Case at a glance
- Recovery: $1 Million Settlement
- Injury: Multiple fractures, head and chest injuries
- Practice: Personal Injury
- Attorney: Brian Beckcom
A tree-trimming job required access to the roof
Mark was assisting a tree-trimming company at a commercial property in Houston. To reach the work, he and another worker needed to get onto the property owner’s roof.
While Mark was working on part of the roof, it collapsed beneath him. He fell roughly 20 feet and struck the concrete floor below. Emergency medical personnel took him to the hospital.
The fall injured several parts of his body
Mark’s injuries included fractures of his pelvis, lower spine, shoulder blade and ribs. He also suffered bleeding in his brain and serious chest injuries, including a collapsed lung.
The property owner challenged the claim
Mark sued the property owner, alleging that it had failed to maintain the roof adequately. The owner sought to end the case through a motion for summary judgment, invoking a Texas statute it argued protected it from liability.
Brian and the VB Attorneys team filed a response opposing that request. After the response, the owner did not go forward with the scheduled hearing on its motion. The dispute continued rather than ending at that stage.
The litigation also addressed what happened to the roof after the fall. Mark filed a motion alleging that the damaged portions had been destroyed and the roof repaired within a week, without the damage being documented. Brian and the VB Attorneys team raised the loss of that evidence as an issue in the case.
How Brian challenged the Chapter 95 defense
The property owner argued that Texas Chapter 95 protected it from Mark’s lawsuit. Brian challenged whether that statute applied to Mark’s tree-trimming assignment.
Mark was there to help trim trees, not to repair the building’s roof. Brian’s argument focused on a roof defect that existed before the tree-trimming work began. He distinguished the work Mark had been hired to do from the dangerous condition that caused his fall.
Why the scope of the work mattered
Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 95.002 ties Chapter 95’s application to an injury arising from the condition or use of an improvement that the contractor constructs, repairs, renovates or modifies. When the chapter applies, § 95.003 requires proof of the owner’s qualifying control over the work, actual knowledge of the danger and failure to warn adequately.
Brian attacked the owner’s reliance on that protection at the threshold: the defective roof was not what Mark had been hired to repair or improve. After Brian and the VB Attorneys team filed its response to the summary-judgment motion, the owner did not proceed with the scheduled hearing. The defense did not end Mark’s case, and the parties later agreed to the $1 million settlement.
Why a pre-existing defect is not an automatic exception
The distinction depends on the work and the condition involved, not just on when a defect arose. In later decisions, the Texas Supreme Court explained the same-improvement requirement in Ineos USA, LLC v. Elmgren (2016) and recognized that a nearby hazard can itself be a condition of the improvement being worked on in Weekley Homes, LLC v. Paniagua (2024). Those decisions came after Mark’s case; they underscore why Chapter 95 requires a fact-specific analysis rather than a blanket rule for every pre-existing defect.
A $1 million settlement
The parties ultimately agreed to settle Mark’s case for $1 million, the amount of the property owner’s insurance policy limits.
The recovery followed litigation over the condition of the roof, the owner’s claimed protection from liability and the evidence available after the collapse. Brian represented Mark as those issues were pursued alongside the consequences of his injuries.
Questions about the case
Related legal help
Learn about personal injury claims or read more VB Attorneys case results.
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For more on contractor claims and Chapter 95, see our construction accident practice.
Every case is different. Prior results depend on the facts of the individual case and do not guarantee a similar outcome.