Industrial Accidents.

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.

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.