The Houston [1st] Court of Appeals has, in a permissive appeal, affirmed a Harris County district court’s denial of a transmission utility’s summary judgment motion in a wrongful death case in which an employee of another entity’s contractor was electrocuted by contact with a high-voltage power line.
Oncor Electric Delivery Company LLC v. Marciela Ramirez and Herman Rendon, As Next Friend of W.R., A Minor(No.01-24-00088-CV; February 27, 2026) arose from a wrongful death claim. Ramirez, an employee of Lujan Lease Works, was assigned as a contract pumper under a contract with Snapp Lease Works. Snapp, in turn, contracted with Citation Oil & Gas Corporation to provide contract pumpers if a Citation pumper was unavailable. On the day of the accident, Ramirez was filling in for one of Citation’s employees, While making his rounds, he spotted a brushfire and reported it to his Citation contract. Upon investigating the fire, Ramirez came into contract with a sagging Oncor power line and was electrocuted. Plaintiffs filed suit in Harris County district court. Oncor moved for summary judgment on the affirmative defense that Ramirez qualified as a “person responsible” under Chapter 752, Health & Safety Code, and failed to comply with Chapter 752’s requirements with respect to the power line. The trial court denied the motion. Oncor requested and the court of appeals accepted a permissive appeal.
In an opinion by Justice Caughey, the court of appeals upheld the trial court’s denial. The question before the court was whether “an employee who decides to investigate a brush fire, and is electrocuted by a power line while doing so, [can] be a ‘person responsible’ for purposes of Chapter 752 [of Texas’s Health and Safety Code]?” Chapter 752 requires a peron responsible for temporary work or a temporary activity or function within six feet of a high voltage overhead line to notify the operator of the line at least 48 hours before work begins. § 752.003(a). Once notified the operator must negotiate a mutual arrangment with the person to provide temporary de-energization and grounding, temporary relocation or raising of the line, or temporary mechanical barriers to keep people and equipment at a safe distance. The responsible person is charged with paying the operator’s expenses for doing this. If a person doesn’t comply with the statute, it can’t anything if at any time it’s possible that the person may come within six feet of the line. Violation of the statute can result in criminal and civil liability.
To succeed in its summary judgment motion, Oncor had to conclusively prove the chapter’s applicability and a violation. The court found that the summary judgment evidence did not conclusively show that Ramirez was a “person responsible” under the statute. In other words, it didn’t conclusively demonstrate that “Ramirez was ‘answerable, accountable,’ or ‘liable to be called to account’ for (or liable or answerable as a primary agent or ‘creditable or chargeable with the result’ of) temporary work or activity near the line.” Working as a pumper in the scope of his employment, Ramirez attempted to investigate a fire. Oncor argued that this activity wasn’t in his scope of employment, but the court found that record presented a fact issue. Citation’s witness stated that one of Ramirez’s duties as a pumper was to “mak[e] rounds to individual wells to ‘see if there w[ere] any issues, report anything back.” Ramirez was on his rounds when he spotted the fire, promptly called his contact at Citation to report, and told him that he was going to put it out. When the contact called Ramirez back to check on his progress, the conversation was cut short by a yell and the phone fell silent.
Oncor argued that no one told Ramirez to enter the utility easement while investigating the fire, but there was also no evidence that Citation told Ramirez not to investigate the fire once he reported it. Based on the record, the court couldn’t conclude that it conclusively showed that Ramirez fell under the ordinary meaning of a “personal responsible” for temporary work within six feet of a high voltage powerline. It also didn’t show that Ramirez had any authority to do any of things required by the statute (i.e, negotiate with Oncor, incur payment obligations on his employer’s behalf, etc.). It wasn’t even clear that Ramirez actually saw the powerline through the smoke. The trial court thus did not err by denying Oncor’s motion for summary judgment.
Oncor further asserted that it didn’t matter what Ramirez’s scope of work was. Oncor proposed a “control over the details of the work” to shift responsibility to Ramirez. The court didn’t go along with this theory, finding that “at the very least” whether Ramirez had control over the details of his own work was a fact question for the jury. The court sent this case back to the trial court for further proceedings.
