Yes. When several companies share an oilfield site, North Dakota law can hold more than one of them responsible for the same injury, and each pays according to its share of the fault. A working well pad often has an operator, a drilling or workover contractor, a trucking company, and two or three service crews within a few hundred feet of one another. Sorting out who controlled what, and who let a hazard stand, is the heart of the case. Our North Dakota oilfield accident attorneys build these claims one company at a time.
Why One Oil Well Pad Can Involve a Dozen Companies
A producing well in North Dakota is rarely run by a single business. The operator holds the lease. A general contractor or a drilling or workover contractor runs the rig. Subcontractors handle cementing, wireline, pressure pumping, tank hauling, crane work, and site maintenance, and equipment suppliers put the pumps, lines, and lifting gear on the pad. Each signs a service agreement that spells out who supervises which task, who supplies which equipment, and who answers for site safety.
That paperwork matters more than most workers expect. The company that signs your paycheck may have had nothing to do with the valve that failed, the load that shifted, or the walkway someone left unguarded. The company that created the hazard may be a contractor you had never met before that shift.
Where Workers’ Compensation Ends and a Third-Party Claim Begins
North Dakota Workforce Safety & Insurance pays medical care and wage benefits without regard to fault. In exchange, the law closes the courthouse door on claims against a contributing employer and against that employer’s agents, servants, and other employees. Two exceptions survive:
- The first is an injury the employer caused by an intentional act done with the conscious purpose of inflicting it.
- The second is an employer that never secured the coverage the law requires, which loses the immunity entirely and can be sued directly.
Even so, that immunity stops at the edge of the payroll. The same chapter says an injured worker may claim benefits and also proceed at law to recover damages from another person whose conduct created a legal liability for the injury. Another contractor on the pad can be that person, if its work or its decisions helped cause the injury.
One trap is worth knowing before you assume a company is fair game. If a staffing service placed you with a client company, and either of them secured coverage under the statute, both share the same immunity, so the business running the site may be off limits even though it is not the name on your check.
The agency does not step aside either. Workforce Safety & Insurance is subrogated to 50% of what you recover, capped at what it has paid and would pay in the future, and it holds a lien for 50% capped at what it has actually paid so far. It carries some of the freight in return. The agency pays half the costs of the action, excluding attorney fees, while the case is pending, and after a recovery those costs are prorated against the share of the agency’s interest that came back. It also pays your attorney a set percentage of what it recovers. Both provisions apply only if you give the agency written notice of your attorney’s name and address.
How North Dakota Divides Fault Among Contractors
This is where North Dakota parts company with much of the country. Fault here is several, not joint. When two or more parties are found to have contributed to an injury, each is liable only for the damages attributable to that party’s percentage of fault. A contractor found 20% responsible pays 20%, even if the other defendants cannot pay at all. A narrow exception covers parties who act in concert, aid or encourage the conduct, or later adopt it for their benefit, and those parties are jointly liable for their combined share.
The consequence is blunt. A contractor left out of the case is a percentage of the recovery left on the table. The court may assign fault to each person who contributed, whether or not that person is a party, and on the request of any party it must. The share written next to an absent company is not redistributed to the defendants who showed up. It simply goes uncollected.
Your conduct is measured the same way. Contributory fault reduces your damages in proportion to your share, and it bars recovery outright only if your fault was as great as the combined fault of everyone else who contributed.
North Dakota law treats a wide range of conduct as fault, including:
- Negligence and reckless or willful conduct
- Failure to warn
- Misuse of a product
- Assumption of risk and failure to avoid injury
- Product liability, whether framed as negligence, strict liability, or breach of warranty
Each of those theories can attach to a different company on the same site, which is exactly why serious oilfield cases so often end with several defendants rather than one.
What Evidence Shows Each Contractor’s Role
Fault percentages are not guesses. They are built out of records that exist on every rig site and start disappearing within weeks. A serious oilfield claim usually turns on material like this:
- Service agreements and the safety obligations written into them
- Job safety analyses and pre-job meeting sign-in sheets
- Daily drilling or workover reports and dispatch logs
- Equipment inspection, certification, and maintenance files
- Photographs, helmet or dash video, and control system data
- Accounts from witnesses employed by different companies
Federal enforcement records help as well. At a site where several employers work side by side, more than one of them can be cited for the same hazard that violates a federal safety standard. The agency asks which employer created the hazard, which one exposed workers to it, which one was responsible for correcting it, and which one controlled the site.
A single company often falls into more than one of those roles at once. Naming the role is only the first step. The agency then asks whether that employer’s actions were enough to meet the obligations the role carries. That framework applies in all industry sectors, not only in construction. A citation is not the same thing as civil liability, but it points investigators and lawyers straight at the company that held the authority to fix the problem.
Filing Deadlines You Cannot Afford to Miss
North Dakota generally allows an injured worker six years to file a personal injury lawsuit. A wrongful death claim is far shorter, at two years from the date of death.
There is also a quieter clock inside the state law that governs workplace injury benefits. If the injured worker does not bring suit within 60 days after the date of injury, Workforce Safety & Insurance may file the action in its name and keep the full amount of its benefits out of the recovery instead of half. Missing that one does not end the claim, but it can quietly cost you a large share of what the claim is worth.
Waiting costs you for a second reason. Rigs move, crews rotate out of state, and electronic records roll over on a schedule. Letters demanding that each company preserve its records are often what keep a case alive.
Talk With a North Dakota Oilfield Accident Lawyer
Pringle & Herigstad, P.C. has represented injured North Dakotans since 1909, and we have handled the injury cases this state produces, including the ones that come off the rigs and the pads. We read the service agreements, track down the crews, and identify every company whose decisions contributed to the injury, because in this state a defendant nobody names is money nobody collects.
Contact us for a free consultation. We work on contingency, so you owe no attorney fee unless we recover for you.