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What you can recover after a workplace injury in Texas depends almost entirely on a question most workers are never asked: does your employer actually carry workers' compensation?
Personal Injury
Texas is the only state that does not require most private employers to carry workers' compensation insurance. Employers who opt out are called non-subscribers, and they trade the protection of the comp system for exposure to ordinary negligence suits — without the defences that used to shield employers. For an injured worker, that distinction is often worth more than anything else in the case.
Medical and income benefits regardless of fault, but generally no negligence suit against that employer. Disputes over impairment ratings and denied treatment are their own fight.
A direct negligence claim, with the employer stripped of the contributory negligence, assumption of risk and fellow servant defences. Damages are not capped by the comp schedule.
A contractor, property owner, equipment maker or driver who is not your employer. This claim exists alongside comp benefits and is often the larger recovery.
Construction and the trades, warehousing and distribution, manufacturing and fabrication, refinery and petrochemical work along the ship channel, transportation and delivery, oilfield services, and maintenance and janitorial work. Houston runs on these jobs and they produce a specific set of injuries — falls, crush injuries, burns, chemical exposure, repetitive trauma and heat illness.
Non-subscribers often run their own injury benefit plan, and the enrolment documents can contain arbitration agreements and liability waivers signed on a first day of work that nobody read. These are not always enforceable and they are worth having looked at before you rely on them or sign anything new after an injury.
Injury cases are handled on a contingency fee: nothing to talk to us, nothing upfront, and the firm is paid out of the recovery. If there is no recovery there is no fee. The percentage and how case expenses are handled are in writing before you sign anything.
No. Texas allows most private employers to opt out, and whether yours did changes almost everything about your case.
An employer that has opted out of workers' compensation. They can be sued directly for negligence and lose several defences that would otherwise protect them.
Generally not for negligence — benefits are usually the exclusive remedy against that employer. Claims against other companies on the site are unaffected.
Medical treatment for the injury and a portion of lost income, regardless of fault. It does not pay for pain and suffering.
Denials are challenged through a dispute process with its own deadlines. Bring us the paperwork rather than waiting to see whether it resolves itself.
A return-to-work release from a clinic chosen by the employer is an opinion, not a diagnosis. Get evaluated independently and keep the records.
Not always. Arbitration agreements and waivers in company injury plans are not automatically enforceable, and they should be reviewed rather than assumed.
Often yes, particularly a claim against a third party, which is not barred by having received benefits.
Falls, crush and caught-in injuries, burns, electrocution, chemical exposure, equipment failures, repetitive trauma and heat illness.
Report the injury as soon as it happens and call early. Both the comp system and any negligence claim carry deadlines, and evidence on a working site disappears fast.
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