Jury Returns $101M In Retaining Wall Collapse Case

John McCabe will present a debrief of Valdez v. Hajoca Corporation for members of the Auto Torts & Premises Liability Section on Wednesday, Sept. 16. Section members can register here.

Valdez v. Hajoca Corporation

Case Type: Construction Negligence / Premises Liability / Personal Injury / Loss of Consortium
Attorney(s) for Plaintiff(s): John McCabe (The Law Offices of John M. McCabe, Cary); Brian Davis and Beth Davis (Davis Law Group, Asheville); Meredith Hinton (Ricci Law Firm)
Result: $101 million jury verdict
Date of Incident: Jan. 13, 2021
Date of Verdict: May 12, 19, 2026
Venue: Henderson County Superior Court
Judge: Steve R. Warren

A Henderson County jury appears to have made North Carolina history recently as it returned a $101 million compensatory damages verdict, believed to be the largest in state history. The circumstances giving rise to this monumental verdict surrounded the collapse of a retaining wall in Hendersonville that killed one masonry worker and severely injured several others. The fact pattern arose from the reconstruction of the wall, which had originally separated two commercial properties before collapsing in 2021. One of the properties was leased for use as a Hajoca plumbing supply “Profit Center.” The Plaintiffs alleged, and the facts would later demonstrate, that although Hajoca Corporation and its local manager denied direct involvement in the reconstruction of the wall, the evidence showed that they functionally controlled the project, rejected engineering, rejected permitting, directly coordinated the reconstruction project, and pushed the project forward in a manner that rendered the repaired wall structurally unsound.

The property in question is located on Spartanburg Highway in Hendersonville. The facility that Hajoca rented for its “Pofit Center” was owned by W.D. Building Rentals, LLC, with the adjoining property occupied by a used-car dealership. Prior to its collapse, the wall bisected the two properties, running perpendicular to Spartanburg Rd. It was approximately 10-feet tall and roughly 150 feet in length, with the Hajoca facility situated below street level.

Several months before what would be the fatal collapse, a storm caused the original retaining wall to fail. Its collapse created substantial problems for the Hajoca location. Mud, debris, and damaged materials were left in the parking and work areas, including the portion of the property where pipe and other inventory had been stored and where contractors and customers accessed the business. The local Hajoca manager, Andrew Weymouth, wanted the wall rebuilt.

The issue was complicated by a dispute between the landlord and the adjoining property owner over who owned the affected land, who was responsible for the wall, and who should pay for its repair. One proposed solution involved leaving the affected land as merely a sloping hill between the two properties and landscaping the area without reconstructing the wall. Even W.D. Building Rentals, LLC agreed with this proposal, but critically, Hajoca’s management disagreed. And not passively. It would later come out at trial that Mr. Weymouth was in such a hurry to get the wall put back up that he took it upon himself to spearhead an effort to convince his property owner to allow him to get a land transfer effectuated between the property owner from whom Hajoca was renting and the adjoining owner so that he could get on with rebuilding the retaining wall as quickly as possible. It was even discovered that he had hired the lawyers to finalize the deed transfer, and even admitted in emails that were not produced until shortly before trial—nearly five years later—to those attorneys how much of a hurry he was in to get the land transfer finished so that Hajoca could get the wall back up.  

As would be demonstrated at trial, that desire for speed led Weymouth to initiate and assume control over the project. The evidence developed in litigation showed that in addition to negotiating the land transfer and communicating with attorneys, Weymouth coordinated contractors, scheduled work, and served as the central point of direction for the project, despite not being a licensed general contractor and having limited, if any, experience in construction. The Plaintiffs contended that his role was not merely administrative or informational, but rather operational and critical to the wall not being engineered and soundly constructed..

The first repair proposal obtained after the storm contemplated engineering, accounted for proper permitting, and bore a cost exceeding $200,000. That proposal was rejected. A second proposal, also involving engineering and permitting, came in substantially lower at around $46,000, but this was rejected by Hajoca, Weymouth, and its landlord, WD Building Rentals. The project ultimately went forward when Hajoca and Weymouth contacted and hired a masonry contractor, Robert Crawford Masonry, to rebuild the wall at a far lower cost, with none of the involved parties obtaining engineering plans or permits.

The rebuilt structure was a concrete masonry unit retaining wall. This entailed that after the wall structure was constructed and installed, concrete would be poured in to solidify it. After pouring the concrete, the masonry contractor specifically told Weymouth, the Hajoca Profit Center manger, that the concrete needed ten days to cure before placing any backfill behind the wall.

The Plaintiffs alleged that the instruction to wait was disregarded, and it was later determined that Mr. Weymouth arranged for the backfill to begin the very next day. Mr. Weymouth and Hajoca arranged and directed for large quantities of dirt and gravel backill to be placed behind the newly constructed wall within days of the concrete being poured, and prior to it being allowed to cure. According to the plaintiffs’ evidence, roughly 210 tons of backfill was placed behind the wall before the curing period had elapsed.

For several days, the wall remained standing.

Then, on Jan. 13, 2021, at the request of Hajoca’s Profit Center Manager, a Robert Crawford Masonry crew returned to the site to perform work near the base of the wall. The conditions were not windy, stormy, or unusual. Yet despite these reassuring conditions, without warning, the wall failed.

The collapse was captured on video, which the Plaintiffs played for the jury at trial. According to counsel, the footage showed the wall failing suddenly and falling in a single mass rather than gradually crumbling. One of the workers, Marcelino Hernandez, was tragically killed as a result of the collapse. Other workers, including the Plaintiffs in this matter, suffered serious and life-altering injuries.

OSHA investigated the incident, and litigation followed. The Plaintiffs sued Hajoca Corporation, Andrew Weymouth, W.D. Building Rentals, LLC, and others connected to the project.

The case would eventually progress for nearly four years. Discovery was extensive, and the dispute was hard-fought, even including one trip to the Court of Appeals after Hajoca pursued a third-party claim against Robert Crawford Masonry (which was eventually dismissed at the appellate level). The Plaintiffs pursued a theory that Hajoca and Weymouth exercised control over the reconstruction project and served as the de facto project manager, while the Defendants contended that the masonry contractor bore responsibility for the wall’s failure.

The distinction proved central. Defendants argued that Hajoca was a plumbing supply company, not a masonry contractor, and that the collapse resulted from construction defects in the wall itself. The Defense focused particularly on the manner in which the wall had been built, including whether the rebar was sufficiently embedded and whether the wall was adequately anchored to withstand the load placed behind it.

The Plaintiffs’ case focused less on the formal job titles and more on what actually occurred. They argued that Weymouth’s conduct went well beyond what a normal customer would do and that he demonstrated and exercised control over the project: he pushed the project forward, negotiated the land transaction, communicated with lawyers, hired and coordinated the contractors, directed the work, provided specific instructions on how the wall should be built, scheduled and directed the premature backfill, and functioned as the person directing the time and manner of the work. The Plaintiffs emphasized that the more expensive rebuild options (the ones that included engineering and permitting) were rejected, that the final project proceeded without engineering plans or permits, and that the backfill occurred at Hajoca and Weymouth’s direction before the concrete in the wall had time to cure.

By the time of trial, the case had already narrowed. Claims involving other injured workers were resolved before or even during the trial, with one (the wrongful death claim) resolving the Saturday before the trial was set to gavel in on Monday morning, and with another resolving three days in to proceedings. Remaining for the jury were the personal injury claims of Mr. McCabe and Mr. Davis’ clients, along with the loss-of-consortium claim asserted by the wife of Mr. McCabe’s client.

The trial involved approximately 28 witnesses. Plaintiffs presented evidence not only regarding the mechanics of the collapse, but also regarding site control, project sequencing, communications among the parties, certain portions of the OSHA investigation (although the trial judge deemed the OSHA violations themselves to be admissible), and the practical realities of how the reconstruction was managed, with the video of the collapse served as a key visual anchor for the liability case.

Hajoca and Weymouth, as expected, denied that they controlled the work. Weymouth characterized his role as that of a person relaying information between others. The Plaintiffs utilized the record evidence, which included extensive deposition testimony, project communications, witness testimony, and the sequence of events to argue that such a characterization did not match the reality of the project.

The jury was asked in Phase 1 to determine whether the McCabe and Davis clients were injured by the negligence of Andrew Weymouth, Hajoca Corporation, and W.D. Building Rentals, LLC.

After 35 minutes of deliberations, the jury found for the Plaintiffs on all claims in the liability phase. The Phase 1 verdict sheet reflects negligence issues submitted as to Andrew Weymouth, Hajoca Corporation, and W.D. Building Rentals, LLC, as well as the Jury’s finding of no contributory negligence on the part of the injured Plaintiffs and a finding of employer negligence on behalf of Robert Crawford Masonry

In Phase 2, the jury awarded compensatory damages of $45 million apiece to the two injured Plaintiffs and considered the loss-of-consortium claim brought on behalf of one of their spouses. Admittedly to the surprise of even the Plaintiffs, the loss of consortium claim came back with a verdict of $11 million, despite the Plaintiffs only having asked for $10 million. The resulting compensatory verdict was approximately $101 million.

After completing the compensatory damages phase of the trial, the trial proceeded into the third and final phase – punitive damages.  As the jury was deliberating on the punitive damages, the parties reached a confidential settlement, bringing the case to a close.

The verdict is notable not only for its size, but for the theory by which plaintiffs obtained it. Rather than merely framing the issue as a dispute about disagreements over masonry techniques, the Plaintiffs were sure to keep the Jury’s attention on the question of control. The central question was determining who actually ran the project, who made the decisions that mattered, and who was responsible for allowing an unengineered and prematurely backfilled retaining wall to exist in a state and in a location where it was so likely to cause the harms that eventually resulted.

That framing allowed the Plaintiffs to address anticipated defenses regarding the masonry contractor’s work, superseding and intervening negligence, the independent contractor rule, and any attempts to hide behind contentions of contributory negligence on the part of the injured Plaintiffs. The Defendants argued that the wall failed because the masonry contractor failed to construct it properly, to which the Plaintiffs responded that the unsafe condition was the foreseeable product of a rushedand under-engineered project. The masonry details mattered, as did the question of whether the workers should have been sent into harms way in the first place, but only as part of a broader sequence of decisions.

Further in defense against contributory negligence claims, the Plaintiffs countered that the workers were not responsible for the project decisions that placed massive amounts of fill behind the wall before it was ready and that they had no meaningful ability to protect themselves from a sudden structural failure.

The loss-of-consortium claim was also of significance as one of the larger and more demonstrative recoveries in recent history.

For practitioners, the case offers several lessons. Perhaps most notably, as the saying goes, is to never judge a book by its cover when considering traditional notions of geopolitical and socioeconomic predisposition during litigation and trial prep. Attorney McCabe was incredibly forthcoming with crediting the immense amount of help provided on the case by Attorney Alicia Campbell of Campbell Law, out of St. Louis, who introduced the Plaintiffs’ team to recent innovations in how “big data” analysis can be utilized to pinpoint and game-out likely trial and jury outcomes before they even happen in the real world. McCabe even noted at one point the models they were running for their trial plan when posed against the anticipated argument from the Defense rendered a success rate of up to 90% in the run-up to trial.

The case also underscores the importance of persistence in discovery. As also noted by Plaintiffs’ counsel, communications concerning Weymouth’s role in the land transfer and wall project became important evidence in proving control. Those communications supported a narrative that the project was not simply being observed by Hajoca’s local manager but was being driven by him.

Further, the verdict demonstrates the power of a clear liability theme in a technically complex case. The wall failure involved engineering, masonry, construction sequencing, property ownership, OSHA findings, employer negligence, contributory negligence, and multiple defendants. The Plaintiffs were able to reduce those issues to a central question understandable to jurors: who was in charge?

This case demonstrated perhaps most clearly of all that there can truly be no better predictor of a favorable trial outcome than a jury comprised of serious and compassionate individuals who are willing to engage with the facts, connect with the evidence, immerse themselves in the narrative, and deliberate in good faith towards a fair outcome.

McCabe made particular note of how all involved were thoroughly impressed with the diligence of the jury, noting the genuine feat that was their service over what was a grueling six-week trial that saw proceedings have to stop for a few days to allow for sick jurors to recover, and even saw one juror have to be excused from the matter due to an extended illness. He noted also that many of the jurors faced significant financial hardship as a result of their service, but were not dissuaded from their enthusiasm for their respective roles. Even the jury selection process in this matter proved contentious, extending to seven days in total, which included three different jury pools, and multiple jurors excused for hardship or cause.

“We had a phenomenal jury,” said McCabe. “They were attentive, they cared, and they took their job really serious.” “The judge literally was in tears thanking them for their dedication and telling them that they were a perfect example of how our justice system is supposed to work, and they truly were.”