The families of two construction workers killed in the collapse of an unfinished private airplane hangar at the Boise airport nearly two years ago have settled a wrongful-death lawsuit against two Idaho companies involved in the project.
Terms of the settlements are confidential, attorneys for the families and the project’s general contractor separately told the Idaho Statesman. In a related action, Meridian-based Big D Builders and Boise-based Walker Structural Engineering were dismissed from the federal case last month.
The financial agreements were reached through mediation, Enrique Serna, the lawyer for the two families, told the Statesman. Attorney James Thomson, who represents Big D Builders, confirmed by email the confidential nature of the resolution accepted by his client.
Serna declined to say whether the two firms admitted any fault for the fatal accident in January 2024, citing the non-disclosure clause of the agreements. “The customers have approved it and are happy with the result,” he said in a telephone interview.
The large-scale construction project on Boise airport property warped and overturned while crews were still building a 150-foot-tall, 39,000-square-foot steel hangar designed for the Jackson Jet Center. Three men died at the scene after each suffered blunt force trauma injuries in the incident, the Ada County Coroner’s Office reported in the days after their deaths.
Mario Sontay Tzi, 32, left, and Mariano “Alex” Coc Och, 24, both of Nampa, were two construction workers killed in the collapse of a private aircraft hangar at Boise Airport on Jan. 31, 2024.
The victims were the two construction workers — Nampa residents Mario Sontay Tzi, 32, and Mariano “Alex” Coc Och, 24 — and Craig Durrant, 59, of Boise, co-founder of Big D Builders. Nine other workers were injured in the incident.
Serna represented the heirs of the two workers.
OSHA violations on appeal
Following a six-month investigation, the US Department of Labor, which oversees the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, found an “egregious failure to comply with safety standards” at the site that led to the hangar’s collapse. The federal agency said the fatal accident could have been prevented with stricter adherence to industry standards.
OSHA issued citations and fined Big D Builders nearly $200,000 for safety violations — three serious and one identified as “willful.” Inland Crane, a Boise crane service working on the project, was also cited for a serious violation with a recommended fine of about $10,000.
Inland Crane, a crane service in Boise, and Big D Builders, of Meridian, were two Idaho construction firms cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration after an unfinished airplane hangar project collapsed and killed three men in January 2024 in Boise. The security breach against Inland Crane was settled in April 2025.
Big D Builders and Inland Crane separately challenged OSHA’s safety violations. Inland Crane reached a formal settlement in April with OSHA, which resolved the violation case. The fine was waived and the citation was expunged from Inland Crane’s record.
“The employer has agreed to take additional steps to improve worker safety, and OSHA has withdrawn the original citations and penalties,” Michael Petersen, a regional spokesman for the Department of Labor, said in a statement to the States in April.
Big D Builders continues to challenge its safety violations from the hangar project. An OSHA trial is scheduled for early May in Denver.
Thomson, Big D’s attorney in the federal lawsuit, is not representing the company in the OSHA appeal. But he told the Statesman that his client declined to comment on the ongoing dispute.
Construction of a new hangar for the Jackson Jet Center at Boise Airport was completed by June of this year. A previous attempt to build the project collapsed in January 2024, killing three workers and injuring nine more.
Meanwhile, the company resubmitted amended construction plans for the project to the city and began rebuilding the hangar earlier this year, according to earlier reports by the Statesman. Jackson Jet Center did not respond to requests from the Statesman, but a Boise Airport spokesman said the hangar was finished by June.
The hangar hosted a wagon dedication ceremony for fallen soldiers returning to Idaho that month. A “Girs in Aviation” event followed there in September.
More than 300 people attended a ceremony to dedicate a cart for the return of fallen soldiers to Idaho in the Jackson Jet Center hangar on Boise Airport property in June 2025.
The federal civil suit continues
The two families’ wrongful death lawsuit against additional defendants is ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho.
The case originally included six defendants. Serna, their attorney, determined that a lawsuit against the city over earlier allegations that it approved flawed building plans was not warranted, so it was not included, the Statesman previously reported.
Before Big D Builders and Walker Structural Engineering settled with the families and were removed from the case, two other companies were also fired. One had no “independent liability,” while the other was a “defunct entity … and its name was misused a little bit,” Serna said.
The remaining lawsuit names Inland Crane and Steel Building Systems, a U.S. custom steel manufacturer with a location in Emmett. Inland Crane declined to offer a settlement, a company spokesman said in a statement to the Statesman.
“When OSHA withdrew its citation, it confirmed Inland Crane’s position that the company and its employees followed all safety protocols and were not at fault in the tragic incident on January 31, 2024,” Doug Self said via email. “Inland looks forward to defending this position and defending its employees, equipment and labor record in court.”
The listed attorney representing Steel Building Systems in the case did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday. In a separate federal case, Steel Building Systems’ insurance provider sued to avoid covering its client’s potential liability in the hangar collapse lawsuit brought by the families of the two workers.
An unfinished steel hangar collapsed near the Boise airport on January 31, 2024, killing three workers and injuring nine others. A wrongful death lawsuit against the project’s general contractor was recently settled.
Serna said his clients plan to maintain their case and resolve it through the federal court system.
“We are filing complaints against everyone who is still involved in the case and both are responsible for the deaths of my clients (loved ones),” he said. “We’ll leave it up to the people of the state of Idaho to make that determination when they’re sat down and sat down as to who was more at fault — Indoor Crane or Steel Building Systems.”