Orlando Rodriguez Trial Lawyer · Houston
Practice Areas

Industrial Accidents.

Houston runs on the people inside its plants. When a company cuts corners on safety, I send the bill back.

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The situations I hear about most, answered honestly: which are cases I take, which are not, and where to go either way. Read it first → Or see where else to go.

Refineries, chemical plants, and construction sites run on schedules and budgets. When safety loses that contest, workers pay with their bodies.

Houston is the energy capital of the country, and its economy is built on some of the most dangerous work there is. An industrial injury is rarely bad luck. It usually traces to a decision: a skipped inspection, a disabled safety device, a rushed shutdown, a crew sent into a space that was not made safe. Finding that decision, and the company behind it, is the work.

Texas is the opt-out state

Texas is the only state where employers can choose not to carry workers' compensation. Those employers are called non-subscribers, and the choice has a consequence. If a non-subscriber's negligence hurts you, you can sue it directly, in court, for your full damages, and it cannot fall back on the usual defenses that blame the worker.

Under Texas Labor Code Section 406.033, a non-subscribing employer sued by an injured employee cannot assert the common-law defenses of contributory negligence, assumption of the risk, or the fellow-servant rule. The employee must still prove the employer's negligence, but the deck is not stacked with those defenses.

Third-party claims

Even where workers' compensation applies and bars a suit against your employer, it does not touch everyone else. Refineries and job sites are crowded with other companies: contractors, subcontractors, equipment manufacturers, and property owners. When one of them causes the injury, a third-party claim against that company preserves your right to full recovery, including damages that workers' compensation never pays. Sorting out who is who, early, is often where the real case is found. When the company is the owner of the site, Texas law sets a higher bar first: read Chapter 95.

OSHA and the safety rules

Federal workplace safety standards set the baseline for how this work is supposed to be done, from fall protection to confined-space entry to machine guarding. A violation of those rules, and the citations and reports that follow an incident, are powerful evidence that a company chose speed or cost over the safety it owed its workers.

Industrial cases I handle
Oilfield & Frac Site Injuries
Frac sites, rigs and well locations, where the company that signs your check is one of many.
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The Company Doctor
If your employer carries workers’ comp, you choose the doctor who treats you, not the company.
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Refinery & Plant Explosions
Blast and burn injuries from the failures that turn a plant into a hazard in an instant.
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Falls & Crush Injuries
Falls from height and caught-between injuries on job sites, and the safety rules meant to prevent them.
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Non-Subscriber Work Injury
When your employer opted out of workers' comp, you can sue it directly, and it loses its usual defenses.
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Third-Party Claims
The other companies on site who caused the harm, and the full recovery a claim against them preserves.
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Chapter 95: The Owner’s Shield
Hurt at a plant that is not your employer’s: the statute that protects the owner, and the two things that get past it.
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From The Night Docket

The science of these injuries, from my writing desk:

The Body: The Gas You Stop Smelling →
Hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs at very low levels, and then, at the levels that hurt, the nose can stop reporting it. What the gas does inside the body, why some of the harm can come a day or more later, why rescuers can become the second victims, what the workplace limits are, and why the proof of an exposure is the air readings and the clock, not a blood test for the gas.
One Word: Shelter in Place →
Shelter in place: three words that send a town indoors. What the order means, why a closed house protects for a while and then stops, why the all-clear is half of the order, who gives it and on whose information, and what the words do afterward. A federal rule lists sheltering in place beside deaths and injuries as an offsite impact a covered plant must report. In a case, the order is a dated public record that officials judged the outside air a risk. It is not proof of what any one person breathed.
The Body: The Dose →
After a chemical release the first question is what it was. The second decides more: how much reached a person, and for how long. Toxicology’s rule is that the dose makes the poison, and the Texas Supreme Court has quoted it. The emergency yardsticks are written for stretches of ten minutes to eight hours, because time is part of the measure. Smell is not a measure, and neither is feeling fine. Where the dose is written down: the plant’s reports, the air monitors, a person’s own account, and the medical record.
One Word: Serious Violation →
Serious violation: the word on the OSHA citation after a worker is hurt sounds like a verdict, and it is not. The statute defines it by what could have happened and by what the employer knew or should have known, not by what did happen; the citation runs on its own clock, six months to issue and fifteen working days to contest; the penalty number says as much about the size and history of the company as about the hazard; and the statute itself says it neither enlarges nor diminishes anyone’s rights in a civil case. What the word means, how a citation is issued, priced and fought, why the number can shrink without the hazard shrinking, what the citation is and is not in a Texas injury case against a subscriber, a nonsubscriber or a third party, and the file a family should ask for before it is gone.
Dispatch: Hours Later →
A plant fire puts a column of smoke over a town, and the people who breathe it are sorted, without knowing it, by chemistry. Some gases announce themselves the instant they are breathed. Others say almost nothing, and those are the ones that put a person who walked away feeling fine into an emergency room that night. What the federal medical guidelines say, gas by gas, about which ones burn at once and which ones wait hours to fill the lungs, the process-safety duty a plant owes when it holds dangerous chemicals in quantity, why comp is a floor and not a ceiling for the worker, what the family next door has to ask, and why the record made early is the case.
The Fifth Circuit: DuFour v. BP →
A shoreline cleanup worker after the Deepwater Horizon spill said almost three years of crude oil and dispersant made his asthma worse. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the exclusion of both of his causation experts and the summary judgment that followed: a toxic-exposure plaintiff must prove general and specific causation through reliable expert evidence, a study of a different condition in a different population does not carry his case, and a treating doctor who never wrote a causation opinion is not a causation witness. A dissent would have let a factfinder weigh the linear relationship the study found. What the decision asks of every refinery, plant and spill case: the dose, the study that matches, and the expert who says so in writing.
Dispatch: Lift, Not Hold →
A floor jack is built to lift a car, not to hold it up, and the device built to hold it, the jack stand, is where the law begins, not the person who was underneath. On the West Side of San Antonio a man in his thirties died when the floor jack under the car he was working on gave out. What the manual for an ordinary floor jack warns, what the federal occupational safety rule requires the instant the load is up, the jack stands that were themselves recalled in 2020, and the questions Texas products law asks before anyone blames the man under the car.
The Fifth Circuit: Allemond v. Talos →
A welder on a platform off Louisiana lost a fingertip to the moving conductor pipe he was hired to brace, after seven warnings that morning. No unreasonable risk under Louisiana’s risk-utility test, no proof of what a safer method would cost, and an operational-control argument forfeited because it was never made in the district court.
The Body: The Quiet Gas →
Carbon monoxide has no color and no smell, and it takes oxygen’s seat in the blood and holds it about two hundred times harder. Why the symptoms look like the flu, why the fingertip monitor reads normal, the injury that shows up weeks later, what the storms taught Texas about generators, and what the law asks.
Dispatch: The Edge →
Falls, slips, and trips killed 844 American workers in 2024, 77 in Texas. Why a fall from height is a case about the edge: the six-foot rule and the standard OSHA cites most.
The Body: The Splash →
A chemical in the eye: acid or alkali, why the water has to be within ten seconds, and what the law requires around corrosive chemicals.
One Word: Secondary →
A face shield belongs over goggles. What OSHA requires when the job means acid or caustic, and why the equipment is evidence.
Competent Person →
Every trench needs someone who can see a cave-in coming and has the power to stop the work. What that person enforces, and why the case turns on who held the power.
Dispatch: On the Job →
557 Texas workers killed on the job in 2024, the two causes that lead, and why comp is a floor and not a ceiling for a worker’s case.
Fertilizer →
Ammonium nitrate detonation and blast lung, the mechanism behind an industrial explosion.
Fire →
Post-incident fire, fuel-fed burns, and the science of inhalation injury.
Inspection →
The safety check that should have caught it, and what its absence proves.
Custom →
Industry practice, and how it cuts both ways in a safety case.
Common Questions
Can I sue my employer for a workplace injury in Texas?
It depends on whether your employer carries workers' compensation. Texas lets employers opt out, and if yours is a non-subscriber, you can generally sue it directly for negligence, and it cannot use the usual defenses that blame the worker under Labor Code Section 406.033.
What is a third-party claim?
It is a claim against someone other than your employer, such as a contractor, equipment manufacturer, or property owner whose negligence caused your injury. Third-party claims can be brought even when workers' compensation covers your employer, and they can recover damages comp does not pay.
What does OSHA have to do with my case?
Federal OSHA standards set the safety baseline for the work. A violation, and the citations or reports issued after an incident, can be strong evidence that a company put speed or cost ahead of the safety it owed.

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Contact Orlando Rodriguez

(713) 239-2300