In the wake of the Pasadena, Texas, scaffolding collapse on March 12, 2025, at the Chevron Plant, where three workers were injured when they fell 25 feet to the ground, it might be a good time to revisit Texas’s policies on worker safety and the responsibility of employers to provide for them. While some states, such as New York, have imposed strict liability on employers and contractors for making scaffolding safe, Texas has not. Instead, Texas worker’s comp laws basically act as a shield for many employers so that when they neglect to follow the OSHA rules regarding scaffolding, scaffolding accident lawyers are prohibited from suing the employer on behalf of the injured client in most cases.
Background on Scaffolding Work
A worker works from a ground-based scaffolding platform beside a building.
Scaffolding is part of the reason construction site jobs have been named some of the most dangerous jobs in Texas. Scaffolding typically takes the form of a platform on pulleys (often used on high-rise buildings) or a ground-based structure that uses pipes and a base to create an elevated work area. Regardless of the type, scaffolding enables workers to perform their tasks in elevated places. They are used to work on the exteriors of buildings, plants, and other hard-to-reach places. They may be used by painters, window washers, construction workers, or other people performing work in an elevated setting. To do their work, the workers rely on scaffolding to support not just themselves but the tools, equipment, machinery, and supplies that the job requires. As a result, scaffolding must be both stable and sturdy. Despite this obvious need, a study of construction site accidents conducted from 2003 to 2013 found that scaffold accidents and staging accidents accounted for 14 percent of fatal falls (119 deaths).
Scaffolding Regulations
The Occupational Health and Safety Association (OSHA) regulates the use of scaffolding on job sites. OSHA sets the standards on how to construct it, what it is constructed from, and where and when it may be used. If you have never read the OSHA scaffolding regulations found in section 1926, they are very detailed about the strength and support of scaffolding. Every scaffolding component must be capable of supporting its own weight and 4x the intended load. In addition, every rope, suspension, hoist, and baseboard must meet certain standards to ensure they will support the load without tipping or breaking. Many of these are required to support 6 times the expected weight for safety. When you read through the regulations, you cannot help but wonder how many of the typical unskilled laborers you see working on these have even read the regulations, much less memorized them all.
Negligence and Scaffolding Accidents
There are many potential causes of scaffolding accidents. Most of them are preventable and, thus, a result of someone’s negligence. Some of these causes include:
- Unsafe scaffold design and construction. This occurs when the workers fail to build the scaffold in a safe and balanced structure to support people.
- Failure to provide fall protection. Fall protection comes in many forms and acts as a backup when someone falls from scaffolding. OSHA requires fall protection for anything with a height above 6 feet in construction settings. This may need to take the form of guardrails, safety harnesses, nets, or other fall protective gear, depending upon the situation. A fall protection lawyer can help you understand what was required in your situation.
- Workers overloading the scaffolding with equipment, tolls, gear, supplies, and or people.
- Failure to properly secure, support, stabilize, or fasten scaffolds.
- Using defective equipment such as rusty or bent poles, rotten or weak wood, malfunctioning pulleys or brakes, and weak ropes.
- Failing to maintain the scaffolding in a safe usable condition.
- Failing to provide overhead protection for workers below when something is dropped from the scaffolding.
Another cause may be a design or manufacturing defect, which would fall under the responsibility of the manufacturer and distributors. Under product liability law, they are held to a strict liability standard for making an unsafe product.
Texas Worker’s Compensation Laws vs Negligence
Usually, when an injury is caused by someone’s negligence, the victim must prove that the negligent actor had a duty to act reasonably and failed to act as a ordinary prudent person would have under the circumstances. However, under Texas Worker’s Compensation Laws, an injured employee is barred from suing his employer for negligence if the employer provides worker’s compensation. So, the employer has no fear of getting sued directly, even if they were clearly negligent in failing to protect workers against the above causes of scaffolding collapses and accidents. To add insult to injury, employees of contractors who also provide workers’ compensation to the contractors are barred from suing a negligent property owner and/or company owner if that individual also provided his own employees with worker’s compensation. You can still sue these people if you can prove they were grossly negligent, but that requires a unanimous jury finding, and the standard of proof is “clear and convincing” evidence.
Conclusion
So what does this all mean? If your employer negligently fails to maintain the scaffolding in good working order by letting it rust in the year between use, too bad you are stuck with the limited worker’s compensation benefits and cannot hold your employer liable. If you are contracted to a company and they don’t bother providing fall protection but both offer worker’s compensation to their workers, you cannot hold either the contractor or the contracting company liable for their obvious negligence unless you can convince all 12 jurors it was gross negligence. Few work injury lawyers are going to take on the risk of convincing all 12 jurors to agree by clear and convincing evidence on a contingency fee contract.
At Simmons and Fletcher, P.C., we understand the difficulties of scaffolding accidents and the challenges injured workers face after these events. Call us today for a free consultation to determine whether you may have a claim for your injuries.
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