$222 million verdict in power plant worker death won’t raise rates, Evergy says
Evergy electric customers won’t see higher bills stemming from a $222 million jury verdict over steam-burn deaths at Kansas’ biggest power plant, the company said Friday.
A Texas jury this week found Westar Energy, which became part of Evergy in a 2018 merger, was 10% liable for the death of Jesse Henson, an employee from Manhattan and one of two men burned alive by superheated steam in an June 2018 accident at the Jeffrey Energy Center near St. Marys.
Team Industrial Services, a maintenance subcontractor to Westar, was found 90% liable.
In its first comment on the legal issues involved, Westar confirmed Friday that the cost won’t show up on customers’ electric bills.
“Evergy was not a party to the Texas lawsuit, and we had no involvement in the trial,” company spokeswoman Gina Penzig said in an e-mail. “Evergy does not owe any portion of the verdict. Team is solely responsible for payment of the verdict.”
David Nickel, chief consumer counsel for the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board, had said earlier that if Westar did owe a portion of the judgment, it was unlikely that customers would have to pay for it.
He said he hasn’t been able to find Kansas case law directly on point, but the utility may be protected from having to pay court judgments in another state by a Kansas law limiting worker’s compensation death benefits to $250,000.
If Evergy did owe money, it would have to get permission from the Kansas Corporation Commission to pass it along to customers, which Nickel said wouldn’t be easy.
“Evergy in general would have to prove the necessity of the expense to serve the ratepayers and they’d have to show the prudency of the expense to serve the ratepayers, both of which would be pretty arduous,” Nickel said. “Presuming that there’s negligence, they would have to be able to prove the negligence was necessary to serve a ratepayer and that it was prudent. It seem to me that’s a very difficult burden to show.”
Team has vowed to appeal the $222 million verdict and final resolution is probably years away.
Henson and a co-worker, Damien “Craig” Burchett of Overbrook, were killed while responding to a leak of superheated steam that occurred shortly after Team had rebuilt boiler pressure relief valves on three turbine generating units.
The valves are supposed to allow steam to vent outside the plant if pressure rises too high in the coal-fired boilers.
But the steam leaked into the building instead and Henson and Burchett were engulfed in it when the doors opened on the elevator they rode to the 14th floor of the plant, where the relief valves are located.
Team argued at trial that Westar was primarily responsible and that the workers hadn’t been properly trained or equipped for dealing with the dangerous situation.
“We are deeply sympathetic to the terrible losses suffered by the families in this tragic accident,” said a written statement by Andre C. Bouchard, Team’s vice president and chief legal officer. “We believe there should be accountability for those who contributed to the deaths of these two good men; however, knowing all of the facts of the case, we do not believe that responsibility lies with us.”
Team is a multinational corporation providing maintenance services for power plants in the U.S., Britain, Germany, Australia and other countries. The case was tried in a Texas court because Team is based there.
The $222 million in damages that the jury found includes $27 million for the physical pain and $30 million for the mental anguish that Henson suffered immediately before his death; $90 million for mental anguish suffered by his wife, Kelli Most; and $75 million for his wife’s loss of Henson’s companionship.
Most and her lawyers, Jason Itkin and S. Scott West, hailed the verdict in a statement as an example that “human life matters, and that big companies cannot avoid responsibility for deadly workplace disasters.”
A separate lawsuit is under way seeking damages for Burchett’s surviving relatives.
This story was originally published June 3, 2021 at 2:21 PM.
