explosion in August 2000 of a 50-year-old gas pipeline that killed 12 members of an extended family who had camped on the banks of the Pecos River south of Carlsbad.
The first responders’ lawsuit described the horrific scene where “babies were burned and charred,” family members “suffered burns so severe they were unrecognizable” and “one family member asked to be shot.”
Dozens of witnesses testified during the 29-day trial, which was held in Roswell rather than Carlsbad due to a venue change.
Jurors heard emotional testimony from firefighters, analysis of the mental state of emergency responders and details of the company’s pipeline maintenance program.
In an e-mail to the Carlsbad Current-Argus, Carlsbad Fire Chief Michael Reynolds embraced the jury’s “important decision.”
“The willful and gross negligence may have been a factor, but it is not our place to extract justice or punishment; we respond when things go horribly wrong,” Reynolds wrote. “We don’t sue afterwards because we hurt as a result of our customers suffering.”
The trial went forward after a 2007 opinion by the New Mexico Supreme Court that said the emergency responders could seek damages if they could show intentional conduct or recklessness by the company that exceeds risks inherent in the firefighters’ job.
Firefighters’ attorneys could not be reached for comment Monday. El Paso attorney Jeff Ray, the lead attorney for El Paso Natural Gas, was unavailable at his office and did not respond to e-mail.
“It is our position that El Paso Natural Gas did not act in a reckless manner or intend to inflict emotional distress on the firefighters by the way the company operated its pipelines,” Wheatley said.
El Paso Natural Gas in 2002 settled lawsuits filed by relatives of those killed in the explosion. In a 2007 settlement with the Department of Justice, the company agreed to spend at least $86 million on pipeline modifications and pay a $15.5 million fine.
Federal investigators concluded the explosion was caused by corrosives, including water, that had accumulated in a section of the pipeline near the river.
Copyright 2009 Albuquerque Journal