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Lawsuit in Tower Death May be Long Shot

July 1, 2015

By J. Sharpe Smith —

Robert Miller

Miller

July 2, 2015 — The mother of the woman who died in a fall from a cell tower in Concho County, Texas, March 28 has hired a lawyer to seek damages in a wrongful death suit. On the surface, it would appear that she has a good case.

Stephanie Gurney, a first-time climber from San Angelo, Texas, was on the tower with Stephen Butler and Joseph Grimes, the owner of Jostan Communications, to evaluate her tower climbing ability. But there is no evidence that she went through an established climber safety program, according to Robert Miller, the attorney hired by Lisa Weatherby, Gurney’s mother.

“You don’t normally take someone up a cell tower for an evaluation without some thorough training before they get on there,” Miller said. “You need expert training before you get on a tower.”

Here is where it gets complicated. Grimes does not appear to have been on the tower on behalf of any of the tenants or of the tower owner, which is SBA Communications. So that eliminates the deep pockets that are needed for a lawsuit.

“I would think that you would need to get permission to get on the tower,” Miller said. “If he is a trespasser on private property — if they had no control over him — you can’t sue these people.”

That leaves Jostan Communications as the only company that can be sued. As of this writing, Miller has written a letter to Grimes but has received no response. As a small concern, it probably doesn’t have the means to comply with a judgment, Miller said.

“Eventually I am going to get his attention,” he said. “But you can have the greatest damages in the world and liability, but if you can’t recover how much are going to invest in this case for the principal of it?”

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