Iraq Injury Spurs Class Action Against KBR

Driver says Kellogg Brown & Root didn’t properly train its workers, which led to his debilitating injury

Greg Land
Fulton County Daily Report
August 18, 2008

A Griffin wrecker driver who signed on with Houston-based Kellogg, Brown & Root to work in Iraq says the company dumped him in a war zone with poorly trained, unskilled co-workers whose inability to follow simple instructions left him injured and unable to work.

On Tuesday, his lawyers filed a class action lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court in Georgia outlining Curtis “Bubba” Coffey’s own experiences with the multinational contractor and pointing to several other highly publicized reports of deaths, accidents and sexual assaults allegedly tied to the company. Similar actions have been filed in other court jurisdictions across the nation with mixed results.

The complaint, filed on the same day a Congressional Budget Office report estimated that the United States spent more than $85 billion on contractors in Iraq between 2003 and 2007, targets KBR and nine subsidiaries, describing them as a “sham” and “corporate fiction” designed to “perpetrate a fraud for the direct personal benefit of KBR.”

But “our main focus is that KBR is taking American folks, telling them that everyone they’ll be working with is skilled, that everyone’s trained,” said Atlanta attorney E. Adam Webb. “Then they get to Iraq, and there’s no training, no experience, people that speak no English — that’s what caused the direct issue here.”

According to Webb and details contained in the lawsuit, Coffey, 45, was an experienced tow-truck driver who had earned his “WreckMaster” certification and was hired by KBR to “recover disabled vehicles, including tanks, personnel carriers, jeeps, cars and trucks.” He was told that only persons with more than three years of experience would be considered for such employment and that extensive specialized training would be provided. But upon arriving for training at Camp Anaconda in Iraq in February, Coffey was rushed through an “ineffectual” training regimen with “trainers who were often inexperienced themselves,” according to the suit.

Coffey “often had to correct the instructor to prevent the teaching of improper practices,” says the complaint, and when he was sent to his post at base Q-West in northern Iraq, the promised additional training failed to materialize.

When Coffey asked if he could inspect the equipment during down time, he was told “no joy riding” was allowed, and no specialized training would be permitted, according to the complaint.

The suit says that Coffey complained about the lax training but was admonished for “saying some bad things” about KBR’s practices by a manager, Jeff Rock. Coffey agreed that he had doubts about the company’s training and said “that KBR’s practices were ‘getting people killed.’ Mr. Rock cautioned Mr. Coffey that he should ‘keep his mouth shut’ and not continue to inform others about his safety concerns.”

On April 24, Coffey was working with a Kenyan national, known as David or “Killer,” when he asked his co-worker to move the wrecker boom. Killer, who “had been a truck driver in Kenya and had had experience with wreckers,” spoke very little English. “Thus, when Mr. Coffey told David to move the wrecker equipment in a certain direction, David did exactly the opposite.”

Coffey’s hand was caught in the truck’s machinery and his finger “mangled such that, even after multiple treatments and surgery, he does not have use of his finger.”

The resulting pain means he can no longer work and requires heavy medication to sleep, according to the complaint.

The complaint goes on to detail a laundry-list of other incidents it blames on poor training, supervision and hiring, including the reported deaths of at least 110 KBR employees in Iraq since it began operations there; convoys being sent into active combat zones, resulting in KBR employees being killed; several rapes and assaults alleged to have been perpetrated by employees of KBR and related companies; and a rash of fires and electrocutions — blamed on faulty wiring — that have reportedly killed 16 American service personnel at facilities maintained by KBR since August 2006.

“We’re not alleging claims for putting people into war zones, getting raped, things like that,” said Webb. “Our claims are specifically for Americans put into situations where they were put at risk by lack of training, and the failure of their supervisors to handle that issue.”

The Fulton County Daily Report provided a copy of the suit to KBR on Wednesday. A company spokeswoman said Thursday the company would not comment because it had not received service of the suit.

The company’s Iraq operations have been targeted for legal action before, with somewhat mixed results.

As recently as May, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a dismissal of a suit filed under the federal False Claims Act by two drivers alleging that KBR had committed fraud by not providing adequate maintenance and security for its Iraq operations. The appeals court held that the drivers had no grounds to sue because they alleged a breach of contract claim that only the government could bring. (U.S. ex rel. Wilson v. Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., No. 07-1516)

But in June, the 5th Circuit reversed a lower court’s dismissal of another suit, also filed by KBR truck drivers and their survivors, alleging fraud and negligence, among other charges. The action combines three suits filed against Halliburton which spun off its former subsidiary, KBR, in 2007.

A judge in Texas’ Southern District Court had ruled that the company, because it was under government contract, was protected by the separation of powers doctrine.

But the appeals court disagreed, and said the suit could proceed.

“If KBR tortiously guaranteed safety when it knew there was no such safety, it may be liable for resulting injuries despite that the immediate causes were determined attackers that could not be thwarted by the best efforts of American defenders,” wrote the court.

“There are constitutional as well as practical considerations that may prevent judicial resolution,” it noted. “It appears, though, that these tort-based claims of civilian employees against their civilian employers can be separated from the political questions that loom so large in the background.” (Lane v. Halliburton, No. 06-20874)

The Coffey suit, filed by Webb, G. Franklin Lemond Jr. and William W. Stone, all of the seven-month-old firm Webb, Klase & Lemond, represents a marked departure for the attorneys who have carved out a niche representing sign owners challenging local ordinances. Webb said Coffey was a client long before his Iraq sojourn. “I represented him in a case against Fayette County over some signs he’d put in his yard,” said Webb.

That case, Coffey v. Fayette County, went twice to Georgia’s Court of Appeals and once to the state Supreme Court before settling last month, said Webb.

“We obtained some permits from the county, got some attorneys paid, got some damages for Mr. Coffey,” said Webb.

The KBR case, he said, “is something different for us,” said Webb. “But once we started talking and Bubba told me what had gone on over there, we just said, ‘We’ve got to do something.’”

The case is Coffey v. Kellogg Brown & Root, No: 2008CV154929.