Refinery Entitled to Judgment Based on Exclusive Remedy Defense
The Beaumont Court of Appeals has affirmed the judgment of a trial court that had granted an employer summary judgment based on the exclusive remedy defense despite the absence of the employer’s name being listed as a named insured on the workers’ compensation policy. The case, Trahan v. The Premcor Refining Group Inc. D/B/A Valero Port Arthur Refinery, No. 09-17-00005-CV (Aug. 16, 2018) involves an employee who was severely burned while working at Premcor’s Port Arthur refinery.
Trahan sued several parties for negligence, including Premcor. She alleged that on the day of the incident, her employer was Valero Energy Corp. In its amended answer, Premcor raised the affirmative defense of exclusive remedy under the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act. See Tex. Lab. Code Ann. § 408.001(a). The court concluded that Premcor conclusively established its exclusive remedy defense by proving that Trahan was Premcor’s employee at the time of the injury and that Premcor had workers’ compensation coverage through Valero’s workers’ comp carrier, Ace Indemnity.
Trahan asserted the evidence failed to show that Premcor was a named party under the workers’ compensation insurance policy produced by Premcor and Ace, the comp carrier. Premcor established that Valero procured workers’ compensation coverage for the entities under its umbrella, including Premcor, as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Valero secured workers’ compensation insurance through Ace. The Vice President of Risk Management of Valero Services, Inc. testified in his deposition that he was the individual responsible for obtaining the insurance. A Risk Finance Manager for Valero also testified they secured workers’ compensation insurance for Valero. The testimony revealed Premcor provided to Ace specific information for each of its employees at the Port Arthur refinery to obtain workers’ compensation coverage. That information included loss history and payroll information. Valero forwarded this type of information to Ace on behalf of each entity for which it secured coverage. Ace charged Valero one premium. Valero then allocated a portion of that premium to each entity covered under the workers’ compensation policy based on actuarial information, which again, included loss history and number of employees on the payroll for each covered entity. Premcor and Valero provided spreadsheets showing their internal accounting and allocation of costs. Indeed, of all the Valero entities, Premcor paid the largest monthly portion of the premium under the policy.
Testimony and claim forms revealed that Trahan received workers’ compensation benefits. Moreover, the workers’ compensation carrier showed in its sworn discovery responses that on the date of the incident Premcor had workers’ compensation insurance coverage, and the insurance company paid benefits to Trahan under the policy. The parties to the insurance contract agreed: Premcor and Ace had a contract in which Ace provided workers’ compensation coverage to Premcor at the time of Trahan’s injury. See First Bank v. Brumitt, 519 S.W.3d 95, 99 (Tex. 2017) (“only ‘the parties to an agreement determine its terms’”) (quoting Royston, Rayzor, Vickery, & Williams, LLP v. Lopez, 467 S.W.3d 494, 503–04 (Tex.2015)).
Trahan asserts that because Premcor was not listed by name on the actual policy, it is evidence that Premcor had no workers’ compensation insurance coverage under the policy. She also argues that Premcor was not shown on the Texas Department of Insurance’s web page as a subscriber.6 We find these arguments unpersuasive. Unlike the situation before us, when the Garza Court held the employer did not prove it had coverage, it noted that no workers’ compensation policy was identified or made part of the record. That is not the situation before us. Trahan included information from the Texas Department of Insurance’s website with her supplemental motion for summary judgment which purported to show that Premcor was not shown as a workers’ compensation subscriber. But the Texas Department of Insurance’s website provides a disclaimer that states, “Not able to find the information required? This does not necessarily mean that coverage does not exist.” See Garza, 161 S.W.3d at 481. Despite Premcor’s name itself not being listed on the policy, the address for the Port Arthur Refinery owned and operated by Premcor is listed in the “SCHEDULE OF OTHER WORKPLACES[.]” The evidence also established the steps taken to insure Premcor, specifically, subscribed to and received the benefit of workers’ compensation insurance. See id., 161 S.W.3d at 478 (noting premiums are to be based on that employer’s rating experiences, not another employer’s). These steps, as established by the summary judgment evidence, included
• submitting Premcor’s specific payroll information and loss history information to the insurance carrier;
• listing the address of the Premcor refinery in Port Arthur on the policy;
• assigning a specific percentage of the overall premium charged by Ace to Premcor based on actuarial information;
• allocating that premium as an expense to Premcor;
• communicating with the carrier about coverage for Premcor; and
• obtaining the carrier’s agreement that the coverage provided by the policy extended to Premcor.
Based on this record, the evidence conclusively established Premcor was Trahan’s employer on the date of the incident for purposes of the TWCA and that Premcor subscribed to workers’ compensation insurance. In fact, the summary judgment evidence reveals Trahan received workers’ compensation benefits under the policy. Premcor therefore was entitled to a judgment that the receipt of workers’ compensation benefits was Trahan’s exclusive remedy under the TWCA and acted as a bar to her negligence claims against it. Allowing her to pursue a lawsuit against Premcor after accepting workers’ compensation benefits provided by Premcor would defeat the purpose of the TWCA. See Wingfoot Enters., 111 S.W.3d at 142; Little v. Delta Steel, Inc., 409 S.W.3d 704, 714–15 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2013, no pet.) (applying quasi-estoppel principles in concluding a plaintiff’s negligence claim could not survive when a plaintiff accepted death benefits and to do otherwise would be repugnant to the purpose of the workers’ compensation statute and noting that a party’s acceptance of workers’ compensation benefits was inconsistent with the party’s assertion that the employer did not have workers’ compensation insurance). We overrule issues two and three.
The court also rejected Trahan’s argument that the trial judge should have recused himself based on the mention of the judge’s sister-in-law in one pretrial document. The court concluded that Trahan had failed to establish that the trial judge’s sister-in-law was likely to be a material witness and that the trial judge had knowledge that she was likely to be a material witness. Thus, the court held that the recusal judge did not abuse his discretion in denying Trahan’s motion to recuse.
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