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Bujol v. Entergy Services8/14/2002
This appeal is from judgments rendered after a second trial arising from an explosion and flash fire. The plaintiffs are two individuals who were severely burned in an industrial accident, Don A. Perkins and Joseph E. "Jeb" Bujol, III, their families, and the survivors of Ray Hracek, who received fatal burns. The defendants in this second jury trial were X.L. Insurance Company, Ltd. (X.L.) and National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, PA (National Union), insurers of Air Liquide, S.A. (ALSA) and Liquid Air Engineering Corporation (LAEC). Judgment was rendered in favor of plaintiffs awarding compensatory and exemplary damages against the insurers. X.L. and National Union perfected this appeal; the Hracek plaintiffs answered the appeal. For the following reasons, we reverse in part, amend in part, affirm in part, and remand to the trial court.
BACKGROUND
On April 6, 1994, three employees who were working at an air-separation plant near Plaquemine, Louisiana, owned and operated by Air Liquide America Corporation (ALAC), were severely injured in an oxygen flash fire. One of those employees, Ray Hracek, died of his injuries several days after the incident. The other two injured employees, Joseph Bujol and Don Perkins, sustained third degree burns over 90 percent of their bodies, but survived. The flash fire occurred approximately three hours after the Plaquemine plant unexpectedly shut down following an electrical disturbance and while the three employees were assisting in restarting the plant.
The workers at the Plaquemine plant were near the end of the task of restarting the plant when an operating problem developed in the "let-down station." An automatic control valve was regulating differential pressures between a 700-pound oxygen pipeline supplying its customer Exxon and a 400pound pipeline supplying other customers. The plant manager, Mr. Hracek, asked Mr. Bujol and Mr. Perkins to accompany him to the let-down station to address the problem. Mr. Bujol and Mr. Perkins were closing an eight-inch manual isolation valve upstream from the automatic control valve when Mr. Hracek told them to stop. Mr. Hracek climbed inside the loop of piping that formed the let-down station while the other two men watched. They were close enough to the automatic control valve for Mr. Bujol to see it cycle open and then abruptly close. The flash fire immediately erupted.
The record shows that ALSA is a multinational company headquartered in France. In the 1960s, ALSA was distributing pressurized oxygen by pipeline in France and Belgium. In the early 1970s, the company began expanding in Europe. By the time of trial, ALSA's corporate family operated in at least 60 countries, employing 27,600 people worldwide primarily in France and the Americas.
In 1986, Big Three Industries, Inc. (Big Three) was purchased for $1,000,500,000.00 and became part of the ALSA family of companies, adding approximately 15 plants in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas to the ALSA list of subsidiaries. A few of these, including the plant at Plaquemine, were air-separation "tonnage" plants. After the acquisition, the air-separation tonnage plants continued to be operated as a separate division of an ALSA subsidiary under the name of Big Three. On January 1, 1994, the Big Three division merged with a sister subsidiary into a new subsidiary, ALAC. Neither the original acquisition nor the subsequent merger affected the physical operation of the Plaquemine plant, which kept the same executives, plant manager, and workers who formerly operated under the Big Three ownership.
ALSA's vice-president for legal and corporate affairs described its structure as "cascading" ownership. ALSA
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