Midland, Texas Mass Shooting — Legal Rights of Victims and Families When Security Fails
If you are reading this page, you or someone you love was at the wrong place at the worst time. One person is dead. Ten more are injured — some may still be in the hospital, some may be home wondering why the headaches will not stop, some may be unable to close their eyes without seeing it again. Midland Mayor Lori Blong confirmed the toll: at least one fatality, ten injuries, a Friday that shattered eleven lives and the families behind them.
You are probably sitting in a hospital waiting room, a kitchen, or a parking lot. The news is still breaking. The police are still investigating. And somewhere, a surveillance camera is already recording over the footage of what happened.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial lawyers who take Texas cases, and this page exists because you typed a search at the worst moment of your life and landed here. Everything that follows is written to give you the truth about your rights, the evidence that is disappearing right now, and what happens next. No sales pitch. No promises about your specific case. Just the law, the medicine, the money, and the fight — explained by people who do this for a living.
What Happened in Midland
What we know from public reporting: on a Friday in Midland, Texas, a shooting left at least one person dead and ten others injured. Mayor Lori Blong provided a public update on the incident. The event meets the standard definition of a mass-casualty shooting — four or more victims shot in a single incident.
What we do not yet know — and what the investigation is still developing — is where the shooting occurred. That single fact, more than any other, determines what your legal options are. A shooting at a commercial business opens one set of doors. A shooting on a public street opens a different set. A shooting at a private residence opens yet another. The location is the key that unlocks the entire case, and it is the first question any lawyer must answer before anything else can happen.
Midland sits in Midland County, in the heart of the Permian Basin — the most productive oil and gas region in the United States. The city’s population has surged and contracted with every oil boom, creating a workforce that skews young and male, with heavy commercial traffic and a transient population that shifts with the energy economy. The Midland Police Department handles incidents within the city limits; the Midland County Sheriff’s Office covers unincorporated areas. For a mass-casualty event like this one, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers routinely assist in the investigation.
That investigation — critical as it is — does not compensate victims. A criminal prosecution, if one comes, is the state’s case against the shooter. It does not pay medical bills. It does not replace a lost paycheck. It does not bring anyone back. The civil case is separate, it runs on its own clock, and the evidence that decides it is dying while you read this.
What Negligent Security Means Under Texas Law
Texas law recognizes a doctrine called negligent security — and it is the most powerful theory available to victims of third-party violence at a commercial property. The principle is straightforward: a business that invites the public onto its premises owes those invitees a duty of reasonable care to protect them from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties.
That duty is not abstract. It translates into specific obligations. A commercial property owner or operator may be required to provide adequate lighting, functioning security cameras, access control, trained security personnel, and reasonable measures to prevent known or foreseeable dangers. When the owner fails in those duties and someone is harmed by a third-party criminal act as a result, the owner can be held liable — not for the crime itself, but for the failure to take reasonable steps to prevent it.
The question that decides every negligent security case is foreseeability. Did the property owner know, or should it have known, that this kind of danger existed? Foreseeability is proven through prior similar incidents at the location, area crime data, the nature of the business, and conditions on the premises. A bar with a history of fights has a duty to take security measures that a quiet bookstore does not. A nightclub that has called the police a dozen times in the past year cannot claim that a shooting on its premises was an unforeseeable act of God.
Texas does not impose a general cap on non-economic damages in non-medical-malpractice personal injury or wrongful death cases. This is one of the most important facts for a shooting victim to understand: pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, and physical impairment are compensable without a statutory ceiling. The value of these human losses is placed in the hands of a jury — twelve people from Midland County who decide what a life and a body are worth.
Who Can Be Held Accountable for a Mass Shooting
The shooter bears primary criminal and civil liability — assault, battery, and potentially wrongful death for all eleven casualties. But individual shooters are frequently judgment-proof. Without significant personal assets, a civil judgment against the shooter alone may be uncollectible. The shooter’s liability is the predicate wrong, but it is rarely where the compensation comes from.
If the shooting occurred at a commercial premises — a bar, a nightclub, a shopping center, an entertainment venue, an apartment complex, a restaurant — the property owner or operator faces a separate theory of liability. The question becomes: what did the owner know about the danger, and what did it do about it? Premises liability and negligent security cases follow this pattern: the duty runs from the owner to the invitee, and the breach is the failure to provide reasonable security against foreseeable harm.
If a third-party security company was retained, it can face direct negligence claims for failing to implement adequate patrol, monitoring, screening, or response protocols. Security contracts, post orders, and patrol logs become critical evidence — they establish what the security company was hired to do and whether it actually did it.
If the shooting occurred at a ticketed or organized gathering, the event organizer or promoter owed attendees a duty to provide safe premises and adequate security. The standard of care for a large event is higher than for a routine business — crowd control, screening, and security staffing must match the scale and risk of the gathering.
If the venue held a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) permit, TABC regulations governing premises security, responsible service, and over-service may create additional statutory duties. A venue that over-serves alcohol to a patron who later becomes violent may face dram-shop-style liability alongside negligent security.
Security companies in Texas are licensed and regulated under the Texas Private Security Act, administered through the Department of Public Safety’s Regulatory Services Division. Violations of that act — unlicensed security, improperly trained officers, failure to meet statutory requirements — can serve as evidence of negligence. A security company that was not properly licensed or that failed to meet the training requirements Texas law imposes is not just cutting corners; it is breaking the rules the state wrote to protect the public.
The Foreseeability Doctrine: How Prior Incidents Create Liability
Foreseeability is the engine of every negligent security case. It is the single most important element to prove, and it is built from a specific kind of evidence: prior incidents.
If the shooting occurred at a commercial venue, the most critical evidence is not the shooting itself — it is what happened before. Prior 911 calls to the same address. Prior police reports of assaults, fights, or weapons at the location. Prior incident reports generated by the business itself. Prior complaints from patrons or neighbors. The crime profile of the surrounding area. The nature of the business — a late-night bar carries different foreseeable risks than a daytime retail store.
This prior-incident history is what lawyers call the foreseeability spine. It transforms the shooting from a random, unforeseeable act — which no property owner could have prevented — into a foreseeable, preventable event that the owner chose not to prepare for. When a jury hears that a venue had been the site of a dozen prior violent incidents and did nothing to upgrade security, the question stops being “how could they have known?” and becomes “why did they do nothing about what they already knew?”
Negligent security cases across the country have established this pattern: the prior-incident record is the proof that the danger was known and the security was inadequate. The same doctrine applies whether the harm is a sexual assault at a hotel or a shooting at a nightclub — the property owner’s duty to protect against foreseeable criminal acts is the same.
The prior-incident evidence has a clock on it. Police call-for-service records, 911 dispatch audio, and the business’s own incident reports are all subject to retention schedules — and those records can be purged, archived, or “lost” if no one demands them in time. The 911 call history for the subject premises covering at least the preceding 24 to 36 months is the single most important discovery request in a negligent security case. It must be subpoenaed before records are lost or purged.
Wrongful Death Claims in Texas: Who Can File and What They Can Recover
For the family of the person who died, Texas law provides two separate paths — and both must be pursued.
The Texas Wrongful Death Act permits surviving spouses, children, and parents to bring a claim for the death of a family member. These are the statutory beneficiaries — the people the law recognizes as having suffered a compensable loss. The damages available under the Wrongful Death Act include lost earning capacity (what the deceased would have earned over their lifetime), loss of care and maintenance, loss of society and advice, mental anguish, and funeral expenses.
Wrongful death claims are not about punishing the shooter — they are about compensating the family for the economic and human losses that the death inflicted. The lost paychecks matter. So does the lost guidance of a parent, the lost companionship of a spouse, the lost presence of a child. Texas law recognizes all of these as separate, compensable losses.
The Texas Survival statute allows the estate of the deceased to pursue the claims the decedent could have brought if they had survived. This includes pre-death pain and mental anguish — what the victim experienced between the injury and death — plus medical expenses incurred before death. The survival claim belongs to the estate, not to the individual family members, and it is brought by the personal representative.
A court appoints a personal representative — the one person Texas law authorizes to bring the family’s case. This appointment is one of the first legal steps after a fatal shooting, and it must be done promptly. While the official death certificate is being completed and the police investigation continues, the civil case is already running on its own clock.
Survival Claims: What the Estate Can Pursue
The survival claim exists because the law recognizes that a person who dies from someone else’s negligence had their own claim for what happened to them — and that claim does not die with them. It passes to the estate.
The most significant element of a survival claim in a shooting death is pre-death conscious pain and suffering. If the victim survived for any period after being shot — minutes, hours, days — the pain, fear, and mental anguish they experienced during that time are compensable. The medical records from the emergency room, the trauma center, the ICU — every entry that documents what the victim endured becomes evidence in the survival claim.
Pre-death medical expenses are also recoverable through the estate. Emergency transportation, emergency surgery, intensive care, and all treatment between the shooting and death are costs the estate can pursue.
The distinction between wrongful death and survival matters because the damages flow to different recipients. Wrongful death damages go to the statutory beneficiaries — spouse, children, parents. Survival damages go to the estate, which distributes according to the decedent’s will or Texas intestacy law. Both claims must be filed; leaving one on the table is leaving money that the family is entitled to.
Personal Injury Claims for the Ten Injured Victims
Each of the ten surviving victims has an independent claim — ten separate cases, each with its own injuries, its own medical records, its own damages. There is no single “mass shooting case” that bundles everyone together. Each victim’s claim stands on its own facts.
The damages available to an injured shooting victim include past and future medical expenses — every hospital bill, every surgery, every therapy session, every prescription, every piece of medical equipment, projected forward for the rest of the victim’s life. Lost wages and diminished earning capacity account for the income the victim has already lost and the income they will never earn because of the injury. Physical pain and suffering compensates the raw physical experience of being shot and the ongoing pain of recovery. Mental anguish covers the psychological toll — the nightmares, the fear, the depression, the PTSD. Disfigurement compensates scars and permanent physical changes. Physical impairment compensates the loss of a body function — the ability to walk, to use a hand, to see, to think clearly.
The severity spectrum among ten shooting victims is likely wide. Some may have graze wounds that heal in weeks. Others may have catastrophic injuries: spinal cord damage resulting in paralysis, traumatic brain injury from a projectile striking the skull, organ damage requiring complex surgery, vascular injury leading to amputation, or permanent disability that reshapes the rest of their life. Each victim’s damages must be calculated individually, and for the catastrophically injured, a life-care planner and forensic economist should be retained early to project lifetime medical costs and lost earning capacity.
The Injuries: From Graze Wounds to Catastrophic Harm
A bullet destroys tissue through kinetic energy transfer. The physics is simple and brutal: the energy of a projectile increases with the square of its velocity. A high-velocity rifle round carries many times the energy of a handgun bullet — and the tissue damage scales accordingly. As the projectile travels through the body, it creates a permanent cavity (the bullet’s actual path) and a temporary cavity (tissue that stretches beyond the bullet track as energy dissipates). The temporary cavity can damage organs and blood vessels the bullet never touched. Fragmentation, tumbling, and yaw increase the wound channel. The injury is not just the hole — it is the cone of destruction around it.
For a victim shot in the head, the result can be a traumatic brain injury. The brain does not need to be penetrated for a TBI to occur — the shock wave alone can cause diffuse axonal injury, the shearing of nerve fibers that connects brain regions. A “mild” TBI — the word doctors use when the victim can still talk — can come with a perfectly normal CT scan and still produce headaches, memory loss, personality changes, and inability to work that last for months or permanently. Roughly one in seven people with a so-called mild brain injury never fully recovers. The defense will point to the clean scan and say “there’s nothing wrong with you.” The medicine says the opposite: the damage is microscopic, not invisible.
For a victim shot in the spine, the result can be paraplegia or tetraplegia. The spinal cord does not need to be severed for paralysis to occur — bruising, compression, and ischemia from the injury can destroy cord function below the level of the wound. The lifetime cost of a spinal cord injury runs into the millions — the federal registry that tracks these injuries puts the first year of a neck-level injury at approximately $1.4 million and the lifetime cost for a young adult at more than $6 million — and that figure deliberately excludes every lost paycheck.
For a victim shot in the chest or abdomen, the result can be organ damage — a perforated bowel, a lacerated liver, a shattered kidney, a collapsed lung. These injuries require emergency surgery, carry infection risk, and can leave the victim with permanent loss of organ function.
For a victim shot in an extremity, the result can be vascular injury requiring emergency repair, fracture of the underlying bone, nerve damage, and in the worst cases, amputation. The lifetime cost of an amputation — including the prosthetic device that must be replaced every three to five years for the rest of the person’s life — runs more than half a million dollars, and that is before counting a single lost paycheck.
And for all eleven victims — the deceased and the ten injured — there is psychological trauma. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate requirements under the DSM-5, and a person who was shot, who watched someone get shot, or who learned that a loved one was shot can meet every one of them. The nightmares. The avoidance of the place where it happened. The hypervigilance. The startle response that does not fade. PTSD is not “all in their head” — it is a measurable psychiatric injury with diagnostic criteria, validated screening instruments, and a lifetime cost that includes therapy, medication, and lost quality of life. The defense will call it subjective. The medicine calls it a wound.
The aggregate damages across eleven victims could reach eight figures if a collectible commercial defendant is identified and the injuries are catastrophic. A life-care planner builds the cost stream for each catastrophically injured victim — every surgery, every therapy session, every medication, every piece of equipment, every caregiver hour, projected across a full lifetime. A forensic economist reduces those future costs to present value. The number at the end is built from real medicine and real math, not from a lawyer’s imagination.
Punitive Damages: When a Property Owner’s Failure Crosses Into Gross Negligence
Texas allows punitive damages — called exemplary damages in the statute — but they require a heightened standard of proof. The plaintiff must present clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with fraud, malice, or gross negligence.
Gross negligence has a specific meaning in Texas. It is not ordinary carelessness. It requires evidence that the defendant had actual awareness of the extreme risk involved and consciously disregarded that risk. In a negligent security context, this means: the property owner knew about prior violent incidents at the location, knew that the lack of security created an extreme risk of harm, and chose to do nothing about it.
A property owner with a documented history of violent incidents at its premises — 911 calls, police reports, patron complaints, prior shootings or stabbings — who maintained inadequate security despite that knowledge has crossed from ordinary negligence into gross negligence. The prior-incident record is not just the foreseeability engine; it is the punitive damages engine.
Texas imposes a statutory cap on punitive damages tied to the amount of economic damages plus a non-economic multiplier, with exceptions for certain felonies. The cap is real, but the economic damages in a mass shooting case — with eleven victims and potentially millions in medical and lost-earnings losses — can push the punitive cap into significant territory.
Punitive damages are not available against a municipality under Texas law, but they are available against private commercial defendants. This is one more reason why identifying the correct commercial defendant — the property owner, the operator, the security company, the event promoter — is the most important early step in the case.
The Evidence Clock: What Disappears and How Fast
The evidence that decides this case is dying. Not metaphorically. Not eventually. Right now, while you read this.
Surveillance footage — the single most important piece of physical evidence in a shooting case. CCTV from the incident location and all neighboring businesses shows the shooter’s entry and exit, the timeline, the lighting conditions, whether security cameras were even functioning, and whether security personnel were present and responsive. Commercial DVR systems typically overwrite on a 7 to 30 day cycle. After that, the footage is gone — legally, permanently, and irreversibly. A preservation letter demanding that the footage be frozen must go out within 72 hours. If the shooting happened at a venue whose cameras overwrite on a 7-day loop, the footage may already be gone by the time you finish reading this page.
Police reports, 911 call recordings, and dispatch records — these identify the exact location, the shooter, the weapon, prior calls to the same address, the response time, and initial witness accounts. They are subject to Texas public-records retention schedules, but some dispatch audio auto-purges on short cycles. These must be requested immediately — not after the criminal case concludes, not after the funeral, now.
Prior crime and incident reports for the subject premises — this is the foreseeability engine. Prior violent incidents at or near the location are the single most important liability proof in a negligent security case. This evidence must be requested from law enforcement and the premises owner before records are lost or purged. The 911 call history for the address covering at least the preceding 24 to 36 months is the core discovery demand.
Security company contracts, post orders, patrol logs, and incident reports — if third-party security was retained, these records establish what security was contracted for, what was actually performed, and whether the security provider deviated from the standard of care. These must be preserved before vendor records are routinely destroyed. A spoliation letter goes to both the security company and the premises owner.
Medical records of all eleven victims — these document injury severity, mechanism, treatment course, and prognosis for each victim’s individual damages claim. While medical records are generally retained per HIPAA and hospital policy, they should be obtained through authorizations before providers archive or transfer them.
The shooter’s social media, communications, and background — if the shooter is identified, their social media posts, messages, and communications may reveal motive, planning, prior threats, a connection to the premises, or a relationship to any defendant. Social media posts and messages can be deleted within hours. Preservation orders must be obtained immediately — not next week, not after the criminal case develops, within hours.
The two-year statute of limitations in Texas runs from the date of the incident — not from the conclusion of the criminal case, not from the date you hired a lawyer, not from the date you discovered you were injured. Federal law enforcement involvement by the FBI or ATF, which is common in mass-shooting investigations, does not pause that civil clock. The criminal case and the civil case are on separate timelines, and the civil deadline does not wait for the criminal justice system to finish.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How to Counter Every Move
If a commercial defendant is identified — a property owner, a business operator, a security company — its insurance carrier has already opened a file. The adjuster’s job is to minimize what the company pays. Here is what they will do, and here is what you do about it.
Play 1: The friendly “just checking in” call. Within days, someone will call you. They will be warm, sympathetic, concerned. They will ask you to “just tell us what happened” — on a recording. Everything you say will be transcribed, parsed, and used to undermine your claim. The counter: do not give a recorded statement to anyone without your lawyer present. You are not required to. “I’m not ready to give a statement” is a complete sentence. The adjuster is not your friend; the adjuster is a professional trained to save the company money, and the recording is engineered to help them do exactly that.
Play 2: The fast settlement check. A check may arrive quickly — sometimes before the medical results are in, sometimes before the full extent of the injuries is known. Attached to that check, often on the back page, is a release. Signing it extinguishes your right to pursue any further compensation — forever. The counter: never sign a release from an insurance company without having a lawyer read it first. A quick check is designed to close the claim before the real cost of the injury becomes clear. One night in a trauma center can exceed a quick settlement offer. A lifetime of care dwarfs it.
Play 3: The “you were partly at fault” argument. Texas follows a modified comparative-responsibility rule:
Texas applies a modified comparative-responsibility regime with a 51% bar — a plaintiff who is 51% or more at fault is barred from recovery, and a plaintiff below that threshold has damages reduced by their percentage of fault.
The adjuster will try to pin percentage points of fault on the victim — “you chose to be there,” “you should have left when you saw trouble,” “you were out late.” Every percentage point they assign to you is money subtracted from your recovery. The counter: being a patron at a business is not negligence. Being present at a venue that should have had security is not assuming the risk of being shot. The law put the duty to protect on the property owner, not on the customer.
Play 4: The medical authorization trick. The adjuster will ask you to sign a blanket medical authorization so they can “verify your injuries.” That authorization gives them access to your entire medical history — not just the records related to the shooting. They will mine it for pre-existing conditions to blame your symptoms on. The counter: provide the specific records related to the shooting through your lawyer, not a blanket authorization that lets them fish through your past.
Play 5: The delay aimed at the statute of limitations. The adjuster may string negotiations along — “we just need one more document,” “our committee meets next month” — until the two-year deadline passes. Once it does, the claim is dead. The counter: do not let the insurance company’s calendar control yours. A filed lawsuit freezes the clock. A demand letter with a deadline forces action. Patience is not a legal strategy; it is a trap.
Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years on the other side of this equation — inside a national insurance-defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the valuation software works, how reserves are set, how IME doctors are selected, and where delay tactics cross into bad faith. He uses that inside knowledge for injured people now.
What a Case Like This Is Worth
The honest answer, given what is publicly known, is that the range is exceptionally wide. The case value in a mass shooting depends almost entirely on one fact that has not yet been confirmed: where the shooting occurred.
At the low end — if the shooting occurred on a public street or at a private residence with no commercial defendant — the only liable party is the shooter, who likely has negligible assets. In that scenario, the recoverable value may be limited to whatever insurance coverage exists (such as a homeowner’s policy if the shooter had one, or a crime victims’ compensation fund), and the realistic recovery could be in the range of $500,000 or less. A judgment against a judgment-proof shooter is a piece of paper, not a check.
At the high end — if the shooting occurred at a commercial venue with a collectible owner, documented prior violent incidents establishing foreseeability, inadequate security constituting gross negligence, and catastrophic injuries among the ten surviving victims plus a wrongful death — the aggregate damages across all eleven victims could reach well into eight figures. Texas’s lack of a non-economic damages cap in non-medical-malpractice cases means a jury can award the full human cost — the pain, the anguish, the lost life, the scarred body — without a statutory ceiling cutting it down.
The difference between these two outcomes is the location and the existence of a deep-pocket commercial defendant. That is why the first priority in any shooting case is identifying the precise premises type. Everything else flows from that single fact.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We have recovered more than $50 million for injured clients across our firm’s history, including multi-million-dollar results in brain injury cases, amputation cases, and wrongful death cases. But every case stands on its own facts, and the facts of this shooting are still developing.
Your First 72 Hours: A Practical Roadmap
Medical first — always. If you were shot, you should already be under medical care. But symptoms lie. A “mild” traumatic brain injury can present hours or days after the impact — the headache, the confusion, the nausea that was not there in the ER. A gunshot wound that seemed to graze can mask deeper damage. Return to the doctor if new symptoms appear. Document everything — every visit, every symptom, every prescription. The medical record is the foundation of your damages claim, and gaps in treatment are gaps the defense will exploit.
Do not sign anything. Not from the insurance company. Not from the property owner. Not from a security company. Not a release, not a medical authorization, not a “settlement” that arrives in the mail. If someone hands you a document and tells you it is routine, put it in a folder and call a lawyer. You are not obligated to sign anything to preserve your right to sue — the statute of limitations does that for you.
Do not give a recorded statement. Not to the insurance adjuster. Not to the property owner’s “investigator.” Not to anyone who is not law enforcement. If an adjuster calls, say “I am not ready to give a statement” and hang up. You can give a statement later, with your lawyer present, after you know the full extent of your injuries. You cannot un-say what you say on a recording.
Document everything. Photograph your injuries. Photograph the location if you can safely do so. Write down everything you remember — the timeline, what you saw, who was there, what the lighting was like, whether there were security cameras, whether there were security guards, whether there were signs warning of danger. Memory degrades fast; a written account taken the same week is evidence that lasts.
Preserve evidence before it disappears. Surveillance footage overwrites in days. Social media posts get deleted. Police dispatch audio purges on schedules. The preservation letter that freezes these records must go out within 72 hours of the incident — not after the funeral, not after the criminal case concludes, not when you feel ready. The day you call a lawyer is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you. If you or a family member were victims, contact us immediately so the preservation letters can go out.
How We Build a Negligent Security Case
If the shooting occurred at a commercial premises, the case is built in a specific sequence — and the order matters because each step depends on the one before it.
Step 1: Identify the venue. The precise location and premises type must be confirmed. This single fact determines whether a viable negligent security case exists against a collectible defendant. Once the venue is identified, the chain begins.
Step 2: Freeze the evidence. Preservation-of-evidence letters go to the property owner, any security company, and all neighboring businesses within 72 hours. These letters demand that surveillance footage, security logs, incident reports, and all related records be preserved and not destroyed. A preservation letter converts an automatic deletion into sanctionable destruction — if the footage disappears after the letter is on file, a jury can be told to assume it would have helped you.
Step 3: Pull the prior-incident record. Subpoenas go out for 911 call history and police reports for the address covering at least the preceding 24 to 36 months. This is the foreseeability engine — the single most important discovery in a negligent security case. Prior violent incidents at the location prove the danger was known. The prior-incident record is what separates a freak, unforeseeable event from a tragedy the property owner chose not to prevent.
Step 4: Inspect the premises. A board-certified security expert is retained to inspect the premises — lighting, camera coverage, access points, security staffing, and the physical conditions that allowed the shooting to occur. The expert opines on industry standards for the venue type and whether the premises met them. A crime-forensics expert maps the prior incidents geographically and temporally, building the foreseeability picture.
Step 5: Identify the coverage tower. All commercial general liability, liquor liability, and umbrella/excess policies covering the premises must be identified. In Texas, excess-insurance exposure can be activated through a Stowers-style demand once liability and policy limits are known — a demand that, if unreasonably rejected, can expose the insurer to liability above the policy limits. Knowing which policies exist, in what order they pay, and how to trigger that exposure is half the value of the case.
Step 6: Build the damages. For each of the eleven victims, medical records are obtained and organized. For catastrophically injured victims, a life-care planner projects lifetime medical costs. A forensic economist reduces those costs to present value and calculates lost earning capacity. For the deceased victim’s estate, a personal representative is appointed, and both wrongful death and survival claims are filed.
Step 7: Prepare for a Midland County jury. The case will be decided by twelve people from Midland County — a conservative, energy-industry-oriented population that values property rights and personal responsibility. The case must be framed around property-owner accountability and reasonable security standards, not around rhetoric that a conservative jury may reject. The framing is not about guns; it is about a business that invited people in, took their money, and failed to protect them from a danger it knew about.
Mediation should be pursued only after the prior-incident discovery is fully developed. That evidence drives both settlement leverage and punitive damages exposure — and settling before you know what the prior-incident record shows is settling blind.
Why Midland, Texas Makes This Case Different
Midland is not Houston. It is not Austin. It is a Permian Basin oil town where the population swells with every boom and thins with every bust, where the workforce skews young and male, where the energy industry sets the rhythm of daily life, and where a jury will be drawn from people who understand hard work, personal responsibility, and the obligation of a business to the people who walk through its doors.
That jury pool matters. A negligent security case in Midland County is not tried the same way it would be tried in a downtown Harris County courthouse. The jurors here are conservative, gun-rights-oriented, and skeptical of lawsuits that feel like someone is trying to cash in on a tragedy. The case must be framed in their language: a property owner who took people’s money and failed to provide the basic security that any reasonable business in Midland would provide. Not a gun-control argument. Not a political statement. A simple, direct case about a business that did not do its job and the people who paid for it with their bodies.
Midland’s rapid growth — driven by the oil boom that transformed the Permian Basin into the most productive energy region in the country — has strained the city’s infrastructure and public-safety resources. That growth is relevant: a commercial venue that opened or expanded during the boom, drawing larger crowds than its security infrastructure was designed to handle, may have created the conditions that allowed this shooting to occur. The gap between what the business became and what it was prepared to protect is part of the case.
The Midland County district courts handle the civil docket, and a case filed there will be heard by a judge and jury who are neighbors of the victims. That local knowledge cuts both ways — it can help the plaintiff who tells a honest, grounded story about a business that failed its community, and it can hurt the plaintiff who overreaches. The trial strategy must match the venue.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the property owner if I was shot at a business in Midland?
Yes — if the shooting occurred at a commercial premises and the owner knew or should have known about the risk of violence, you may have a negligent security claim against the property owner or operator. The key is foreseeability: prior similar incidents at the location, area crime data, or the nature of the business may establish that the owner had a duty to provide adequate security and failed to do so. The shooter is also liable, but individual shooters are often unable to pay a judgment — which is why the property owner’s insurance is usually the real source of compensation.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit after a shooting in Texas?
Texas has a two-year statute of limitations for both personal injury and wrongful death claims, running from the date of the incident. The criminal case against the shooter does not pause this deadline. Federal investigations by the FBI or ATF do not pause it. The two-year clock runs independently of whatever is happening in the criminal justice system. If you miss the deadline, the claim is barred — no matter how strong it was.
What if the insurance company says I was partly at fault for being at the location?
Texas follows a modified comparative-responsibility rule with a 51% bar. Being a patron at a business is not negligence. Being present at a venue is not assuming the risk of being shot. If you are found to be less than 51% at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault — but it is not eliminated. The adjuster’s job is to pin percentage points on you to reduce what the company pays. Our job is to keep those percentage points off you.
Does the criminal case against the shooter affect my civil case?
The criminal case and the civil case are separate. The criminal prosecution is the state’s case — it does not compensate victims, and it does not pause the civil statute of limitations. A conviction can be useful evidence in a civil case, but you do not need to wait for a conviction to file a civil claim. The two cases run on separate tracks, and the civil deadline does not wait for the criminal justice system to conclude.
What compensation can I get for a gunshot wound?
You can pursue past and future medical expenses, lost wages, diminished earning capacity, physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, and physical impairment. For catastrophic injuries — spinal cord damage, traumatic brain injury, amputation — a life-care planner projects lifetime medical costs and a forensic economist calculates lost earning capacity. Texas does not cap non-economic damages (pain and suffering, mental anguish) in non-medical-malpractice personal injury cases, so a jury can award the full human cost of the injury.
How much is a mass shooting case worth?
The range is exceptionally wide. If the shooting occurred on a public street with no commercial defendant, the recovery may be limited because the shooter likely has no assets to collect from. If the shooting occurred at a commercial venue with a collectible property owner, documented prior violent incidents, inadequate security, and catastrophic injuries, the aggregate damages across eleven victims could reach well into eight figures. Texas has no cap on non-economic damages in these cases. The location and the existence of a collectible defendant are the two facts that determine the value.
What if the shooting happened on a public street, not at a business?
If the shooting occurred on a public street or at a private residence, the viable commercial defendant may be limited or nonexistent, and the primary liable party is the shooter — who is often judgment-proof. However, every fact pattern must be examined individually. Was the shooting adjacent to a commercial property whose inadequate lighting or security contributed? Was there a governmental entity with a duty to maintain safe conditions? These questions require a case-specific analysis, and the absence of an obvious commercial defendant does not end the investigation — it redirects it.
Can all ten injured victims file separate lawsuits?
Yes. Each of the ten injured victims has an independent personal injury claim with its own injuries, medical records, and damages. There is no single “mass shooting case” that bundles everyone together. Each victim’s claim stands on its own facts and is valued individually. The severity spectrum among ten victims is likely wide — from graze wounds to catastrophic injuries — and each claim must be calculated separately.
What if my family member died — who can file the claim?
Under the Texas Wrongful Death Act, surviving spouses, children, and parents can bring a wrongful death claim. The estate can bring a separate survival claim for the deceased’s pre-death pain and suffering and medical expenses. A court appoints a personal representative to bring the estate’s claim. Both claims — wrongful death and survival — must be filed; leaving one on the table is leaving compensation the family is entitled to.
How fast does surveillance footage get erased?
Commercial surveillance systems typically overwrite on a 7 to 30 day cycle. Some systems overwrite faster. Once the footage is gone, it is gone — legally, permanently, and irreversibly. A preservation letter demanding that the footage be frozen must go out within 72 hours of the incident. If the shooting happened more than a few weeks ago and no preservation letter has been sent, the footage may already be recorded over. This is the single most time-critical step in any shooting case.
Why Our Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in Texas courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he earned his B.A. in Journalism and Public Relations from the University of Texas at Austin, and he approaches every case the way a reporter approaches a story: find the facts, follow the evidence, and tell the truth to a jury in language they cannot ignore. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association — Million Dollar Member. He speaks Spanish.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the valuation software works, how reserves are set in the first 48 hours before the real injuries are diagnosed, how IME doctors are selected to say you are fine, and how the “just checking in” call is engineered to get you to say “I’m feeling okay.” He is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch, born and raised in Sugar Land. He conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Together, they have recovered more than $50 million for injured clients across the firm’s history — including multi-million-dollar results in brain injury, amputation, truck crash, and wrongful death cases. The firm has been in business since July 18, 2001 — more than 24 years. We have a 4.9-star Google rating from more than 250 reviews.
We handle cases on a contingency fee: 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The phone line is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — by live staff, not an answering service.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
If You or Your Family Were There
The evidence is disappearing. The clock is running. The insurance company has already opened a file.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. There is no fee unless we win your case. We serve clients across Texas — from our offices in Houston and Austin, and throughout the Permian Basin. Hablamos Español.
The day you call is the day the preservation letters go out, the evidence gets frozen, and the clock starts working for you instead of against you. Everything before that call is the defense’s advantage. Everything after it is yours.
