Pensacola oyster farmer wins $1.69M verdict in Skanska civil trial

A Pensacola business owner was awarded just over $1,689,000 following a seven-day civil trial over allegations rogue Skanska USA barges destroyed his burgeoning oyster farm.

Travis Gill, the owner of the DeLuna Oyster Company, claimed that two Skanska barges that were not properly secured to withstand Hurricane Sally in 2020 came unmoored during the storm and plowed through his oyster cages, destroying his crop of hundreds of thousands of oysters.

Skanska's attorneys argued that wind and waves from the storm had destroyed Gill's oysters and equipment, but a slew of experts said they had never seen a storm cause the type of damage Gill suffered. Some of Gill's damaged cages were found on the Pensacola Bay shoreline a short distance from a beached barge the morning after Hurricane Sally.

"I think what this jury saw was a company that views itself as bigger than this community and felt like they could come into a courtroom here and accuse a hard working young man, who's just trying to start a business, and accuse him of being a liar," said Brian Barr, a shareholder at Levin Papantonio Rafferty and an attorney for Gill.

"For two weeks, (Gill) had to sit there and listen to this company call him a liar, say that he didn't have the number of oysters in his cages that he claimed he had. And what I hope is that this company will see that our community sees through that and sees through the types of tactics that Skanska wants to employ."

A spokesperson for Skanska declined to comment on the verdict citing active litigation in the case.

Gill's trial team included G. Jeffrey Vernis and Gill's own father, Jeff Gill, both attorneys at the Vernis & Bowling law firm.

Jeff Gill noted that the verdict was hugely important for his son, who was sent back to square one before he could even harvest his first oyster crop.

"This is going to give him what he needs to get everything started," Jeff Gill said of the verdict. "I mean, the reality is, is he was ready to harvest his first crop of oysters in 2020, really ready to get going again, and this barge hit him. It sent him back to 2018, having to completely start over with this startup aquaculture company. And so what this is going to do, it's going to put him back in the position that he would have been in today with an operating, revenue-producing oyster farm. And this is going to allow him to now implement the plan that he had for that farm and continue to build it out."

'It felt like a big corporation was coming in trying to cover up something ...'

Corey Floyd, the foreperson of the jury, told the News Journal after Wednesday's verdict that he and his peers went into the trial with open minds, but increasingly found Skanska's arguments dubious and, frankly, distasteful.

"(We) heard from a lot of eyewitnesses that were actually there during the storm, residents in a local apartment building that were there and saw the barges go by," Floyd said. "And really, it's their testimonies that carried some of the most weight in the trial ... a lot of them had looked out and seen where the oyster farm was for years, since 2018, when it was there and they see the plaintiff out there and he's checking the cages like every day."

Floyd said witnesses were able to describe how and where a barge came through, even though the farm wasn't visible in the photos and videos they took of the incident.

"To me it was it was pretty disheartening to see the defense get up and try to discredit them or try to make it sound like they didn't know what they were talking about," Floyd said. "The tactics that they used, it just rubbed me the wrong way to see that because (the witnesses) had nothing to gain from that. They weren't being paid for their services."

Floyd added that he and other jurors didn't find Skanska's argument that the hurricane destroyed the farm credible. He said both experts and jurors discussed that if the lines tying down Gill's oyster cages had been damaged by the storm, they would have been "chafed" or frayed as they were ripped apart by weather.

"If it were that, these things would break off, one at a time, two at a time, three at a time and float off in different places, like the barges during the storm, and you'd find them more scattered about, not uprooted with their anchors," Floyd said. "These long, 5-foot anchors that were driven down into the seabed, these anchors uprooted with (the cage) as well and were all wadded up and squished just feet behind the barge. That, to us, that was very, very hard to explain away as a weather accident."

Jurors ultimately found Skanska's negligence was a "legal cause of loss or damage to DeLuna Oyster Company" and calculated how many oysters Gill could have realistically sold if his farm was not destroyed and how much he could have made if he had been able to complete a business he had laid out in his lease agreement with the state.

According to a verdict form filed in Circuit Court, Gill was ultimately awarded $445,016 for property damage and $1,244,761.18 for lost profits, a grand total of $1,689,777.81.

Floyd said this was his third time serving on a jury, but the first time he felt compelled to speak about why the jury decided the way it did.

"It's just, this kind of feels like I'm actually happy for the person. I feel like justice was really done well because it, to me it felt like and I know the other jurors felt like this too, it felt like a big corporation was coming in trying to cover up something that they knew they were responsible for," Floyd said.

"They had to have known, looking at the things that they had access to, hearing from the people that they've heard from, they had to know that they're responsible for this, but to try to discredit local people here, to try to discredit witness testimony of people that have no reason to make this up ... it was just disheartening to see, and I just was happy to see the word get out there that justice was done. I think a really good thing was done for a local business here in the area."

Skanska may face hundreds more plaintiffs, and attorneys want justice for them all

This is the first of what may potentially be hundreds of state-level civil trials from citizens, commuters and business owners who say Skanska barges caused them physical or financial damage.

A previous federal court determined Skanska was negligent when it failed to move 55 barges before Hurricane Sally.

Previously: Skanska tells jury weather destroyed Pensacola oyster farm, not a loose barge

Under Skanska’s hurricane plan submitted to the Florida Department of Transportation, the company should have relocated the barges to one of two “safe harbors” − Butcherpen Cove on the Gulf Breeze shoreline on the east side of the Bay Bridge, or Bayou Chico in Pensacola on the west side of the bridge site.

Instead of following that plan, crews tied the barges to mooring pilings a few hundred yards east of the Pensacola Bay Bridge. Of the 55 barges on site prior to the hurricane, 22 broke loose, crashing into seawalls, landing within inches of homes and taking out a significant portion of the bridge.

"I think as a trial team, we all felt a tremendous responsibility to Pensacola – and even Travis did as the initial plaintiff to take a damage claim in front of a jury – and we just feel very satisfied that the first case went this way, that a jury clearly saw through to the truth of the allegation," Jeff Gill said.

Barr said he is representing clients in other civil cases against Skanska, and that he and everyone representing the DeLuna Oyster Company was pleased with the outcome of this initial trial and determined to keep holding Skanska accountable.

"We're going to fight back against this company and do all that we can do to get the people that they damaged the justice that they deserve," Barr said.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: DeLuna Oyster Company owner Travis Gill wins Skanska civil trial