A $20.5 million jury award against homebuilder D.R. Horton for a worker injured in a trench collapse has been overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court.
The court ruled that the country’s largest homebuilder did not owe a legal obligation to Timothy Kono who was working for a subcontractor April 9, 2019, when he was severely injured in a cave-in.
Kono was at the bottom of a 10-foot-deep trench installing sewer lines in a D.R. Horton residential development in Polk City when he was completely buried “by an SUV-sized mound of dirt” for one to two minutes, according to the state Supreme Court’s opinion filed April 10.
Kono was employed by Royal Plumbing LLC of Prairie City. The court’s opinion said D.R. Horton was not at the scene and didn’t know about the cave-in until two months after it occurred.
It noted that Royal Plumbing was cited by the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration for failing to provide protection to employees from loose rock or soil that could fall into an excavation and was fined $7,467. D.R. Horton was not cited by OSHA for the incident.
Kono received worker’s compensation from Royal Plumbing and also settled gross negligence claims against three of his coworkers. He suffered injuries to his hips, legs, knees, ankles and lower back for which he has undergone multiple surgeries. He also suffers from severe and long-lasting post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, according to court records.
In October 2023, a jury awarded Kono more than $20.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages against D.R. Horton. Kono’s suit claimed D.R. Horton had “owed a duty of care” to ensure a trench box was in the trench and safety regulations were followed.
D.R. Horton appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled that “the district court erred in concluding that D.R. Horton owed Kono a duty of care and in submitting the claim to a jury.”
The Supreme Court also ruled that “a general contractor ordinarily does not owe a duty of care to the employee of a subcontractor.”
“D.R. Horton did not retain control — neither by contract nor through its conduct — over the operative detail of the work that caused Kono’s injuries,” the Supreme Court’s opinion states. “And trenching work for a residential construction project, as a matter of law, does not create the type of peculiar risk that imposes a duty on the general contractor.”
