Lack Of Roof Inspection By Cowboys Is A Red Herring

As the reports continue to flow regarding the collapse of the Cowboys’ indoor practice facility during a Saturday storm, there’s one specific development that has far less meaning than the superficial news items might suggest. Per the Dallas Morning News, the Cowboys failed to have Irving, Texas officials inspect the new roof that was placed on the structure in 2008, five years after it was first built. It’s a non-issue, in our view. If the new roof had been inspected, the folks who inspect such structures for the City of Irving undoubtedly would have done nothing to confirm whether the steel beams under the roof would have survived winds reportedly in the range of only 70 miles per hour. Implicit in this report is the vague notion that the Cowboys were in some way at fault for this incident. Barring evidence that Cowboys officials personally designed or built the structure, the Cowboys simply aren’t responsible for what happened. Moreover, the Cowboys employees injured in the collapse most likely have no recourse against the team apart from the Texas no-fault workers’ compensation system. It’s a simple proposition. Once upon a time, employers were flooded with lawsuits resulting from workplace injuries. And so most states (presumably, every state) created a system for paying employees who suffer injuries while on the job. Here the quid pro quo: The employee gets compensation for medical bills and lost wages and permanent impairment, and the employer receives immunity from a negligence lawsuit. The primary exception to immunity is intentional conduct, or in some states a high degree of recklessness involving actual knowledge of a specific risk followed by a failure to fix it. For example, if there were evidence in this case that, after a prior storm involving strong winds, the Cowboys determined that the structure was at risk of falling but opted to ignore the situation, the employees might, depending on the niceties of Texas law, have grounds for pursuing additional relief from the team. Here, there’s no reason to believe that the Cowboys had any reason to think that the facility would fall, and the focal point of the potential blame for this incident continues to be at this point the company that designed and built the structure. In our opinion, the question of whether the Cowboys dotted every “i” and crossed every “t” regarding the City of Irving’s permitting process is meaningless in this regard. UPDATE: Under Section 408.001 of the Texas workers’ compensation laws, an employer can be sued only if the employee dies and if the accident arose from gross negligence of intentional conduct. So, basically, the injured employees cannot sue the Cowboys.