Defeating the Chapter 95 Operator Defense on an OCS Platform

The chain hoist, and an I-beam that was too short.

the mechanic was a lead mechanic for Archrock Services, sent to rebuild a gas compressor on Occidental's Boomvang Spar, a deepwater platform in federal waters off the Texas coast. On November 15, 2020, he and two other mechanics were lifting the piston-rod assembly back into the cylinder using a chain hoist mounted on an I-beam above the compressor. The beam was the problem: at full extension, the hoist's centerline still sat fourteen inches in front of the cylinder. To walk the rod in, the men had to side-pull the rigging horizontally — exactly the move the design standards prohibit. The load shifted, the slings let go, and the roughly two-hundred-pound piston fell onto Mr. The worker's legs. He briefly lost consciousness; a medevac flew him to UTMB Galveston. He left with an intramedullary rod through an open left tibia, a cast on the right leg for a fibula fracture, and a year of healing ahead. He has not returned to offshore work.

The platform's other hoist was rigged correctly.

The engineering pointed straight back to the operator. ASTM F1166 and the hoist manufacturer's own instructions require an assisted lift to be vertical, directly over the load — impossible from the position the operator had installed. The proof that this was a choice, not a limit, sat a few decks away: another chain hoist over another compressor on the same platform was mounted on a properly extended beam. The operator knew how to do it right. Archrock's own report flagged the rail-length restriction as a causal factor. And under federal regulation, the platform's Ultimate Work Authority that day was Occidental's offshore installation manager; Occidental's mechanic signed the Job Hazard Assessment, which itself listed "Dropped Objects" and "Line of Fire" as hazards for the task.

An owner-protection statute, dressed up to protect operators too.

Because the Boomvang Spar sits on the Outer Continental Shelf, OCSLA borrows the adjacent state's law — here, Texas — including Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code Chapter 95, one of the most aggressive premises-liability shields any state has enacted. It exempts a property owner from a contractor's-employee injury unless the plaintiff proves both control over the work and actual knowledge of the danger. The operators moved for summary judgment, arguing Chapter 95 protected all of them as a group, leaning on a single quoted line from the Fifth Circuit's Arsement v. Spinnaker — "entities operating offshore oil and gas rigs … are owners under Chapter 95" — and on bundling related entities together under Ineos v. Elmgren.

Each piece collapsed when you read the cases past the quoted line.

Read the next sentence.

The operator defendants stayed in.

On April 19, 2024, the court denied summary judgment as to Occidental and Anadarko Petroleum — the operators of the Boomvang Spar, not its property owner — finding, in the words of the order, that it had been "presented with no on-point authority supporting the extension to operators of Chapter 95's protection for owners." Chapter 95 was not going to dispose of the case; the defense would have to try it on the engineering. The matter resolved on confidential terms.

What the piston cost Mr. The worker is not confidential: an open tibial fracture and delayed union, a traumatic peroneal nerve injury, an antalgic gait, a rotator-cuff tear from months of wheelchair use, and an adjustment disorder. His home had five steps at the entry. After the incident, those steps were too painful to take, and he and his family sold the house.