San AntonioOilfield InjuryLawyer

You were just doing your job.

On the rig floor, on a lease road, in the yard. You did the work the way you were trained to do it, and you trusted the people above you to run a safe site: the right equipment, a full crew, and enough time to do the job right. Most days that trust holds. The day it doesn’t, the energy stored in all that equipment has to go somewhere, and it usually goes into a person.

If that’s how you got hurt, or how you lost someone, here’s what Texas law actually gives you, and how I work it.

Why oilfield cases are different in Texas

Texas is the only state that lets an employer opt out of the workers’ compensation system entirely. An employer that opts out is called a “non-subscriber” (a company that carries no workers’ comp insurance). That choice cuts both ways. Standard workers’ comp usually pays medical bills and part of your lost wages, but nothing for pain and suffering. A non-subscriber, though, gives up the legal shields that comp normally hands an employer. In a non-subscriber case a hurt worker may sue the employer directly for negligence, and the employer often can’t fall back on the usual defenses, like blaming a co-worker or arguing you assumed the risk.

Then there’s Chapter 95 (a part of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code that can limit a property owner’s liability to a contractor working on the owner’s property). It’s the kind of rule that can decide a case before a jury ever hears it, and it turns on details most people would walk right past. Reading which rule fits your facts is much of the work.

I’ve put the whole playbook in one place. If you want the detail, read the full guide to Texas oilfield injury law: how Chapter 95 works, what a non-subscriber case looks like, and what the first weeks after an injury should look like.

The chain of responsibility

An oilfield injury rarely traces back to one company. A single pad might have an operator, a drilling contractor, a service company, a staffing outfit, and equipment makers, all working the same site, all bound together by contracts written long before you got hurt. Master service agreements (the contracts between operators and contractors that decide who answers for what) often try to shift the blame and the cost in advance.

Each of those companies may carry its own insurance, and a third party (a company other than your employer, like an equipment manufacturer or another contractor) can sometimes be held responsible for the full range of harm, including pain and suffering and mental anguish, that workers’ comp leaves out. This is where my background earns its keep. I spent years as a corporate lawyer reading exactly this kind of paperwork, the agreements companies use to point at each other when someone gets hurt.

The Eagle Ford, specifically

Much of South Texas sits on the Eagle Ford Shale, and the field runs right up to San Antonio’s doorstep. The crews, the yards, the sand haulers, and the injured workers all pass through here. That’s why these cases keep landing in this part of the state, and why the firm sits here too.

What to do right now

If you were hurt on a rig or a lease, get medical care first, then get a lawyer moving before the site changes. Equipment gets repaired, crews roll off to the next job, and paperwork gets filed away. Have a family member call if you can’t. And before you give any company or insurer a recorded statement, talk to somebody whose job is protecting you. A statement given in the fog of week one can follow the case for years.

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