The families of two construction workers who died nearly two years ago when an unfinished private aircraft hangar collapsed at the Boise Airport have settled a wrongful-death lawsuit against two Idaho companies involved in the project.
Terms of the settlement are confidential, attorneys for the family and the project’s general contractor separately told the Idaho Statesman. In related action, Meridian-based Big D Builders and Boise firm Walker Structural Engineering were each dismissed from the federal lawsuit last month.
A financial settlement was reached through mediation, Enrique Cerna, a lawyer for the two families, told the Statesman. James Thomson, an attorney representing Big D Builders, confirmed via 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 crash in January 2024, citing a confidentiality clause in the contract. “The customers approved it, and they are satisfied with the results,” he said in a phone interview.
A large-scale construction project buckled and collapsed on airport property in Boise while crews were building a 43-foot-tall, 39,000-square-foot engineered steel hangar for the Jackson Jet Center. Three men died on the spot in the incident.
Mario Sonte Tzi, 32, left, and Mariano “Alex” Koc Och, 24, both of Nampa, were two construction workers killed in the Jan. 31, 2024, collapse of a private aircraft hangar at Boise Airport.
Among those killed were two construction workers – Nampa residents Mario Sonte Tzi, 32, and Mariano “Alex” Koc Och, 24 – and Craig Durant, 59, of Boise, co-founder of Big D Builders. Nine other workers were injured in the incident.
Serna and Boise attorney Jane Gordon represented the heirs of the two workers.
OSHA Violations on Appeal
After a six-month investigation, the U.S. Department of Labor, which oversees the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, found “gross disregard for safety standards” for the hangar’s collapse at the construction site. The federal agency claims that fatal accidents can be prevented by strictly following industry standards.
OSHA issued citations and fined Big D Builders nearly $200,000 for safety violations — three identified as serious and one as “willful.” Boise-based crane service Inland Cranes, which worked on the project, was also cited for serious violations, with fines of about $10,000 recommended.
Inland Crane, a Boise-based crane service, and Big D Builders of Meridian, were two Idaho construction firms cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration when an unfinished aircraft hangar project collapsed in January 2024, killing three people in Boise. A safety violation against inland cranes was scheduled for April 2025.
Big D Builders and Inland Crane separately appealed OSHA’s safety violations. Inland Crane reached a formal settlement with OSHA in April, which resolved the violation case. The fine was dropped and the citation was removed from Inland Crane’s records.
“The employer agreed to take additional steps to improve worker safety, and OSHA has withdrawn the initial citation and penalty,” Michael Peterson, a regional spokesman for the Labor Department, said in a statement to the Statesman in April.
Big D Builders continues its security breaches from the Hangar project. An OSHA test is scheduled for early May in Denver.
Thomson, Big D’s attorney in the federal case, is not representing the company in its OSHA appeal. But he told the Statesman that his client declined to comment on the pending dispute.
Construction of a new hangar for the Jackson Jet Center at the Boise Airport was completed in June of this year. A previous attempt to build the project collapsed in January 2024, killing three workers and injuring nine.
Meanwhile, the company resubmitted revised construction plans for the project to the city and began rebuilding the hangar earlier this year, according to previous Statesman reporting. The Jackson Jet Center did not respond to requests from the Statesman, but a Boise airport spokeswoman said the hangar was finished in June.
The hangar hosted a cart dedication ceremony for fallen soldiers returning to Idaho that month. In September there was a “Girls in Aviation” event.
More than 300 people attended a June 2025 ceremony at the Boise Airport’s Jackson Jet Center hangar to dedicate a cart for the return of soldiers killed in Idaho.
The federal civil case is ongoing
Two families of wrongful death lawsuits are pending against additional defendants in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho.
There were only six defendants in the case initially. Serna, their attorney, determined that a lawsuit against the city for allegedly approving defective building plans was not warranted, so it was not included in them, the Statesman previously reported.
Two other companies were also liquidated, before Big D Builders and Walker Structural Engineering settled with the family and removed them from the lawsuit. One had no “independent liability,” while the other was a “defunct entity … and its name was somewhat misused,” Serna said.
The remaining lawsuit names Inland Crane & Steel Building Systems, an American custom steel fabricator, against Emmett. Inland Crane has declined to offer a settlement, a company spokesman told the Statesman in a statement.
“When OSHA withdrew its citation, it affirmed Inland Crane’s position that the company and its employees followed all safety protocols and were not at fault for the tragic incident that occurred on January 31, 2024,” Doug Self, a spokesman, said by email. “Inland looks forward to standing up to this position and defending its personnel, equipment, and work record in court.”
A listed attorney representing Steel Building Systems in the case did not return a request for comment Tuesday. In a separate federal case, an insurance provider for a steel building system sued to avoid covering its client’s potential liability in a hangar collapse lawsuit brought by the families of two workers.
On January 31, 2024, an unfinished engineered steel hangar collapsed near the Boise airport, killing three workers and injuring nine others. A wrongful death lawsuit against the project’s general contractor was recently settled.
Serna said his clients want to maintain their case and resolve it through the federal court system.
“We are still pursuing claims against everyone involved in the case, and they are both responsible for my clients’ (loved ones’) deaths,” he said. “We’ll leave it up to the people of the state of Idaho to decide when they get on the panel and who was more at fault – the inland cranes or the steel building systems that sat on them.”
