On March 23, Dan Barton won a $12 million jury verdict on behalf of his client Robert Earl Roye, who was scalded over a large part of his body, and Roye’s wife.
In their eighth amended petition, filed Feb. 6 in Harris County’s 165th District Court, the Royes alleged that in May 2009, Robert’s employer sent him to inspect valves and steam traps on a steam line on the premises of an E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. plant in La Porte. During the inspection, the ground caved in and Roye fell into an open pit of hot steam. The plaintiffs alleged DuPont’s negligence had allowed steam traps to be built without the use of French drains, thereby allowing for soil erosion and the creation of the pit. [See the petition.]
