Your Family Got a Phone Call No One Should Ever Receive
If you are reading this, someone from the Raleigh County Sheriff’s Office probably called you in the hours after February 16, 2026, and told you that your husband, your father, your brother, or your child was shot while working a security shift at The Resort at Glade Springs. Maybe you drove to a hospital where a doctor told you there was nothing left to do. Maybe you are the one who had to tell the rest of the family. Maybe you have not yet slept through a full night since.
We cannot bring your family member back. No lawyer can. But we can tell you what happens next, what the law gives you the right to pursue, and why the choices you make in the next 72 hours may determine whether the people responsible for the conditions that put your loved one in that guard shack ever answer for what they did — or did not do.
We handle security guard wrongful death cases in West Virginia. We know the Deliberate Intent statute. We know how negligent security claims against gated resort communities work. We know what evidence the resort has, how fast it can be lost, and how to stop it. We work on contingency: no fee unless we win.
The first call costs you nothing. 1-888-ATTY-911 — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
What We Know About What Happened at The Resort at Glade Springs
On Monday, February 16, 2026, deputies with the Raleigh County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of a shooting at the guard shack of The Resort at Glade Springs, an upscale property in Daniels, Raleigh County, West Virginia, roughly ten miles southeast of Beckley. They found a Glade Springs security guard with an apparent gunshot wound. The guard was taken to a local hospital, where he died. His identity was not released publicly as of the Tuesday following the shooting.
The investigation identified Michael Lloyd Taylor, 60, of Piney View, as the suspect. Taylor was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder and use of a firearm during the commission of a felony. West Virginia Code § 61-2-1 sets first-degree murder at life in prison. The firearm-during-felony charge under § 61-7-11a adds a mandatory additional term that cannot be served concurrently with the murder sentence. As of the date of this writing, the motive has not been disclosed.
That is where the public record ends. But for your family, the investigation is only the beginning. A criminal case against the shooter answers whether the state can prove he pulled the trigger. A civil case answers a different, equally important question: did the resort that employed your loved one, or the company that placed him at that post, create the conditions that allowed him to be killed? Did they know the guard shack was exposed? Did they staff it alone, in the dark, without ballistic protection or a panic button or a second officer nearby? Did prior incidents at the property give them notice that this post was dangerous? Did they train, equip, and supervise their security team the way a reasonable gated resort should have?
Those questions are the spine of your family’s civil case. They go after the resort, not the shooter. And they carry dollar values that, in our experience, the criminal system never addresses: lost wages the victim would have earned, the household services he performed, the grief and mental anguish of a spouse and children who will carry this for the rest of their lives.
Who We Can Hold Accountable
There are three categories of defendants your family can pursue, and each has a different legal theory and a different pool of insurance money behind it.
Michael Lloyd Taylor. Taylor is the shooter. He faces criminal charges. In a civil case, he has direct liability for the intentional tort — assault, battery, and wrongful death. He will almost certainly be judgment-proof after a murder conviction, which means his personal assets and any modest insurance policy he carries are the only realistic recovery against him. That is why we focus the financial fight elsewhere — but we name him in every complaint because his conviction strengthens every claim against everyone else.
The Resort at Glade Springs and the Justice Family Group. The property sits on Ritter Drive in Daniels, a private resort and gated community built around the Glade Springs brand. The owner/operator is the Justice Family Group. The guard shack is a controlled-access point — the place where every vehicle and every person entering the property is screened. That makes it the single most exposed post on the entire property: the security officer sits alone at the gate, often at night, in a small structure, checking credentials for people he does not know. The resort has a duty under West Virginia premises liability law to protect invitees and employees from foreseeable third-party criminal acts. When the post is a guard shack, that duty includes training, equipment, staffing levels, physical hardening of the structure, supervision, and response protocols. If any of those were inadequate, the resort is negligent.
Any third-party security contractor. Many gated resorts do not directly employ their security officers. They contract with an outside security company that places guards at the property. If your loved one worked for a contractor rather than the resort itself, we pursue both — the contractor under direct theories of negligent hiring, training, supervision, and equipment, and the resort under theories that it failed to exercise reasonable care in selecting and overseeing the contractor it put at its gate.
West Virginia’s Wrongful Death Act — What Your Family Is Entitled To Recover
West Virginia’s wrongful death statute, W. Va. Code § 55-7-6, gives the personal representative of the deceased the right to bring a civil action for damages caused by the death. The damages recoverable under § 55-7-6 are broader than most families expect. They include:
“Such damages, pecuniary and non-pecuniary, as the survivors or estate of the deceased may have sustained by reason of the death of the deceased. Such damages may include, but not be limited to, the following: (1) Sums payable to the surviving spouse, children, parents, brothers, sisters, or other persons dependent upon the deceased for support or for the reasonable expectation of support; (2) Reasonable funeral and burial expenses; (3) The loss of the deceased’s income, services, protection, care, assistance, society, companionship, comfort, guidance, counsel, training, and education; and (4) The mental anguish, sorrow, and grief of the surviving spouse, parents, children, brothers, sisters, and other persons who may have been close to the deceased.”
— Adapted from the text of W. Va. Code § 55-7-6
West Virginia also recognizes the concept of solatium — damages for the sorrow, mental anguish, and solace of the survivors — which is a separate, non-economic component of a wrongful death recovery in this state. In our experience, West Virginia juries sitting in Raleigh County take solatium seriously, and they understand that the loss of a wage-earning spouse or parent leaves a hole that no dollar amount fills but that the law requires the wrongdoer to acknowledge.
For a security guard in his working years, the economic damages alone are significant. The lost future earning capacity, the lost health insurance and retirement contributions, the lost household services (yard work, home maintenance, childcare), and the lost guidance to minor children all combine into a number that reflects what your family lost — not just on the day of the shooting, but over the decades the victim would have worked and lived.
The statute of limitations for wrongful death in West Virginia is two years from the date of death, governed by W. Va. Code § 55-2-12. That means the filing deadline for claims arising from the February 16, 2026 shooting is February 16, 2028. The deadline sounds far away, but the evidence clock runs much faster. We explain why in the evidence preservation section below.
The Deliberate Intent Doctrine — Holding the Employer Directly Liable
West Virginia has one of the most employer-favorable workers’ compensation systems in the country. Under W. Va. Code § 23-2-6, workers’ comp is generally the exclusive remedy against a direct employer for an on-the-job injury. For most workplace deaths, that would mean your family could not sue the employer who employed your loved one — they would be limited to workers’ comp death benefits.
But West Virginia also has one of the most plaintiff-favorable exceptions to that rule. The Deliberate Intent statute, W. Va. Code § 23-4-2, creates a narrow but powerful window where a worker (or the worker’s family after a death) can sue the employer in civil court, even though the injury happened at work. The statute requires proof that the employer had a subjective realization of a specific unsafe working condition and exposed the worker to that condition knowingly.
“It is declared to be the intent of the Legislature that the workmen’s compensation remedy afforded by this chapter shall be exclusive of all other damages for injuries received in the course of and as a result of covered employment, except as otherwise provided in this section, and that a deliberate intent exception to the exclusiveness of the workmen’s compensation remedy is hereby created and shall be construed as follows: …if a private employer subjects its employees to an unsafe working condition … and the employer had a subjective realization and an appreciation of the existence of such unsafe working condition … and the employer exposed the employees to such condition knowingly, then the employer shall be liable for damages.”
— Adapted from the text of W. Va. Code § 23-4-2(d)(2)
This is the test. Not what a reasonable employer should have known. Not what a safety audit would have flagged. What the actual employer knew — subjectively — about a specific danger at a specific post. That is a hard test to meet on paper, but a security guard shot alone at an unhardened guard shack in a high-income gated community is exactly the kind of case where the doctrine was designed to apply. If the resort knew the gate post had been the site of prior confrontations, prior threats, or prior violence — and placed your loved one there anyway — Deliberate Intent may apply.
We pursue Deliberate Intent claims against the employer in parallel with negligent security claims against the property owner and direct tort claims against the shooter. The three theories work together. If one fails, the others survive.
How We Prove the Case — The Investigation Begins Now
A wrongful death case against a gated resort and a security contractor is not built in the courtroom. It is built in the weeks after the shooting, in the records the resort has, in the prior incidents it knows about, in the training it provided or failed to provide, and in the staffing and equipment decisions it made.
Here is what we look for:
Prior incidents at the property. West Virginia negligent security law asks whether the criminal act was foreseeable. The strongest proof of foreseeability is a history of prior violent incidents at the same property or at the same guard post. We pull the Raleigh County Sheriff’s Office call-for-service history for The Resort at Glade Springs. We pull incident reports from resort security. We pull any prior complaints filed by guests, employees, or contractors about safety at the gate. If the resort has had prior confrontations, prior trespassing incidents, prior weapons complaints, or prior calls to law enforcement, those records are the proof that this shooting was foreseeable.
Staffing patterns and protocols. Was the guard alone, or was there a second officer nearby? Was the post staffed at night in the same way it was staffed during the day? Did the resort follow its own written post orders, or did the orders on paper differ from how the post was actually filled? A single guard in an exposed structure during overnight hours, when the property was otherwise quiet, is the staffing pattern that kills. We pull the schedules, the post orders, the dispatch logs, and the time records.
Physical hardening of the guard shack. Ballistic glass. A panic button that connects to the resort’s main security office or to local law enforcement. Reinforced doors that can be locked from the inside. A secondary exit. Lighting that illuminates the approach to the post and eliminates shadow. Sight lines that allow the guard to see an approaching vehicle before it reaches the booth. We examine the structure itself, and we compare what we find to industry standards for gated residential and resort communities.
Training and supervision. What training did the guard receive before being placed at the gate? Did the training cover how to handle an armed intruder? De-escalation? Use-of-force continuum? When was the last training refresher? Did the resort conduct drills? Did supervisors actually visit the post, or did they just sign off on paperwork? We pull the training records, the supervisor logs, and the certification files.
The equipment the guard had — and did not have. Body armor. A radio that works in every part of the property. A second officer on a roving patrol who could respond within minutes. A duress alarm. None of these are exotic. They are standard at upscale gated properties. Their absence is evidence.
The shooter’s connection to the property. Was Michael Lloyd Taylor a guest? A resident? A former employee? A person who had been previously removed from the property? Had he made prior threats? We pull the resort’s own guest and access logs. If Taylor was known to the resort and had a history of concerning behavior, that history goes to both foreseeability and Deliberate Intent.
The Evidence Is Disappearing Right Now
This is the part of the page we want you to read twice. Every day that passes between the shooting and the preservation letter we send is a day in which evidence that proves your family’s case can be destroyed — legally.
Guard shack surveillance footage. The resort almost certainly has cameras pointed at the guard shack. That footage captures the interaction between your loved one and the shooter, the time of approach, and the events before and after the shooting. Footage from commercial security systems is typically overwritten on a rolling cycle — often within 7 to 30 days, sometimes faster. The resort’s security vendor determines the retention period. Once overwritten, the footage is gone forever. We send the preservation letter within 48 hours of being retained.
Resort incident logs and security reports. Every shift generates a log. Every incident generates a report. These records document prior confrontations, prior trespassing, prior weapons complaints, prior calls to law enforcement, and prior security breaches. They are stored on the resort’s own servers and on the security contractor’s systems. They are subject to routine retention and deletion. We demand their preservation immediately.
Employee training records. Training records document what your loved one was taught — and what he was not taught. They show when training happened, who conducted it, and whether the resort followed its own written training plan. Under OSHA’s recordkeeping rule at 29 CFR 1904.33, certain employer records must be kept for five years. Training records not covered by that rule may be destroyed sooner. We pull and preserve these now.
Gate access data. The resort’s electronic gate system logs every vehicle that enters and exits, keyed to a timestamp and a credential. That data shows who was on the property and when — including Michael Lloyd Taylor. It is also subject to routine deletion on the gate-system vendor’s schedule.
Workers’ compensation records. If your loved one was a W-2 employee of the resort or of a contractor, a workers’ comp claim will be filed. The records generated by that claim — the employer’s First Report of Injury, the witness statements, the safety investigation — are subject to their own retention cycles under W. Va. Code § 23-2-9 and § 23-4-7. These records become the spine of a Deliberate Intent claim. We need them preserved.
The shooter’s own devices and accounts. Taylor’s phone, his vehicle, his social media accounts, his computer — all of it is discoverable in a civil case, and all of it can vanish without a preservation demand. Law enforcement may have seized some of it. We coordinate with the criminal case to ensure the civil team has access.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook — and Our Counter to Each Move
The resort carries general liability insurance. The security contractor carries general liability and potentially errors-and-omissions coverage. Within days of the shooting, adjusters and defense lawyers for those insurers will reach out to your family. Here is what they will do, and here is how we handle each move.
Play One: The friendly “we just want to check on you” call. Within the first week, an adjuster will call offering sympathy and asking you to give a recorded statement “so we can understand what happened.” The statement is engineered to lock you into a version of events before you have seen the evidence. Counter: Do not give a recorded statement. Refer the adjuster to us. Anything you say in that first call can be quoted against you in deposition twelve months from now.
Play Two: The quick check with a release. The adjuster may offer a small payment — a few thousand dollars — for “immediate expenses,” with a release buried in the paperwork. Once signed, that release can bar claims far larger than the check you received. Counter: Do not sign anything. Do not cash any check that comes with conditions. We review every document before you sign.
Play Three: The delay. The insurer will tell you they “need more time to investigate” while the evidence clock runs. They will tell you the criminal case needs to resolve first. They will tell you that filing suit is “premature.” All of this is designed to push you past the point where the resort’s footage, the contractor’s training records, and the gate data still exist. Counter: The evidence clock does not pause for the criminal case. We send the preservation demand immediately and we file suit when the case is ready, not when the insurer is ready.
Play Four: The blame shift. The insurer will say your loved one should not have engaged the shooter, or should have retreated, or should have called 911 first. They will hire an expert to say the guard’s training told him to do something different. Counter: We pull the training records to see what the guard was actually taught, and we compare it to what the insurer claims he was taught. If the training was inadequate, the insurer’s own records prove our case.
Play Five: The sympathy switch. After months of delay, the insurer may come back with an offer that sounds generous but is structured as a lump sum that closes the entire case — including the Deliberate Intent claim against the employer and the future loss of benefits claim. Counter: We do not let an early settlement close off the full scope of what your family is entitled to under West Virginia law.
What Your Case Is Worth
We are often asked what a case like this is worth. The honest answer is that every case is different, and the value depends on the specific facts we develop in the investigation. But we can tell you the framework.
The economic damages in a security guard wrongful death case typically include:
- Lost future earning capacity. A working security guard in his 30s, 40s, or 50s has decades of earning ahead of him. Even at a modest wage, the lifetime figure runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. For a guard who had advanced to a supervisor or site lead role, the figure is higher. For a guard who was working a second job or pursuing training, the figure is higher still.
- Lost employer-paid benefits. Health insurance, retirement contributions, paid leave, and the employer share of payroll taxes add another 20 to 30 percent on top of the wage itself.
- Lost household services. Yard work, home maintenance, car care, childcare, errands — the things your loved one did around the house have a market value. A life-care planner or forensic economist puts a number on those.
- Funeral and burial expenses. Recoverable separately.
The non-economic damages under West Virginia’s wrongful death statute include the solatium — the sorrow, mental anguish, and grief of the surviving spouse, children, and parents. These damages reflect what the law recognizes as the irreplaceable human loss your family has suffered.
The case-value framework we work in for premises-security and Deliberate Intent cases of this severity ranges from the low seven figures to the mid-eight figures, depending on the defendant’s insurance coverage, the strength of the foreseeability evidence, the clarity of the safety failures, and the composition of the survivor group. We will give you a specific range once we have reviewed the evidence, the employment records, and the insurance tower. We do not make promises we cannot keep. We give you the honest number, not the number you want to hear.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The First 72 Hours — What to Do and What Not to Do
If you are reading this in the days after the shooting, here is what we need you to do, and what we need you not to do.
Do preserve everything your loved one had at work — any texts about the post, any schedule he printed, any note about being short-staffed that night, any complaint he made about equipment or training. These are the documents that prove the resort failed him.
Do write down everything you remember about the day of the shooting and the days leading up to it, while the memory is fresh.
Do identify anyone your loved one told about problems at the post — coworkers, family members, friends. We will interview them.
Do make a list of every financial document you will need to prove the economic loss — pay stubs, W-2s, tax returns, benefit summaries, banking records.
Do not speak with any insurance adjuster, defense lawyer, or investigator from the resort or the security contractor without us on the line.
Do not give a recorded statement to anyone.
Do not sign any document, including any check that arrives in the mail, until we have reviewed it.
Do not post about the case on social media. Anything you post can be pulled into discovery and used against you.
Do not let the resort or the contractor pressure you into a quick meeting, a quick payment, or a quick resolution. The first offer is almost never the right offer.
Call us first. 1-888-ATTY-911. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The consultation is free, and there is no fee unless we win.
How We Work — Contingency, Plain Language, No Surprises
We take cases like this on a contingency fee. You do not pay us anything out of pocket. We advance the costs of investigation, filing fees, expert witnesses, depositions, and trial preparation. If we do not win your case, you owe us nothing for our time or for the costs we advanced. If we do win, our fee is a percentage of the recovery — 33.33 percent if the case resolves before trial, 40 percent if we have to try the case in front of a jury. We explain every number in writing before you sign our agreement.
We do not hand your case off to a junior associate and disappear. Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña work your case. We return your calls. We send you copies of every important filing. We tell you the truth even when the truth is hard. If a piece of evidence is bad for us, we tell you. If a witness is weak, we tell you. We prepare your case to win at trial, which is also the reason most of our cases resolve on terms that reflect the strength of what we have built.
Who We Are
Ralph P. Manginello is the managing partner of Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998, and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Ralph earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston in 1998 and his B.A. in Journalism and Public Relations from the University of Texas at Austin. Before law school, Ralph worked as a journalist, and he brings that instinct for investigation and storytelling to every case. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Bar Association, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Ralph has spent more than 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court, fighting for people who were hurt by someone else’s carelessness. Learn more about Ralph Manginello.
Lupe Peña is an associate attorney at the firm. He has been licensed in Texas since December 6, 2012, and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Lupe earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston in May 2012 and his B.B.A. in International Business from Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio. Before joining the firm, Lupe worked as an insurance defense attorney at a national defense firm — he spent years on the inside of the industry, watching adjusters set reserves, build Colossus valuations, schedule IMEs, and run surveillance on claimants. He knows exactly how the other side prices a case, how long they will delay, and when they will settle. He now uses that knowledge for injured people. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Learn more about Lupe Peña.
We also work with local counsel in West Virginia where required, and we travel to our clients. If you cannot come to us, we come to you.
The Legal Landscape in West Virginia — Why Local Knowledge Matters
West Virginia is not Texas. West Virginia’s wrongful death statute, its Deliberate Intent doctrine, its premises liability law, its comparative negligence rule (modified 51 percent bar — meaning a plaintiff who is 51 percent or more at fault recovers nothing), and its jury culture are different. We work with West Virginia counsel who know the local courts, the local judges, and the local defense bar. We do not parachute in and pretend to know a jurisdiction we do not.
The Raleigh County Circuit Court is where your family’s case will be filed. The Raleigh County jury — drawn from the people who live and work in this part of southern West Virginia — will decide your case if it does not resolve first. Local counsel on our team knows how those jurors think about security work, about gated communities, about corporate defendants, and about damages. That local knowledge matters when you are picking a jury, when you are framing an opening statement, and when you are deciding whether to settle or try the case.
If Your Loved One Worked for a Contractor — Not the Resort
Many gated resorts in West Virginia and across Appalachia do not directly employ their security officers. They contract with a security company — sometimes a regional firm, sometimes a national chain — that places the guards at the post. If your loved one was a W-2 employee of a contractor, there are additional layers to the case:
- The contractor is the direct employer, and the Deliberate Intent statute applies against the contractor if the contractor knew of the specific danger at the post and placed your loved one there anyway.
- The resort is a third party with its own duty under premises liability law. West Virginia law generally allows an employee to sue a third party whose negligence contributed to the injury, even when workers’ comp bars suit against the direct employer. This is the third-party exception.
- The contract between the resort and the security company becomes its own source of evidence. What did the resort require the contractor to provide? What equipment standards did the contract specify? What staffing ratios? What training requirements? When the contract says one thing and the post looked like another, the discrepancy is evidence.
We pursue all three layers. We name the contractor, the resort, and any management company in between. We pull the contract. We compare the contract to what the post actually looked like.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in West Virginia?
The statute of limitations for wrongful death in West Virginia is two years from the date of death, under W. Va. Code § 55-2-12. For the February 16, 2026 shooting at Glade Springs, the filing deadline is February 16, 2028. There are narrow exceptions that can extend or shorten this deadline in specific circumstances. If you are approaching the two-year mark, contact us immediately.
Can I sue the resort even though my loved one’s shooter was a third party?
Yes. West Virginia premises liability law allows invitees and employees to sue a property owner whose negligence contributed to their injuries, even when the actual physical harm came from a third party’s criminal act. The legal theory is negligent security — the resort had a duty to provide reasonable security measures, it breached that duty, and the breach was a proximate cause of your loved one’s death.
What is Deliberate Intent under West Virginia law?
Deliberate Intent is a statutory exception to West Virginia’s workers’ compensation exclusivity rule, codified at W. Va. Code § 23-4-2. It allows a worker (or the worker’s family in a death case) to sue the employer in civil court if the employer had a subjective realization of a specific unsafe working condition and knowingly exposed the worker to it. This is a high bar, but it was written precisely for cases where an employer knew a job was dangerous and sent a worker into that danger anyway.
What damages can my family recover in a West Virginia wrongful death case?
Under W. Va. Code § 55-7-6, recoverable damages include: sums payable to the surviving spouse, children, parents, and other dependents; reasonable funeral and burial expenses; the loss of the deceased’s income, services, protection, care, assistance, society, companionship, comfort, guidance, counsel, training, and education; and the mental anguish, sorrow, and grief of the surviving family members. The economic losses are calculated by a forensic economist using the victim’s worklife expectancy and earnings history. The non-economic losses (solatium) reflect the human cost of the loss.
Who files the wrongful death lawsuit?
The personal representative of the deceased’s estate files the wrongful death action. If there is no will, the court appoints a personal representative — typically the surviving spouse, an adult child, or a parent. We handle the personal representative appointment as part of our representation. The damages recovered are distributed according to West Virginia’s intestate succession laws.
Do I have to wait for the criminal case to finish before I can file a civil case?
No. West Virginia does not require you to wait for the criminal case to resolve before filing a civil wrongful death case. In fact, waiting can hurt your case because the evidence clock continues to run. The criminal case and the civil case proceed on parallel tracks, and the conviction (if it comes) strengthens the civil case.
What if my loved one was partly at fault?
West Virginia follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51 percent bar. If the jury finds your loved one was 50 percent or less at fault, his recovery is reduced by his percentage of fault but not eliminated. If he is found 51 percent or more at fault, no recovery. In a security guard shooting case, the guard is almost never at fault for being shot while working his post — but the insurance company will try to argue comparative fault anyway. We prepare for that fight from day one.
How much does it cost to hire your firm?
Nothing upfront. We work on a contingency fee. Our fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery if the case resolves before trial, and 40 percent if we try the case to a verdict. We advance all costs of litigation. You pay nothing out of pocket. If we do not recover for you, you owe us nothing.
What if the resort offers us money now?
Do not accept any payment, sign any document, or cash any check without us reviewing it first. Early offers from insurance companies are structured to close down your full case — including claims against the employer, claims against the contractor, and claims for the full scope of damages under West Virginia law. The first offer is almost never the final offer. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 before you respond to anything.
How long will my case take?
That depends on the complexity of the investigation, the cooperation (or lack thereof) from the defendants, and the court’s docket. Some cases resolve in 12 to 18 months. Others take two to four years, particularly if the defendants contest liability or the case proceeds to trial. We keep you informed at every stage. We do not disappear for months at a time.
What evidence should I preserve?
Everything. Your loved one’s work phone, his schedule, his texts about the post, his training records, his complaints about staffing or equipment. Any photographs or videos of the guard shack. Any witness contact information for people he worked with. The police report. The medical records from the hospital. Your own written recollection of events. We will tell you exactly what to gather and how to organize it.
Can I afford to sue a resort and a security company?
Yes — because we front the costs. Litigation costs include filing fees, deposition transcripts, expert witness fees, records retrieval, and trial preparation. We pay those costs out of our own pocket and recover them from the settlement or verdict. If we do not win, you owe us nothing for the costs we advanced.
Do I need to come to your office?
No. We will come to you. We work with families across West Virginia and can meet you at your home, at a location convenient to you, or by video conference. If your case proceeds to litigation, we will travel to Raleigh County for hearings and trial as needed.
What happens if we lose?
You owe us nothing. No fee, no costs. We take the risk because we believe in the case after we investigate it. We do not take cases we do not believe in, and we do not promise outcomes. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
How do I get started?
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The consultation is free and confidential. We will listen to what happened, answer your questions, explain your options, and tell you honestly whether we can help. If we take your case, we begin the investigation that same day, including the preservation letter to the resort and the security contractor. Hablamos Español.
Our Practice Areas — If Your Family Was Affected by Something Else
The guard shack shooting at Glade Springs is the focus of this page, but the same firm handles every kind of serious injury and wrongful death case across West Virginia and nationwide. Explore our full practice areas here. If your family’s loss involved:
- An 18-wheeler or commercial truck crash on I-64, I-77, or I-79
- A car accident caused by a drunk or distracted driver
- A motorcycle crash on a West Virginia highway
- A brain injury from a fall, crash, or assault
- A workplace injury or workers’ compensation claim that the employer is fighting
- A refinery or industrial accident at a plant or facility
- An offshore injury on a vessel or platform
- A construction site accident involving a fall, electrocution, or equipment failure
- A toxic exposure to benzene, silica, asbestos, or chemicals
- A denied insurance claim for a loss your family suffered
We have resources that walk you through each of these. Watch our free guides here.
A Final Word — From One Family to Another
We have represented families who lost someone exactly the way your family did. The shock does not fade quickly. The questions do not stop. The “what ifs” can eat you alive. We cannot answer the “what if” questions. But we can answer the legal questions: what the law gives you the right to pursue, what the evidence shows, who is responsible, and what it takes to hold them to account.
You do not have to figure this out alone. You do not have to call the insurance company back. You do not have to sign anything. You do not have to do anything today except make one phone call.
1-888-ATTY-911. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español.
We are sorry for what happened to your family. We are ready to help you do something about it.