2 Injured Cowboys Settle With Jerry Jones

The attorney for two Dallas Cowboys employees injured in the 2009 collapse of the team's practice facility says each has received about $5 million from companies controlled by team owner Jerry Jones as legal settlements.

Attorney Frank Branson says that lawsuits filed by scout Rich Behm and special teams coach Joe DeCamillis were settled last week.

Behm was paralyzed from the waist down and DeCamillis suffered a broken vertebrae when the steel and fabric building collapsed in a wind storm back on May 2nd, 2009.

The two previously settled with the builder, Summit Structures. Branson says Behm received $19.5 million and DeCamillas was paid $4.5 million.

Cowboys spokesman Rich Dalrymple says the team had no comment Monday.

Naturally...

More when we know more...
Until then, here's an anniversary piece that Sophia Reza did on the collapse
((HT: MyFoxDFW))

Lawsuits Filed In Cowboys Practice Facility Collapse

((HT: MyFoxDFW/Kalthoff))

Two Cowboys employees seriously hurt in the collapse of the team's practice facility last spring filed lawsuits against the companies involved in the structure's construction.

Rich Behm, a scouting aide who is permanently paralyzed and now confined to a wheelchair, and Joe DeCamillis, a special teams coach who broke his neck but recovered, both filed lawsuits in Dallas County court Tuesday.

The separate lawsuits, filed by the same law firm, allege that the builders and installers were negligent, and at least two of the defendants knew the structure was unsafe.

The suits are the first to be filed in connection with the May 2 collapse. Neither suit names the Cowboys organization.

Here's the Behm lawsuit and here's the DeCamillis lawsuit...

Brooks Egerton's piece from the Dallas Morning News has the two plaintiffs calling for a conspiracy charge. They claim that Summit Structures knew two years before the collapse that the facility was unsafe.

From Egerton...
The conspiracy allegations target:

The steel-framed facility's designer and manufacturer, Canada-based Cover-All Building Systems.

Its U.S. sales and construction affiliate, Summit Structures.

The Las Vegas consulting firm JCI. As previously reported in The Dallas Morning News, JCI helped Cover-All and Summit design reinforcements for the tent after a building-collapse expert discovered engineering problems.

The facility underwent repairs in summer 2007 that the Cowboys believed were "a temporary fix," the lawsuits say. They allege that Cover-All, Summit and JCI "were to design and install a permanent fix after the 2007 football season was over" but did not.

Instead, they "agreed to hide and conceal the practice facility's shortcomings," the suits say.

KTVT/CBS-11's John Knicely was standing in front of Valley Ranch and interviewed Coach De's and Behm's attorney...


Those of us here at the HQ think any and all of the defendants need to learn one word: "settle"

Firm: Roof In Valley Ranch Replaced For "Aesthetics"

((HT: Dallas Morning News/Danny Robbins))

The company that built the Dallas Cowboys' indoor practice facility that collapsed this spring is telling its customers that the ill-fated fabric structure got a new roof last year because of team concerns about "aesthetics," not structural problems.

Nathan Stobbe of Summit Structures LLC included the explanation in a letter sent to customers of the Allentown, Pa.-based company. The letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press, seeks to reassure customers that their buildings are safe.

"Please be assured that your buildings have been designed, engineered and manufactured to meet or exceed all local applicable building codes," Stobbe wrote.

The Cowboys' 80,000-square-foot facility collapsed May 2, the fifth Summit building known to have fallen in the last seven years. A member of the team's scouting department was paralyzed from the waist down and 11 other people were injured less severely.

The roof was replaced in 2008 "after discussions with the Cowboys organization to improve the aesthetics of the building and had nothing to do with structural issues," Stobbe said in the letter.

But a person with knowledge of the Cowboys' facility at the time of the roof repair said there were several troubling issues, none of them related to the way the building looked. Among the issues cited by the person were defects in the fabric that could have caused structural problems if not repaired. The person, a building industry source, was granted anonymity because the issues are not supposed to be disclosed publicly.

In a written statement to AP, Stobbe acknowledged that there were "small holes in the fabric" that could have caused "small leaks," but he said they posed no structural problems.

Cowboys spokesman Rich Dalrymple said the team would not comment.

The facility was built in 2003. City of Irving records provide few details about the roof replacement five years later.

Greg Iannarelli, chief counsel for the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, told the AP he suggested the Cowboys hire an expert on building failures after learning from Bruce Mays, the team's director of football operations, that the practice facility had a "roof issue" in 2006. At the time, the port had sued Summit after a warehouse built by the company collapsed in a snow storm in 2003.

The Dallas Morning News has reported that a Las Vegas engineering firm, JCI, was engaged by Summit to deal with the roof issue. A former employee of the firm, Jeffrey Galland, told the newspaper he had recommended major structural reinforcements. Most of the recommendations were carried out by Summit, he said.

Galland did not respond to an e-mail message from the AP, and the company's president, Scott Jacobs, declined to be interviewed.

Among the recipients of Stobbe's letter was Texas A&M University, where one of Summit's largest buildings, a nearly 191,000-square-foot complex for track and football, was completed last year at a cost of $35.6 million.

Less than three weeks after the university received the letter, a three-person team from Summit conducted a two-day inspection of the track portion of the structure, an area that encompasses more than 115,000 square feet, and found no concerns, university records show. The football facility wasn't inspected, according to the records.

Texas A&M officials did not respond to multiple messages from the AP seeking to learn whether the university sought an independent inspection. Instead, the university system issued a statement saying it has "no reason to be concerned at this point."

The letter from Stobbe also says the fabric used in the Cowboys' 2008 roof replacement was the "same material" that has passed the hurricane testing requirements of Miami-Dade County, Fla. However, county records show only one company, Sprung Instant Structures Inc., with that approval.

"Unless you have a Dade County notice of acceptance, you cannot claim that your product is Dade County-approved," said Helmy Makar, the county engineer who approved Sprung's plans.

In response, Stobbe told AP the fabric met Miami-Dade standards when tested independently.

Matt Grubs from MyFoxDFW reported on the investigation at the time...

Official: Cowboys Knew Canopy Issues

((HT: MyFoxDFW))

The Dallas Cowboys knew when they hired Summit Structures LLC to build their now-ruined practice facility that a similar fabric structure built by the company for the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority had collapsed in a storm, according to a port official.

Greg Iannarelli, the port authority's chief counsel, said he was contacted by Cowboys official Bruce Mays not long after a warehouse built by Summit for the port collapsed during a snowstorm in February 2003. Iannarelli said the Cowboys were considering using Summit and were concerned.

"My recollection is they wanted to know what happened, and we weren't sure at the time," he told The Associated Press.

Summit, based in Allentown, Pa., received permission from the City of Irving to begin construction on the Cowboys' facility in July 2003. The 88,000-square-foot building fell in high winds last month, leaving a scouting assistant paralyzed from the waist down and injuring 11 others less severely.

Iannarelli said he had several other conversations with Mays, the Cowboys director of football operations, over the next three years. He said he also sent Mays a copy of a Philadelphia judge's decision in December 2006 stating that the warehouse's collapse was due to design flaws.

"We spoke about our position, what we believed was the cause of the collapse," he said.

Iannarelli confirmed the conversations after the port authority provided the AP with a page from his phone message log showing he was contacted by Mays on Sept. 25, 2006. The document was turned over to the AP in response to a request for information under Pennsylvania's Right to Know law.

Cowboys spokesman Rich Dalrymple said the team would have no comment. Mays declined to discuss the conversations.

"If my name's on a (message slip) there, it means I must have talked to (the port), but I can't make any comment," he said.

The 102,000-square-foot warehouse at the Philadelphia port collapsed less than two months after it opened. The building was unoccupied when it fell.

Although the incident generated little publicity, it resulted in a protracted legal battle between the port authority and Summit. It ended with Common Pleas Court Judge Allan Tereshko ruling that the structure collapsed in conditions "that would have easily been tolerated ... had the building been properly designed and constructed." The company agreed to pay the port $4.8 million to settle the lawsuit.

Another company was hired by the port to rebuild the warehouse.

The Summit engineer listed as responsible for the design of the Cowboys facility was also in charge of overseeing the Philadelphia project, The Dallas Morning News has reported.

Iannarelli also said he learned through Mays that the Cowboys had a "roof issue." He said he referred Mays to an expert witness that the port authority used to help identify the cause of the warehouse collapse.

"I got the sense that Summit and Dallas were working cooperatively to identify the cause (of the problem) and fix it," he said.

The Cowboys replaced the roof of their facility last year, according to City of Irving records.

The Cowboys' facility is at least the fifth fabric structure built by Summit or a related company, Cover-All Building Systems, to collapse since 2002.

A warehouse-type building in upstate New York collapsed in February 2007, and an indoor arena for horse competition in Oregon fell in January 2002, according to court records. Both collapses occurred in heavy snow.

Additionally, an aircraft shade covering made by Summit collapsed in April 2002 at the Naval air station in El Centro, Calif., according to a Navy spokesman. The spokesman declined to provide details, citing the fact that the matter is the subject of a pending complaint over payment by the general contractor.

In a 2004 deposition taken as part of the Philadelphia port case, Summit president Nathan Stobbe attributed the El Centro collapse to F-14 fighter jets being flown through the open-ended structure.

Here's your standard flashback and recollection from our friends at KDFW-TV

Cowboy Building Drama Continues

According to a report in this mornings Dallas Morning News...which you can see here , the Dallas Cowboys used a...shall we say...less than credible consultant to help place reinforcements inside their now collapsed practice facility.

Quite a few questions have arisen from the original collapse of the facility on May 2nd most of them tied to Summit Structures, a company with a history of trouble in their construction of these "Tent-Like" facilities.

The consultant, one Jeffrey Lance Galland, based out of Las Vegas has a criminal history and was the "Director of Engineering" for a company called JCI, though he didn't exactly have an engineering background.

You know, as time goes on, this story seems to get deeper and deeper and the evidence seems to point to several things: One, the work on the facility was done on the cheap. Two, it was done by a company and people with a questionable history and Three, the Cowboys were either negligent or ignorant about what they were doing. Either way, don't be surprised if more comes out and there are more than a few people who start Lawyering up.

In case you missed the video the first time, check it out ((Courtesy: WFAA/You Tube))

Cowboys Facility Builder may be in trouble

Ok, so now that the appropriate people are on the case and investigating the collapse of the Dallas Cowboys indoor practice facility, lots of red flags are starting to come out. Apparently, according to several media outlets, the builder of the facility, Summit Structures LLC and their subsidiary Cover-All Building Systems have had some problems on several of their projects.

((photo courtesy: Ron Jenkins/Fort Worth Star-Telegram))

Check out the story from Kansas City.com here

Also, the Dallas Morning News reports that the engineer who worked for the group and designed the Cowboys facility, also worked on a facility in Philadelphia that collapsed in 2003.

Check out their investigation here

Needless to say, as the investigating contiues more issues seem to be coming out. Also of interest to us was a report from the Houston Chronicle which says that apparently, former Cowboys Coach/Lord, Bill Parcells had some ties to the company in question and it was one of his first orders of business upon arriving in big "D" in 2003.

Check out the Chronicle story here

Also, here is an interview done by CBS's Harry Smith with Brett Kelly of KTVT, who was there when the building collapsed.

((courtesy: CBS.com))

Because of the magnitude of what happened, there undoubtedly will be more to come out of this story. It appears at this time that everyone is about to lawyer up and expect that things will get messy. We here at the OSG will stay on top of this...because it should get "Very Interesting".