Shell Workers Killed in 1980 Chevron Harbor Fire; Hawaii Jury Awards $27.7 Million
After a Chevron-USA tank-farm explosion at Honolulu Harbor burned two Shell Oil employees who later died of their injuries, a Hawaii Circuit Court jury awarded their families a combined $27.7 million in January 1983, then the largest civil verdict in state history.
What happened
On August 15, 1980, a massive explosion tore through a petroleum storage tank at the Chevron-USA tank farm along Nimitz Highway near Pier 30 in Honolulu Harbor. Flames and thick black smoke climbed hundreds of feet above the waterfront. The Honolulu Fire Department, assisted by crews from Hickam Air Force Base and Honolulu International Airport, spent more than five hours bringing the blaze under control. What made the incident especially deadly was not only the scale of the fire but where it spread.
Herman Ah Yat and Antonio Lozano were Shell Oil Co. employees working at a facility immediately adjacent to the Chevron tank farm when the explosion occurred. Both men suffered severe burns. They were transported for emergency treatment, but neither recovered. Ah Yat and Lozano died in the weeks following the blast, leaving behind families who held Chevron responsible for the conditions that allowed the fire to reach a neighboring worksite.
Their families retained Paul F. Cronin of the firm now known as Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Kekina and Fairbanks. The central legal claim was that Chevron's negligence in operating its Honolulu Harbor tank farm caused the explosion, and that its effects reached the adjacent Shell worksite where Ah Yat and Lozano had been doing their jobs. Proving that causal chain across a property line called for detailed evidence on tank maintenance, fire-suppression systems, and what Chevron knew about the risks posed by its facility to workers on neighboring property.
The case went to trial in the Circuit Court, First Circuit, State of Hawaii, in Honolulu. Proceedings ran for eight weeks. Chevron had proposed $1.8 million as the appropriate total compensation for survivors of both victims.
After three days of deliberations, the jury returned its verdict in January 1983. It awarded the family of Herman Ah Yat more than $14 million. Antonio Lozano's survivors received $13 million. The combined award, covering both general and punitive damages, came to $27.7 million.
No civil jury in Hawaii had ever returned a verdict of that size. It exceeded Chevron's own compensation figure by more than 15 to one. Available sources do not show the award was reduced on appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.