The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed $575,668 in wrongful-death damages awarded to the family of a Louisiana welder who fatally overdosed months after a workplace accident.
The worker’s ingestion of “street” fentanyl mixed with xylazine constituted an unforeseeable, superseding cause breaking the chain of causation from his on-the-job injuries, the appeals court ruled.
As documented in Bommarito v. Belle Chasse Marine Transportation LLC, Bosit Bommarito III, a welder for Belle Chasse Land Transportation, was injured while helping construct walkways on a Mississippi River launch site. According to the record, Mr. Bommarito was acting as a rigger during a lift involving a crane mounted on a barge. The hooks used for the lift, designed in-house and attached to the barge’s crane rigging, lacked required safety latches. When the load was lifted too high, one hook slipped loose and struck Mr. Bommarito in the face, causing him to fall up to 12 feet…