It depends on whether your employer carries workers' compensation. If they do (a 'subscriber'), you generally can't sue them directly and instead pursue comp benefits. If they don't (a 'non-subscriber'), you can sue for negligence — and non-subscribers lose key defenses, which often benefits the injured worker. Either way, a third party who contributed to your injury can usually be sued separately. We'll sort out which path applies to you.
Jimmy personally reviews every submission — most people hear back the same day.
Texas is the only state that does not require most private employers to carry workers' compensation. Whether yours chose to is the single fact that decides what you can do — and a great many injured workers do not know the answer for their own employer.
You can find out. Employers must notify employees of their coverage status, and the Texas Department of Insurance's Division of Workers' Compensation maintains coverage information you can request. Do that before you assume anything.
Workers' compensation benefits are the exclusive remedy against your employer for a work-related injury. You get medical benefits and income benefits without having to prove anyone was negligent — that is the trade the system makes — and in exchange you generally cannot sue the company, or a co-worker, for causing it.
There is one statutory exception and it is narrow enough that it should be described precisely rather than hinted at. Where an employee dies because of the employer's gross negligence or an intentional act, the surviving spouse or heirs of the body may recover exemplary damages. Note the three limits: it requires death, not injury; it is limited to exemplary damages; and standing is limited to those beneficiaries.
Comp cases also come with their own procedures and deadlines, run through the Division rather than a courthouse, and a dispute over benefits is a different fight from a negligence suit.
Now you can sue for negligence — and Texas law strips the employer of the defenses that would normally do the work.
A non-subscriber may not argue that you were contributorily negligent, that you assumed the risk, or that a fellow employee caused it. That removes the three most common defenses in a workplace injury case, and it is a substantial advantage. The ordinary proportionate responsibility reduction that applies to a car wreck does not cut your recovery here the way it otherwise would.
Be clear about what remains: you must still prove the employer was negligent. Getting hurt at a non-subscriber is not automatic recovery. There has to be a failure — unsafe equipment, no training, a known hazard left in place, inadequate staffing, a missing guard.
Two more things worth knowing. A waiver you signed before being injured is void and unenforceable under Texas law, whatever it says and whatever anyone told you at orientation. And a waiver signed after an injury is valid only under strict conditions: voluntary and knowing, in writing, signed no earlier than the tenth business day after you reported the injury, after a non-emergency medical evaluation, and printed conspicuously. Many of the documents workers are handed in the first week fail those requirements.
Whether or not your employer is a subscriber, you can sue a third party whose negligence contributed to your injury. That claim is not barred by the exclusive remedy rule because it is not against your employer.
On a jobsite, that is often where the real recovery is: a general contractor or another subcontractor, the owner of the premises, the manufacturer of a defective tool or machine, a maintenance company, a staffing agency's client, the driver of a vehicle that hit you while you were working. A worker covered by comp who is hurt by another trade's crew has both a comp claim and a negligence claim against that company.
Report the injury in writing to your employer and keep a copy — a verbal report to a foreman is the most common gap in these cases. Get medical care and say clearly that the injury happened at work. Photograph the equipment, the area and the condition before it is repaired or cleaned up, because it will be. Write down who was present. And do not sign anything describing itself as a benefit plan election, an arbitration agreement or a release until someone who represents you has read it.
The limitations period for a negligence suit in Texas is two years, and comp deadlines are shorter. Finding out which system you are in is free and takes one conversation.
Authority: Tex. Labor Code § 408.001 (exclusive remedy) · Tex. Labor Code § 406.033 (non-subscriber) · Texas Division of Workers' Compensation
Employers must tell you, and the Division of Workers' Compensation has coverage information.
A verbal report to a supervisor is the most common hole in a workplace injury case.
The condition that hurt you will be repaired. Document it while it still exists.
Pre-injury waivers are void, but a post-injury one can bind you. Have it read first.
Rear-endings, intersection crashes, uninsured drivers, hit-and-runs — in Houston, El Paso, and everywhere in between.
Federal regulations, black-box data, driver logs, multiple insurers. We move fast to preserve evidence before it disappears.
Hurt on the job for a non-subscriber employer, or injured by a third party at a job site? Texas gives you real options.
When the worst happens, we pursue accountability for surviving families with the care and seriousness it deserves.
La consulta es gratis y confidencial. No paga nada a menos que ganemos su caso. Jimmy contesta personalmente, hoy mismo.
Every day you wait, evidence disappears and the insurer gets ahead. One free call. Straight answers about your case — in English or Spanish. If you need a fighter, you'll have one. If you don't, I'll tell you that too.
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