Houston Workplace Injury Lawyer

In every other state, workers' compensation is mandatory. In Texas, private employers can choose not to carry it — and when a non-subscriber's negligence injures a worker, that worker can sue the employer directly for the full range of personal injury damages: all medical care, all lost wages and earning capacity, and pain and suffering. That is dramatically more than the limited wage and medical benefits workers' comp pays.

The advantage runs deeper than the damages. Under Texas Labor Code § 406.033, a non-subscriber employer that gets sued is stripped of the classic common-law defenses: it cannot argue contributory negligence (that you were partly careless), assumption of the risk (that you knew the job was dangerous), or the fellow-servant rule (that a co-worker caused it). If the employer's negligence played any part in causing your injury — inadequate training, missing safety equipment, understaffing, a dangerous procedure — the employer is liable, even if you were partly at fault too. The Legislature designed that rule as the price of opting out, and it is a powerful tool for injured workers.

If your employer is a workers' comp subscriber, comp benefits are generally the exclusive remedy against the employer itself — you usually cannot sue your employer for negligence, with narrow exceptions such as an intentional act or certain gross-negligence death claims brought by a family. Comp pays medical care and a portion of lost wages, but nothing for pain and suffering.

That is not the end of the analysis, and this is where many injured workers leave money on the table. Comp only bars claims against your employer — anyone else whose negligence contributed to the injury can still be sued in a third-party claim. On a Houston construction site that list is long: general contractors and subcontractors from other trades who created the hazard, property owners who controlled the site, equipment and machinery manufacturers whose products failed, delivery and vehicle drivers, and maintenance companies. You can receive comp benefits and pursue the third-party case at the same time; the comp carrier may assert a lien on the recovery, and negotiating that lien down is part of our job.

Construction consistently produces the most severe injuries we see, and the deadliest hazards are well known in the industry: falls from scaffolding, ladders, roofs, and unguarded edges; struck-by incidents involving falling tools, swinging loads, and vehicles; electrocution from live wires and overhead power lines; and caught-in or -between events, including trench and excavation collapses — a danger that turns lethal in seconds, because soil is far heavier than most people imagine.

These incidents are rarely freak accidents. They trace back to choices: skipped fall protection, unshored trenches, missing lockout/tagout procedures, untrained crews pushed to meet schedule. Multi-employer sites also mean multiple layers of responsibility — the subcontractor that created the hazard, the general contractor that controlled safety on the site, the owner that pushed the timeline. Sorting out who owed what duty — and who carried which insurance policy — is exactly the kind of investigation these cases require, and it often changes what a claim is worth.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets minimum safety standards for American workplaces — fall protection, trenching and excavation, scaffolding, electrical safety, machine guarding — and investigates serious incidents. OSHA cannot get you compensated; its citations and penalties run against the employer, not to the worker. But an OSHA investigation file, citation history, and the safety standards themselves can be persuasive evidence of what a reasonably careful company should have done and didn't.

We build work injury cases on that kind of proof: OSHA findings, site safety plans and toolbox-talk records, training files, equipment inspection and maintenance logs, witness statements from co-workers, and photographs of the scene before it changes. Job sites change fast — the trench gets filled, the scaffold comes down, the crew scatters to other projects — so preserving evidence early is not optional. We send preservation demands at the start of every case.

Texas generally allows two years from the date of injury to file a work injury lawsuit (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003). Other clocks run faster: workers' comp has its own short administrative deadlines for reporting an injury and filing a claim, and government-entity cases carry notice deadlines measured in months. (This is general information, not legal advice about your specific deadline.)

Expect pressure while you're still hurting. Non-subscriber employers often route injured workers into company-friendly "occupational injury plans" and push quick releases; adjusters call early with settlements priced long before anyone knows whether you can return to your trade. Do not sign anything before a lawyer reviews it — a release can end your rights permanently, and your ability to do heavy work for the next twenty years may be exactly what's at stake.

What to do now: report the injury to your employer in writing, get medical care and describe exactly how the injury happened, photograph the scene and equipment if you can, keep the names of co-workers who saw it, and call us. The consultation is free, we are available 24/7, and you pay nothing unless we recover for you.