The families of four Colorado dairy farm workers who died after a manure pipe ruptured and exposed them to highly toxic hydrogen sulfide gas filed a wrongful death lawsuit Wednesday, alleging the dairy owner knew the system was failing months earlier and did not fix it.
The filing comes nearly a year after five men and a teenager were killed Aug. 20 at Prospect Ranch LLC, shocking the rural communities in and around Keenesburg, about 35 miles northeast of Denver. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Jorge Sanchez Peña, 36; Alejandro Espinoza, 50; and Espinoza’s sons, Carlos Espinoza Prado, 29, and Oscar Espinoza, 17.
The families allege the dairy had no gas monitors, ventilation or rescue equipment or rescue plan at the pump pit. Photos included in the court filing show the piping was unstable and held together with straps months before the men died.
The lawsuit names Prospect Valley Dairy LLC, Prospect Ranch LLC owner Arend Bos and HD Builders LLC as defendants. A voicemail for the number listed for Bos in the complaint was full Wednesday afternoon. A voicemail left for HD Builders was not immediately returned.
The case follows federal workplace safety regulators’ decision to fine the dairy farm’s owner and two contractors working on a manure management system $246,609 in February. Prospect Ranch LLC faced the largest fine, $132,406, for serious violations, including failures in training, planning and protecting workers from “atmospheric hazards.”
Attorneys representing the workers say their deaths were avoidable, citing warning signs of the unstable pipe supported by weak straps and lack of safety measures. The men were employees of High Plains Robotics and had been performing work on the manure management system under a contract between their company and Prospect Ranch.
While three of the victims fixed a flat tire on site before leaving, Bos reactivated the system remotely by phone, the complaint said. A pipe, part of the piping system that was being held together by straps, then ruptured under pressure, releasing manure water into an underground pit. The pit soon became filled with hydrogen sulfide gas, an invisible gas that is heavier than air and collects in low-lying places. It can cause immediate unconsciousness and death at high concentrations.
After Sanchez Peña went to help a dairy employee close an open valve, he collapsed, according to the complaint.
“This shouldn’t have happened to these hardworking men who each ran in, one after another, trying to save the person before them. Oscar was only three weeks into the job when he died trying to save his father, who died trying to save a coworker,” Sam Cannon, an attorney at Cannon Law said in a statement. “Prospect had every chance to fix what they knew was broken and chose not to. We intend to hold them accountable for that.”
According to the complaint, Sanchez Peña went into the pit to help a dairy employee close a valve and collapsed. When Espinoza and his two sons saw him go down, they ran in one after the other to help and collapsed from the same invisible gas. All four died in the pit, along with two other employees not represented in the lawsuit.
Watching from the top of the stairs, one of their colleagues called 911 and reported that people had gone into the pump pit and collapsed, according to the complaint. He said they were floating in the water and others on site could not safely reach the victims.
An HD Builders employee realized gas must have been causing the men to collapse, so he tried to find equipment to pull them out, the complaint said. All he could find was an extension cord that he threw to a person in the pit, but before he could use it to pull the person out, the person lost consciousness and collapsed.
The families also allege that the dairy owner gave three conflicting accounts of what happened to first responders, including to the medical examiner on the scene, in a handwritten statement to the fire department, and an insurance investigator the next day.
The complaint accuses the defendants of negligence and other wrongdoing and seeks damages under Colorado’s wrongful death law. It also argues that the deaths qualify as felonious killings under state law, which would allow the families to seek damages beyond the state’s limit for noneconomic losses.