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TexasTowelie

(111,292 posts)
Wed Jul 22, 2020, 08:08 AM Jul 2020

Jury awards Mathis widow $18 million over husband's trucking company death

SINTON – After nearly five years, a Mathis widow is finding closure after her husband, Juan Perez, died on March 7, 2015, after falling through a skylight while repairing a roof for I&R Trucking in Mathis, owned by Isaac Rodriguez.

On July 1 Hilliard Martinez Gonzales announced that a San Patricio jury handed down a unanimous verdict awarding $18 million in damages, including $10 million in punitive damages, to the widow Denise Marez. The three-day trial was held in the 156th District Court of San Patricio County with Judge Patrick Flanagan presiding. The jury deliberated for two hours before returning their verdict.

Court documents stated that jurors unanimously agreed with Marez that I&R Trucking was negligent when it asked Perez to do construction on the roof back on March 7, 2015. The courts also said that Perez was given no safety equipment on the 12-foot-high corrugated metal roof, which also had translucent skylights made of a plastic/fiberglass material, according to Marez’s attorneys, John Duff and Alex Hilliard of Hilliard Martinez & Gonzales LLP. Perez could not see from the outside that parts of the roof’s steel I-beam supports were rotted away, but attorneys said I&R’s owner was supposedly well aware of the rotting, which was visible from underneath.

According to attorneys, Perez had worked for I&R for 17 years and was often called on to do odd jobs besides driving trucks. He was called the night before his death and told that the next day he would be needed to go up on the roof of the building in question and replace a roof panel, which was 25 years old and severely “rotted and damaged,” the attorneys said. The roof gave way “like it was paper,” and Perez fell through the panel, they said, onto a concrete floor 12 feet below.

Read more: https://www.mysoutex.com/san_patricio_county/news/jury-awards-mathis-widow-18-million-over-husband-s-trucking-company-death/article_1f53b4ec-c535-11ea-bfc4-8bb717f50550.html

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