Midland Mass Shooting: Your Legal Rights When the Shooter Is Dead
The mayor has confirmed what you already knew: the person who took your loved one is dead. That fact will be offered to you as closure. It is not closure. It is the elimination of the one path the system was going to take for you — the criminal case that would have played out in a courthouse you never chose, on a timeline you never controlled, for a result that was never going to bring anyone back. What it leaves is the other path, the one that was always yours to take: the civil case that asks a different question entirely. Not what punishment fits the shooter, but what the property owner knew, what they failed to do, and whether the deaths on that property were the foreseeable result of decisions made by someone who invited people onto that land and then did not protect them.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases in Texas, including negligent-security claims arising from mass-casualty events. Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you — and now sits on your side of the table. We are writing this page for one person: you, reading at 2 a.m., trying to understand what happens now that the criminal case is gone and the civil case is the only door left.
What follows is not a brochure. It is the complete legal map of what a mass-shooting wrongful death and negligent-security case looks like in Midland, Texas — the law, the evidence that is dying right now, the money, the medicine, the insurance company’s playbook, and the first steps that decide whether the case is strong or whether it evaporates before anyone files suit.
What the Shooter’s Death Means — and What It Does Not Mean
When the shooter is dead, the prosecutor’s office closes its file. There will be no trial, no public airing of evidence, no jury verdict in a criminal courtroom, no sentencing. For many families, that absence of a public process is its own wound — the story never gets told in a forum the whole community can see.
But the shooter’s death does something else that matters more than most people realize: it redirects the entire legal inquiry. In a criminal case, the question is what the shooter did and what punishment fits. In a civil case, the question is what the property owner, the security company, the employer, or the event organizer knew — and what they failed to do with that knowledge. The shooter’s death doesn’t close that question. It opens it, because the person who pulled the trigger is no longer the focus. The conditions that allowed the trigger to be pulled — the lighting, the access control, the staffing, the warnings that were ignored — become the entire case.
That shift matters in Midland. This is a city built on the Permian Basin oil economy, where a transient workforce moves through commercial venues, apartment complexes, and workplaces that serve a rotating population. Security challenges here are different from a static suburban community. Property owners who serve that rotating workforce know — or should know — that the security calculus shifts when the people on your property are strangers to each other and to the area. When a mass shooting happens on a property in this environment, the question of whether the owner took those realities into account is not an abstract legal theory. It is the question that determines whether anyone answers for what happened.
Texas Wrongful Death Law: Who Can Bring the Claim
Under Texas law, the surviving spouse, children, and parents of a person whose death is caused by the wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or default of another may bring an action for damages.
The surviving spouse, children, and parents of a decedent may bring a wrongful death action. If none of those parties exist, the executor or administrator of the estate may bring the action. A survival action — for the damages the decedent could have pursued had they survived — passes through the estate.
This is the Texas wrongful death framework, and it creates two parallel claims that flow from one death:
The wrongful death claim belongs to the family. The surviving spouse, the children, and the parents each have an independent claim. If none of those beneficiaries exists, the executor or administrator of the estate may bring the action. This claim compensates the family for what they lost: the financial support the decedent would have provided, the companionship, the guidance, the society — the human relationship that was severed.
The survival claim belongs to the estate. It carries forward the claim the decedent would have had if they had survived — the conscious pain and suffering between the shooting and death, the medical expenses incurred in that interval, and the funeral costs. In a gunshot case, that interval may be measured in minutes or hours, but it is no less real. The survival claim preserves what the victim endured.
Both claims run on the same deadline in Texas: two years from the date of death. We will address that clock in detail below, but the first thing to understand is that two years sounds like a long time and is not. The evidence that decides these cases — the surveillance footage, the security logs, the prior police calls — dies on a far shorter schedule than the statute of limitations. The deadline to file suit is two years. The deadline to save the proof is measured in days.
Texas Negligent Security Law: The Property Owner’s Duty
When a property owner invites people onto its land — as a business invites customers, as an employer invites workers, as a venue invites event attendees — Texas law imposes a duty to protect those invitees from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. This is the doctrine of premises liability as it applies to criminal third-party conduct, and it is the spine of every mass-shooting civil case.
The key word is “foreseeable.” Texas courts do not require property owners to guarantee that no crime will ever occur on their premises. They require owners to take reasonable measures against the kinds of crime that are foreseeable — that is, crimes of the type that have happened before at or near the property, or that the property’s location, character, and use make predictable.
Texas courts apply a foreseeability framework that analyzes four factors: the proximity of prior crimes to the property, the recency of those crimes, the frequency of those crimes, and the similarity of those crimes to the one that occurred. This framework is the engine of every negligent-security case. When a property owner in Midland had prior incidents of violence — assaults, weapon-related calls, threats, drug activity — on or near its premises, and did not upgrade lighting, add security personnel, install access control, or take other reasonable measures in response, the foreseeability element is met. The shooting was not a freak event. It was the predictable escalation of a danger the owner already knew about.
What a generalist lawyer gets wrong about this doctrine: they look at the shooting in isolation. They treat it as a one-time event that nobody could have predicted. The right lawyer pulls the prior crime record for the property — three to five years of police calls-for-service tied to that exact address — and builds the case around what the owner already knew. The shooting is the last event in a chain the owner was watching (or should have been watching) for years. That prior-crime history is the difference between “unforeseeable tragedy” and “negligent security that caused a death.”
The Timberwalk Factors in Practice
Here is how the foreseeability analysis actually works in a Midland case:
Proximity: How close to the property were the prior incidents? Were they on the property itself, on the adjacent street, or within a few blocks? The closer the prior crimes, the stronger the foreseeability.
Recency: When did the prior incidents occur? A string of violent incidents in the six months before the shooting is far more powerful than incidents from five years ago. But even older incidents matter — they establish a pattern the owner was on notice of.
Frequency: How often did prior incidents occur? A single prior assault is weaker evidence than a dozen calls for service over two years. The frequency tells the jury that this was not a one-time problem but a known, ongoing condition.
Similarity: How similar were the prior incidents to the shooting? Prior assaults with weapons, prior threats involving firearms, prior incidents where a person gained unauthorized access — these are far more probative than minor thefts or property damage. The more similar the prior crime, the more foreseeable the shooting.
These four factors are not a checklist. They are a framework a jury uses to decide whether the property owner should have seen this coming. And in Midland — where the transient oilfield workforce creates unique security dynamics and where the broader Midland-Odessa area has experienced prior mass-casualty shooting events — the local context matters. A Midland County jury has a contextual familiarity with firearm violence and its consequences that a jury in a different part of the state may not share. That local reality affects how the foreseeability evidence is received.
Who Can Be Held Responsible: The Defendant Map
A mass-shooting civil case is almost never one defendant. The property where the shooting occurred is a stack of entities, each with a different role, a different insurance policy, and a different argument for why someone else should pay. Identifying every layer is the first work of the case.
The Property Owner or Operator
The entity that owns or operates the property where the shooting occurred owes the duty to protect invitees from foreseeable criminal acts. This is the primary defendant in a negligent-security case. The duty turns on prior similar incidents at the location and the adequacy of security measures — lighting, surveillance, access control, staffing, patrol patterns.
The property owner’s insurance is the first tower the case reaches. Commercial general liability coverage, umbrella and excess layers, and in some cases self-insured retention all determine how much money is available. In Midland’s oil-economy environment, some commercial property owners carry substantial coverage. Confirming the actual tower — not the statutory minimum, but the real layers — is critical to valuing the case.
The Contracted Security Company
If the property owner hired a security contractor, that company owes its own duty of care — to perform its security services competently. Insufficient staffing, inadequate patrol patterns, failure to monitor surveillance, failure to respond to warning signs, and failure to follow the security plan are all potential breaches.
Texas regulates private security through the state’s private security licensing statute, which establishes licensing, training, and conduct standards for security companies and their personnel. A violation of those standards — an unlicensed guard, insufficient training, a failure to meet minimum staffing or patrol requirements — may constitute evidence of negligence or, in some formulations, negligence per se. Confirm the security company’s licensing status, the individual guards’ credentials, and whether the company’s performance met industry standards.
The Shooter’s Employer (If a Workplace Nexus Exists)
If the shooter had a connection to the property through employment — if the shooter was an employee at the venue, or if the shooting occurred at a workplace — the employer may be liable for negligent hiring, retention, or supervision. This theory attaches when the employer knew or should have known of the shooter’s dangerous propensities and failed to act. Prior threats, a documented violent history, mental-health concerns that were known to the employer, and workplace-violence incidents that were ignored are all evidence that the employer kept a dangerous person in a position to harm others.
In the Permian Basin’s oil-economy environment, where employers manage large transient workforces, the duty to screen, monitor, and remove dangerous employees is not theoretical. OSHA’s General Duty Clause requires employers to maintain a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm — and that includes recognized workplace-violence hazards. If the shooting occurred at a workplace, this federal duty runs alongside the state negligent-hiring claim.
The Event Organizer or Promoter (If Applicable)
If the shooting occurred at an event — a concert, a festival, a gathering — the organizer or promoter owes a duty to provide adequate security proportionate to the foreseeable risk. This includes crowd-control measures, weapon-screening protocols, and staffing levels matched to the event’s size and character. The event organizer’s duty is separate from the property owner’s duty, and both may be liable for the same harm.
The Shooter’s Estate
The shooter’s estate is directly liable for the intentional torts — assault, battery, wrongful death — that caused the deaths and injuries. But estate assets are typically limited, and this channel primarily serves to establish fault rather than to provide meaningful recovery. The shooter’s estate is named in the complaint to fix the liability, but the real money lives in the property owner’s insurance, the security company’s coverage, and the employer’s tower.
Evidence That Is Dying Right Now: The Preservation Clock
This is the section that decides whether the case is strong or whether it disappears before anyone files suit. Every record below exists right now. Every record below has a short, legal shelf life. Every record below is held by someone who has no obligation to preserve it unless a lawyer puts them on written notice.
Surveillance and CCTV footage from the venue and surrounding businesses proves whether security cameras were operational, whether the shooter’s approach was captured, whether security personnel monitored or responded, and establishes the timeline and entry point. These systems overwrite on cycles that can be as short as 7 days and commonly run 30 days. The preservation letter demanding this footage must go out immediately — not next week, not after the funeral, not when you feel ready. The day you call us is the day the letter goes out.
911 call recordings and police dispatch records establish the response timeline, identify witnesses who called in, and may reveal prior calls about suspicious activity or security concerns at the venue. These are retained per the agency’s own policy, but a preservation letter prevents destruction and locks them in. Request within 30 days.
Security company daily activity logs, patrol reports, and staffing schedules prove whether contracted security was present, how many guards were on duty, and whether patrol patterns covered the area where the shooting occurred. Retention ranges from 90 days to one year. If the security company’s records are purged before a demand is made, the proof that nobody was watching the area where your loved one died may be gone.
Prior police calls-for-service and incident reports for the venue — this is the core of the foreseeability proof. A three-to-five-year history of police responses to the property address demonstrates that the property owner knew or should have known of escalating criminal activity and failed to upgrade security. Police records are generally retained, but private incident logs maintained by the property owner may be destroyed per company policy. A preservation letter to the property owner is critical to freeze those logs.
Crime scene photographs, ballistic evidence, and shooting reconstruction establish the mechanism of injury, bullet trajectories, distance, and whether security barriers or measures could have prevented or mitigated the attack. The scene is typically released within 24 to 72 hours. The forensic evidence is retained by police, but a private reconstruction expert should document the scene before remediation. Once the property is cleaned, repainted, and reopened, the physical evidence of what happened is altered forever.
The shooter’s social media, electronic communications, and employment records reveal motive, planning, prior threats, and any connection to the venue or employer that would support negligent hiring or foreseeability theories. Social media platforms may delete accounts post-event. Preservation letters to tech companies must go out within days. Employment records are subject to retention schedules that vary by employer.
Security assessment or audit reports for the venue — if a security consultant identified vulnerabilities at the property and the owner failed to act, this is direct evidence of conscious disregard supporting gross negligence and exemplary damages. These reports may be discarded after remediation or policy renewal. A preservation letter to the owner and any security consultant is essential.
Here is what a generalist lawyer does not understand about these clocks: they think the statute of limitations is the deadline that matters. It is not. The two-year statute is the deadline to file suit. The evidence-preservation deadline — the day the CCTV overwrites, the day the security company purges its logs, the day the scene is cleaned — is the real deadline, and it runs in days and weeks, not years. The preservation letter is the first thing we send. It goes out the day you call, not the day we’re retained, because the day you call is the day the clock is already running against you.
What a Mass Shooting Case Is Worth
Every case is different, and the value depends on facts we do not yet know about the Midland shooting — the venue, the property owner’s insurance, the prior-crime history, the security measures in place, the number of victims, and the strength of the foreseeability evidence. But the framework for valuing these cases follows a consistent structure, and being honest about it is how you make decisions.
At the low end — roughly $2 million — a single-victim negligent-security claim against a modest-asset property owner with limited prior-incident evidence and contested foreseeability. The defense argues the shooting was unforeseeable, the property owner had no meaningful notice, and the security measures were adequate. The case is a fight from start to finish.
At the high end — $75 million or more — multiple fatalities and catastrophic injuries against a deep-pocket commercial property owner with documented prior violent incidents, inadequate security measures, and gross-negligence exposure supporting exemplary damages. The aggregate exposure across all victims could exceed nine figures if a major commercial defendant is involved with significant insurance and asset depth.
Between those poles, the value is driven by several variables:
The strength of foreseeability. A property with a documented history of violent incidents — weapons calls, assaults, threats — creates strong foreseeability. A property with no prior history creates a contested foreseeability fight that reduces value.
The adequacy of security. A property with broken cameras, missing lighting, no access control, and no security personnel creates a clear breach. A property with functioning cameras, adequate lighting, and regular patrols creates a contested breach argument.
The number of victims. Multiple fatalities against a single defendant create aggregate exposure that drives policy-limit tenders and excess-layer negotiations. Each victim’s claim stands independently, and the cumulative exposure pressures the insurer to resolve all claims rather than face a trial on any one of them.
The defendant’s assets and insurance. A deep-pocket commercial property owner with substantial CGL coverage and excess layers creates a large recovery ceiling. A modest-asset property owner with a thin insurance policy creates a recovery-limited case.
Gross negligence and exemplary damages. If the property owner or security contractor acted with conscious disregard of a known extreme risk — if a security audit identified vulnerabilities and the owner ignored them, if prior violent incidents were documented and security was not upgraded — exemplary damages become available. Texas requires proof of gross negligence by clear and convincing evidence, and exemplary damages are subject to statutory caps, but the existence of gross-negligence exposure is a settlement engine regardless of whether the caps are reached.
Venue. Midland County is a conservative West Texas jurisdiction. Jury verdicts here may be more moderate than in urban Texas counties. But the visceral impact of a mass shooting on local jurors can transcend political leanings. The same community that experienced the Midland-Odessa shooting events understands what firearm violence does to families. That understanding cuts through political labels.
We do not promise a specific dollar outcome. We never will. What we can tell you is that the value of the case is driven by the evidence, and the evidence is dying. A case that is worth $20 million with the CCTV footage and the prior-crime record intact may be worth a fraction of that without them. The preservation letter is not a formality. It is the first economic decision in the case.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The firm has recovered over $50 million in aggregate, including multi-million-dollar results in trucking wrongful-death cases, brain-injury settlements exceeding $5 million, and amputation settlements exceeding $3.8 million. Those results reflect the firm’s experience with catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death litigation, not a prediction of what this specific case will produce.
The Medicine of Gunshot Wounds: What the Family Lives With
A mass shooting produces injuries that follow a different trajectory than most personal-injury cases. The mechanism is a projectile — a bullet traveling at high velocity that tears through tissue, shatters bone, and damages organs along its path. The severity depends on where the bullet went and what it hit.
Torso gunshot wounds can damage the lungs, heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, and major blood vessels. A bullet that severs a major artery can kill in minutes. Survivors face emergency trauma surgery, ICU stays, multiple operations, and long recovery periods. The medical cost of a single torso GSW — from ER through rehabilitation — routinely reaches seven figures.
Head gunshot wounds are frequently fatal. Survivors face catastrophic traumatic brain injury — loss of cognitive function, memory, speech, motor control, and personality. The lifetime cost of care for a severe TBI runs into the millions. The family watches the person they knew change in ways no scan can fully capture.
Spinal gunshot wounds can produce paralysis — paraplegia if the injury is in the thoracic or lumbar spine, tetraplegia if it is in the cervical spine. The lifetime cost of a spinal cord injury ranges from roughly $2 million to over $6 million depending on the level and severity, and that figure covers only direct health-care costs — not the lost wages, not the wheelchair-accessible housing, not the modified vehicle, not the years of life that are different from what they would have been.
Survival damages — the conscious pain and suffering between the shooting and death — are a real and compensable element of the case. In a gunshot case, that interval may be measured in minutes or hours. But minutes of conscious suffering, knowing you are dying, have substantial value. Medical records, forensic reconstruction, and expert testimony establish what the victim experienced. This is not speculation. It is proof.
Psychological trauma extends to survivors and witnesses. People who were in the venue, who saw the shooting, who ran, who hid, who held someone who was bleeding — they may carry post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and a lifetime of sleep disturbances. Under Texas law, victims who were in the zone of physical danger and witnessed the shooting may pursue emotional-distress damages, subject to the state’s bystander requirements of proximity and severe emotional injury.
Forensic shooting reconstruction — the work of a reconstruction engineer — maps the event: bullet trajectories, shooter position, distance, angle, and the sequence of shots. This reconstruction answers the question that matters to the civil case: could security measures have prevented or mitigated the attack? Would additional lighting have deterred the shooter? Would access control have slowed the approach? Would a security patrol have detected the threat? The physics of the shooting, mapped against the security measures that were or were not in place, is the proof that ties the property owner’s failures to the deaths.
Here is the medicine that the family lives with and that the defense tries to minimize: a gunshot wound is not a car-accident injury. It is a penetrating trauma that destroys tissue along a path the bullet chose, and the human body does not heal from it the way it heals from a fracture. The life-care plan for a GSW survivor — or the survival damages for someone who did not survive — accounts for years of treatment, rehabilitation, and adaptation. The adjuster’s first offer will not reflect that. It will reflect a fraction of it. That gap between the real cost and the first offer is the entire reason the case exists.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and the Counter to Each Play
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their lawyers decided how to handle claims like yours. He knows the plays because he ran them. Here are the plays that are already being run against the families of the Midland shooting — and the counter to each one.
Play 1: The “Sympathy Call” That Is Really a Recorded Statement. Within days, someone friendly will call to “check on the family” and ask you to “just tell us what happened.” The call is recorded. Everything you say is being parsed for inconsistencies, admissions of comparative fault, and statements that minimize the emotional impact. The counter: do not take the call. Do not give a recorded statement to the property owner’s insurance company. Do not give a recorded statement to anyone without your lawyer on the line. Every word you say before you have counsel is a word the defense will use.
Play 2: The Quick Settlement Check. A check may arrive fast — sometimes within weeks — with a release printed on the back or enclosed with it. The amount will seem meaningful in the moment and will be a fraction of what the case is worth. The release, once signed, extinguishes the claim forever. The counter: do not sign anything. Do not cash any check from the property owner’s insurance company, the security company, or any entity connected to the shooting. Every document the insurance company sends you in the first weeks is designed to close the case before you understand what it is worth.
Play 3: The “Unforeseeable Crime” Argument. The property owner’s defense will argue that the mass shooting was an unforeseeable act that no property owner could have predicted. This is the defense’s strongest argument and it is beatable. The counter: the prior-crime history at the property. Three to five years of police calls-for-service — weapons calls, assaults, threats, drug activity — destroys the unforeseeability argument. The shooting was not a random act of evil. It was the predictable escalation of a danger the owner was already on notice of. The foreseeability evidence is the single most important asset in the case, which is why the preservation letter demanding the prior-crime records goes out the day you call.
Play 4: The “Shooter Is the Only Liable Party” Argument. The defense will argue that the shooter alone is responsible and the property owner cannot be held liable for a third party’s criminal act. The counter: Texas law explicitly recognizes a property owner’s duty to protect invitees from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. The shooter’s moral responsibility does not extinguish the property owner’s legal duty. Both can be liable, and the property owner’s insurance is where the recovery lives.
Play 5: Social Media Monitoring. The insurance company’s investigators are already watching the social media accounts of the victims’ families. They are looking for photos of you smiling, going out, living your life — anything they can use to argue the loss is not as severe as claimed. The counter: do not post about the case, the shooting, the investigation, or your grief. Set your accounts to private. Assume everything you post is being read by someone whose job is to pay you less.
Play 6: The Delay Aimed at the Statute of Limitations. The insurance company may string out “negotiations” for months, making small moves and requesting additional documents, while the two-year statute of limitations clock ticks toward zero. The counter: the lawyer who understands the Texas Stowers doctrine — which requires an insurer to settle a claim within policy limits when a reasonable insurer would do so, under penalty of bad-faith liability for any excess verdict — controls the timeline, not the adjuster. A properly calibrated Stowers demand puts the insurer’s own money at risk if they refuse to settle, and that changes the entire dynamic.
How a Negligent Security Case Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk — week one through resolution — of how a mass-shooting negligent-security case is built.
Week one: The preservation letter goes out. The day you call, letters go to the property owner, the security company, the police department, and any third-party data vendor (CCTV, key-card, dispatch) ordering them to preserve every relevant record. This letter is what stops the evidence from being legally destroyed. Without it, the CCTV overwrites, the security logs are purged, and the scene is cleaned. With it, the records are frozen and any subsequent destruction creates a spoliation argument — the jury can be told that the missing evidence would have been unfavorable to the party that destroyed it.
Weeks two through four: The records demands begin. We subpoena police calls-for-service for the venue address covering the prior three to five years. We demand all security assessments, incident logs, staffing schedules, and patrol reports from the property owner and the security company. We request 911 recordings and dispatch records. We send preservation letters to social media platforms for the shooter’s accounts before they are deleted.
Months one through three: The expert team is retained. A board-certified security expert is retained to opine on industry standards for the venue type and to perform a CPTED — Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design — audit. This audit examines lighting, sightlines, access control, surveillance coverage, and staffing, and demonstrates how each failure created the conditions for the attack. A forensic reconstruction engineer documents the shooting — bullet trajectories, shooter position, distance, and the sequence of events. A life-care planner begins building the cost stream for any surviving victim’s future medical needs. A forensic economist begins the work of reducing future losses to present value.
Months three through six: Discovery and depositions. The property owner’s risk manager is deposed — what did they know, what were they told, what cheap remedies were available but not implemented. The security company’s management is deposed on staffing, training, patrol patterns, and whether the security plan was actually followed. The corporate structure is traced — the operating LLC, the property company, the management company, the parent — to identify every entity with insurance and every decision-maker with knowledge.
Months six through twelve: The Stowers demand. Once the liability evidence and the damages picture are assembled, a Stowers demand is calibrated to the defendant’s policy limits plus reasonable settlement value. If the insurer rejects a Stowers demand that is within or below policy limits, the insurer exposes itself to bad-faith liability for any excess verdict. This is the leverage that turns a contested case into a settlement — the insurer’s own money is at risk if they refuse to be reasonable.
Trial, if necessary. In Midland County, the jury will be twelve people from the community — people who understand what firearm violence does to families because this community has lived through it. The case is framed not as a gun-control issue but as a duty-of-care issue: did the property owner take reasonable steps to protect the people they invited onto the premises? Voir dire explores jurors’ attitudes about property-owner responsibility versus individual criminal accountability. The foreseeability evidence — the prior-crime history, the ignored warnings, the cheap remedies that were never implemented — is the engine that drives the verdict.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
Hour 1: Medical first. If you or someone you love survived the shooting, the first priority is medical care. Gunshot wounds that appear survivable can deteriorate rapidly. Internal bleeding, organ damage, and infection can declare themselves hours or days after the injury. If you were in the venue and were not shot, you may still need evaluation — for acoustic trauma from gunfire, for injuries sustained during evacuation, and for psychological trauma. Symptoms lie. The person who “feels fine” the day after a mass shooting may be the person who collapses a week later.
Hours 2 through 24: Evidence preservation. The preservation letter is the single most urgent legal step. Surveillance footage overwrites in days. Security logs purge on short cycles. The crime scene is released within 24 to 72 hours. The preservation letter is what stops all of it. We send the letter the day you call — not the day we are formally retained, not after you have had time to think about it, not after the funeral. The day you call is the day the clock is already running against you.
Hours 24 through 72: Do not sign, do not record, do not post. Do not sign anything from the property owner’s insurance company. Do not give a recorded statement to anyone. Do not post about the shooting, the investigation, or your grief on social media. Do not speak to the insurance company’s investigator. Do not accept a “goodwill” payment or a “memorial fund” from the property owner or its insurer — these may come with strings that compromise the claim.
Days 3 through 7: Personal representative. If a loved one was killed, the court must appoint a personal representative — the person authorized to bring the wrongful death and survival claims on behalf of the estate and the beneficiaries. We handle this appointment. It is a procedural step, but it is the step that opens the courthouse door. Without it, no claim can be filed.
Day 7: Call us. 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. You are not committing to a lawsuit — you are asking questions and getting answers from a trial lawyer who has spent 27 years in courtrooms. If we are the right fit, we will tell you. If we are not, we will tell you that too.
What Texas Law Says About Your Time
Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations on both personal injury and wrongful death claims. For wrongful death, the two years run from the date of death. For personal injury, the two years run from the date of injury. For survival claims, the two years run from the date the cause of action accrued — generally the date of injury or death.
This deadline is unforgiving. Miss it, and the case is over — the court never reaches the merits. But the deadline is also longer than most people realize, and that creates a false sense of security. The evidence-preservation deadline is measured in days and weeks. The filing deadline is measured in years. The gap between them is where cases are won and lost. The family that calls in week one has the CCTV, the security logs, and the prior-crime record. The family that calls in month eighteen has the statute of limitations but may have lost the proof.
Texas applies a modified comparative negligence standard with a 51% bar. A plaintiff’s recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault, and is barred entirely if they are more than 50% at fault. In a mass-shooting case, this rule is unlikely to burden victims — no jury is going to assign 51% fault to a person who was shot while standing in a venue. But the defense may try to argue that the victim “assumed the risk” by attending an event in a “dangerous area” or that the victim’s own conduct contributed to the harm. These arguments fail when the foreseeability evidence is strong and the property owner’s failures are clear.
Texas does not impose a general cap on non-economic damages in negligent-security or wrongful-death cases outside the medical-malpractice context. Pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of companionship, and loss of enjoyment of life are fully recoverable without a statutory ceiling. Exemplary damages require proof of gross negligence by clear and convincing evidence and are subject to statutory caps under the Texas exemplary-damages framework. The exact cap calculation depends on the defendant’s net worth and other factors — confirm the current rule at the time of filing.
How We Approach Cases Like This
Our practice includes wrongful death, catastrophic injury, and premises liability cases — the exact intersection of law that a mass-shooting civil case demands. We have handled mass-shooting litigation before, and we understand the specific dynamics that these cases present — the foreseeability engine, the evidence-preservation clock, the insurance-tower analysis, and the human reality of representing families who are grieving while the legal system moves at its own pace.
Ralph Manginello — Managing Partner, 27 years licensed, Texas Bar #24007597, admitted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. A journalist before he was a lawyer, Ralph approaches cases the way a reporter approaches a story: find the document that proves it, find the witness who saw it, and build the argument that a jury can feel in their gut. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association — Million Dollar Member. He is currently lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing wrongful-death lawsuit.
Lupe Peña — Associate Attorney, Texas Bar #24084332, admitted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Lupe spent years at a national insurance-defense firm before joining this side of the table. He knows how claims are priced, how adjusters set reserves, how the valuation software works, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is deployed, and how delay tactics are engineered — because he was the one doing it. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch, born and raised in Sugar Land, and he is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Hablamos Español. If your family communicates in Spanish, you will speak directly with Lupe — not through a translator, not through a staff member, but with a lawyer who speaks your language and understands your community.
The fee is contingency. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% if the case resolves before trial and 40% if it goes to trial. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. You pay nothing out of pocket — not for the preservation letters, not for the experts, not for the filing fees. Those costs are advanced by the firm and recovered from the recovery, if there is one. If there is no recovery, you owe nothing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the property owner after a mass shooting in Texas?
Yes. Texas law imposes a duty on property owners to protect invitees from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. If the property where the shooting occurred had a history of violent incidents and the owner failed to implement reasonable security measures, the owner can be held liable for the deaths and injuries that resulted. The key question is not whether the property owner caused the shooting but whether the owner’s failure to provide adequate security made the shooting foreseeable and preventable.
How long do I have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations on wrongful death claims, running from the date of death. However, the evidence that decides these cases — surveillance footage, security logs, prior crime records — disappears on a far shorter schedule. The preservation deadline is measured in days and weeks, not years. The two-year filing deadline is the backstop. The evidence-preservation deadline is the real clock.
What if the shooter is dead — can I still get justice?
The shooter’s death eliminates the criminal case but opens the civil case. In a civil case, the question is not what punishment fits the shooter but what the property owner knew, what the security company failed to do, and whether the deaths were the foreseeable result of those failures. The shooter’s death redirects the entire legal inquiry from the person who pulled the trigger to the conditions that allowed the trigger to be pulled. That is where accountability lives when the criminal case is gone.
How much is a mass shooting wrongful death case worth?
The value depends on the foreseeability evidence, the security failures, the number of victims, the defendant’s insurance and assets, and the strength of the gross-negligence exposure. A single-victim case against a modest-asset owner with contested foreseeability may be worth roughly $2 million. A multi-victim case against a deep-pocket commercial owner with documented prior incidents and gross-negligence exposure may be worth $75 million or more. We do not promise a specific dollar outcome. We do promise that the value is driven by the evidence, and the evidence is dying.
What evidence needs to be preserved after a mass shooting?
The critical evidence includes: surveillance footage from the venue and surrounding businesses (overwrites in 7 to 30 days), 911 call recordings and police dispatch records, security company daily activity logs and staffing schedules (purged in 90 days to one year), prior police calls-for-service for the venue address covering three to five years, crime scene photographs and ballistic evidence (scene released in 24 to 72 hours), the shooter’s social media and employment records, and any security assessment or audit reports for the venue. A preservation letter demanding all of these records must go out immediately.
What is negligent security and how does it apply to mass shootings?
Negligent security is a form of premises liability that holds a property owner responsible for failing to protect invitees from foreseeable criminal acts. In a mass-shooting context, the claim is that the property owner knew — from prior violent incidents, from the property’s location and character, from the nature of the people it invited onto the premises — that a violent attack was foreseeable, and failed to take reasonable measures to prevent it: adequate lighting, functioning surveillance, access control, security staffing, and weapon-screening protocols. The foreseeability analysis looks at the proximity, recency, frequency, and similarity of prior crimes at or near the property.
What is the difference between a wrongful death claim and a survival action?
A wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family — the spouse, children, and parents — and compensates them for what they lost: financial support, companionship, guidance, and society. A survival action belongs to the estate and carries forward the claim the decedent would have had if they had survived: conscious pain and suffering between the shooting and death, medical expenses, and funeral costs. Both claims run on the same two-year statute of limitations, and both are typically filed together in the same lawsuit.
What if the property owner says the shooting was unforeseeable?
This is the defense’s strongest argument and it is beatable. The counter is the prior-crime history at the property. Three to five years of police calls-for-service — weapons calls, assaults, threats, drug activity — at the venue address demonstrates that the property owner was on notice of escalating danger. The foreseeability framework analyzes the proximity, recency, frequency, and similarity of those prior crimes to the shooting. When the prior-crime record is strong, the “unforeseeable” argument collapses. The preservation letter demanding those police records is the first step in defeating the defense.
Can I sue if my loved one was a bystander?
Yes. Anyone who was on the property as an invitee — a customer, an employee, an event attendee — is owed the duty of reasonable protection from foreseeable criminal acts. The status of the victim as a “bystander” does not reduce the property owner’s duty. If the property owner invited people onto the premises, the duty extends to all of them. Additionally, victims who were in the zone of physical danger and witnessed the shooting may pursue emotional-distress damages under Texas’s bystander requirements.
How does the insurance company try to minimize my claim?
The insurance company will deploy a series of plays: the “sympathy call” that is actually a recorded statement designed to gather admissions, the quick settlement check with a release that extinguishes the claim, the “unforeseeable crime” argument, the “shooter is the only liable party” argument, social media monitoring for evidence that minimizes the loss, and strategic delay aimed at the statute of limitations. Each play has a counter — do not give a recorded statement, do not sign anything, preserve the evidence, and engage a lawyer who understands the Stowers doctrine and can put the insurer’s own money at risk if they refuse to be reasonable.
Why This Firm, and Why Now
The difference between the firm that sends the preservation letter the day you call and the firm that sends it three weeks later is not a matter of efficiency. It is a matter of evidence. The CCTV footage that proves no one was watching the cameras when the shooter walked in — that footage overwrites in 30 days. The security log that shows the patrol was understaffed — that log purges in 90 days. The prior-crime record that destroys the “unforeseeable” defense — that record exists right now, in police files and the property owner’s own incident logs, and it can be demanded and frozen with a letter.
Every day without that letter is a day the defense gains advantage. Every day the scene sits uncleaned is a day the physical evidence degrades. Every day the social media accounts go un-preserved is a day closer to the platforms deleting them.
We do not claim to represent the victims of the Midland shooting. We have not been retained by any family affected by this event, and we do not state or imply that we have taken any action on this specific case. What we are is a powerful resource — the education, the governing law, the evidence clocks, the honest valuation, and the decision power to tell you what a case like this looks like, what it is worth, and what the first steps are.
If you are reading this at 2 a.m. in Midland, trying to understand what happens now — the answer is that the civil case is the door that is still open. The criminal case is gone. The civil case is yours. The question is whether the evidence that decides it will still exist when you are ready to use it.
Call us. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. There is no fee unless we win your case.
1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911)
We answer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Not an answering service — live staff. Hablamos Español.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.