The Warrior on the Pool Deck and the Question on Everyone’s Mind
If you watched Army Maj. Jonathan Turnbull tell a Fox News audience how he turns a 25-meter pool into 100 meters with little zigzags down the lane — because he cannot see the wall he is swimming toward, because an ISIS suicide bomber in Manbij, Syria took both of his eyes on the day he was supposed to come home — you probably had the same thought most Americans had. There has to be a lawsuit. There has to be a way to make someone pay for what this man went through, for the 23 life-saving surgeries, for the doctors who gave him 12 hours to live, for the rebuilt face, for the seven years of recovery that produced a Warrior Games athlete in San Antonio who competes in archery, cycling, field events, indoor rowing, powerlifting, precision air, swimming, and track as a completely blind man.
We understand that impulse. We work with injury victims every day at Attorney911, and we know the question that comes after the news story is over. We are going to answer it honestly. That answer is the first piece of protection we can give you, and it is the only honest place to start.
The short, hard answer: in most cases, a service member injured in combat overseas cannot bring a civil lawsuit for those injuries against the United States. A 1950 Supreme Court case called Feres v. United States blocks those claims. The recovery pathway for combat-injured service members runs through a separate system entirely — a system of military entitlements, Veterans Affairs benefits, and a small number of narrow civil claims that do survive Feres. That system is real. It is substantial. It is also the kind of system that punishes people who do not understand its deadlines, its paperwork, and its playbooks.
This page is built to walk you through what Feres actually says, what benefits are available, what narrow civil claims can still be brought, and what Attorney911 can and cannot do for a Texas service member or veteran. It is the page we wish existed the first time one of us sat across a kitchen table from a wounded warrior’s family. We are the firm that has spent 27+ years in courtrooms fighting corporate defendants and catastrophic-injury claims. We are also the firm that will not take your money for a case we cannot win. That honesty is the beginning of every honest lawyer-client relationship.
What the Feres Doctrine Actually Says
In 1950, the United States Supreme Court decided Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135. The case held that the federal government is not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act (28 U.S.C. § 1346(b)) for injuries to active-duty service members that “arise out of or are incident to” their military service. The Court gave two reasons for this rule, and both reasons matter for understanding why the doctrine has stayed in place for more than seven decades.
“The federal government is not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries to active-duty service members that ‘arise out of or are incident to’ their military service.”
— The rule of Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950), as applied for over seventy years by the federal courts.
The first reason was a concern about military discipline. The Court worried that if a service member could sue the military in civilian court over an injury, the litigation would pull the chain of command into a courtroom and interfere with the command structure that keeps the armed forces functioning. The second reason was the existence of a separate compensation system — the system of military disability retirement, Veterans Affairs benefits, and the other entitlements we will describe below. The Court reasoned that Congress had created a separate system to care for injured service members, and that civilian tort damages on top of that system would be either duplicative or disruptive.
The doctrine is not narrow. Federal courts have applied Feres to bar claims arising from combat, training exercises, military medical care at military treatment facilities, and even some on-base automobile accidents. Feres is not a “combat exception” — it is a broader “incident to service” rule that happens to capture almost every combat case as a matter of course. A Special Operations civil affairs officer injured by an enemy suicide bomber in a foreign theater of war is the paradigmatic Feres scenario.
There are exceptions, and they are narrow. The Supreme Court has recognized that Feres does not bar a claim where a service member’s injury was not “incident to” military service in a meaningful sense — for example, a claim involving a non-government third party whose own negligence contributed to the injury, or a claim involving medical care received at a non-military facility. We will come back to those narrow doors, because they are the only doors that exist.
For Maj. Turnbull’s combat injuries in Manbij, Feres is dispositive. There is no civil tort claim against the United States, and the only other potentially liable party — ISIS — is a non-state actor with no presence in U.S. courts, no attachable assets, and no way to be subjected to a Texas personal injury lawsuit. The country that sent him to Syria cannot be sued for what ISIS did to him. That is the legal reality, and no Texas verdict can change it.
Why Combat Injuries Are Different From Civilian Personal Injury Cases
A Texas personal injury case requires five things: a defendant who owed a duty of care, a breach of that duty, causation, damages, and a viable legal theory to put them together. A typical car crash case checks every box: the other driver owed you a duty to drive reasonably, they breached it by running a red light, the breach caused your injuries, your injuries are documented, and the legal theory is negligence. A commercial truck case adds a defendant map — the driver, the motor carrier, the freight broker, the shipper — and layers of federal regulation under 49 CFR that the jury can be told about. The case has defendants, evidence, and a path.
A combat injury case in a foreign theater has almost none of that. The actor who caused the harm is an enemy combatant on the other side of a war. The employer is the United States, but the Feres doctrine bars the claim against the employer. The location is a foreign combat zone, where Texas tort law does not apply and Texas courts have no jurisdiction. The evidence is classified and controlled by the Department of Defense, not the plaintiff. The video Samantha Turnbull described watching — the security camera footage of the truck in the moments before the explosion — is a military investigative record, not a piece of civil discovery.
To put it in terms a Texas plaintiff would understand: the Texas two-year personal injury statute of limitations under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003, the modified comparative negligence rule under Chapter 33 of that same code (the 51% bar), the loss-of-consortium doctrine, the lack of a general cap on personal injury damages — none of those doctrines reach this case, because this case does not have a Texas defendant in a Texas courthouse.
The country did not leave combat-injured service members without any recovery. It built a separate system. That system includes military disability retirement, the traumatic injury payout known as TSGLI, combat-related special compensation, the Special Compensation for Assistance with Activities of Daily Living for catastrophically injured service members, the full range of Veterans Affairs disability compensation, and lifetime TRICARE medical coverage. The system is real. The system pays. The system also has deadlines, paperwork, medical evaluations, and rating decisions that can go wrong if no one is paying attention. That is where the work happens for a combat-injured service member — not in a courtroom, but in the administrative system the country built to take its place.
What Benefits Are Available to a Combat-Injured Service Member
The military and Veterans Affairs benefits system is its own legal discipline. Most combat-injured service members never learn about it until after they are already in it, and the people who handle it well are the ones who learn its deadlines early. Here is a plain-English walk through the major entitlements that apply to severe combat injuries like Maj. Turnbull’s.
Traumatic Injury Protection under TSGLI (38 U.S.C. § 1980A). The Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance Traumatic Injury Protection program, almost always called TSGLI, is a one-time, tax-free payment of up to $100,000 that pays out when a service member suffers a severe traumatic injury. The qualifying injuries are itemized in the statute and the implementing regulation, and they include the loss of sight, the loss of a limb, and injuries that require specific intensive-care-style interventions. The payment is $100,000 for the most severe qualifying losses. The application must be filed within 365 days of the injury, with limited extensions available for certain circumstances. The 365-day clock is the most important deadline a wounded service member’s family will face in the first year. Miss it without good cause, and the $100,000 is lost forever. This is a hard deadline. It is not a soft one. It is the kind of deadline that insurance defense attorneys — and Lupe Peña, who spent years on that side of the table, will tell you — is engineered to be missed.
Combat-Related Special Compensation (10 U.S.C. § 1413a). CRSC is a tax-free monthly payment for service members whose disabilities are officially determined to be combat-related. It is designed to restore some of the retired pay that the concurrent-receipt rule would otherwise offset against Veterans Affairs disability compensation. To qualify, the disability must be documented as combat-related, and the application goes through the individual service’s CRSC office. The amounts are calculated by disability rating and base pay, and they can be substantial for severely disabled retirees.
DoD Disability Retirement. When a service member is found unfit for continued service by a Medical Evaluation Board and a Physical Evaluation Board, they are assigned a disability rating, and they are either placed on the Temporary Disability Retirement List or separated with a permanent disability retirement. The retirement pay is calculated as a percentage of the member’s base pay, indexed to the disability rating. For Maj. Turnbull’s level of injury, the rating would almost certainly be at or near the maximum.
Special Compensation for Assistance with Activities of Daily Living (SCAADL). SCAADL is a tax-free monthly payment for catastrophically injured service members who require caregiver assistance with basic activities like bathing, dressing, eating, and using the bathroom. The maximum payment is approximately $4,500 a month, and it is paid in addition to other compensation. It is designed to offset the cost of caregiver support for service members whose injuries leave them unable to live independently without help. A service member who has lost both eyes and required 23 life-saving surgeries is the precise population SCAADL was built for.
Veterans Affairs Disability Compensation. The VA disability system is separate from the DoD system. The VA assigns its own disability rating, pays tax-free monthly compensation based on that rating, and provides access to VA health care. A service member can receive both DoD retirement pay and VA disability compensation through the CRSC program described above, subject to the eligibility rules for each. The VA rating process has its own medical examination requirements, its own appeals structure, and its own well-documented tendency to underrate severe disabilities on first examination. That is the “playbook” we will describe below, and it is the reason a disabled veteran often needs help on the administrative side even after the combat injuries are documented.
TRICARE for Life and Lifetime Medical Care. For a catastrophically injured service member, the cost of lifetime medical care is one of the largest items on the balance sheet. TRICARE for life provides that coverage for retirees, including the catastrophically injured, often with no out-of-pocket cost for the most essential care. For a service member with two lost eyes, 23 surgeries, and a lifetime of follow-up care, this benefit alone is worth more than the largest civil verdict most plaintiff firms will ever see — and the point is that the country is paying it, not the wounded warrior.
The Combat Zone Tax Exclusion. Income earned in a designated combat zone is excluded from federal income tax for the months served in the zone. For a service member deployed to a combat zone for any part of a month, the entire month’s pay is excluded. This is a benefit that applies to the income earned before the injury, and it can produce a meaningful refund when properly claimed.
These benefits together can be substantial. A catastrophically injured retiree with a high DoD disability rating, a high VA rating, CRSC, SCAADL, TRICARE for life, and TSGLI can receive a six-figure tax-free annual income plus a $100,000 tax-free lump sum and lifetime medical care. That is real money. It is not a $165 million wrongful-death verdict, and it will not give Maj. Turnbull back his eyes. But it is the legal answer to the question, “Who pays for this?”
When a Service Member Can Still Bring a Civil Claim
The Feres doctrine is broad, but it is not absolute. There are real, narrow categories of civil claims that survive it. If you are a service member, a veteran, or a family member of one, it is worth understanding where those doors are. None of these categories will reach Maj. Turnbull’s Manbij injuries, but they may reach your situation.
Civilian-Side Medical Malpractice. The Supreme Court has recognized that the Feres doctrine does not necessarily bar a medical malpractice claim that arises from care received at a non-military facility. If a service member is treated by a civilian doctor, a civilian hospital, or a non-military urgent-care clinic, and the care falls below the standard of professional practice, the resulting claim against that civilian provider is not barred by Feres. The boundary is the military-civilian line: care at a military treatment facility is generally covered by Feres; care at a non-military facility is generally not. There are gray areas at the edges, but the rule is workable.
Third-Party Tortfeasors. If a service member’s combat injury is partly caused by the negligence of a non-government third party — for example, a defective equipment manufacturer whose product failed in a way that contributed to the injury, or a civilian contractor whose negligence created a hazardous condition — the claim against that third party is not barred by Feres. Feres protects the United States; it does not protect every private defendant in the supply chain. The legal analysis is more complex than a normal third-party claim, because the third-party defendant will argue that the military’s own choices are the real cause. But the door exists.
USERRA — Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. USERRA is a federal statute that protects the civilian employment rights of service members. It requires civilian employers to reemploy returning service members in the same or similar position, with the same seniority and benefits, after a period of military service. USERRA also protects service members from discrimination on the basis of their military service and prohibits employers from retaliating against service members who assert their rights. USERRA claims can be brought in federal court, and the statute of limitations for a private right of action is generally four years from the violation. If a service member is denied reemployment, demoted, denied promotion, or otherwise discriminated against by a civilian employer on the basis of military service, USERRA is the statute that gives them a way to fight back. This is a federal claim that Attorney911 handles, and it is one of the genuine civil rights protections for service members that survives Feres intact.
SCRA — Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. The SCRA is a different statute with a different purpose. It provides a series of protections for active-duty service members in their personal financial affairs, including a 6% cap on interest rates for pre-service debts, protection from foreclosure on pre-service mortgages, protections in lease terminations, and protections in certain default judgments. The SCRA is a defense and a claim, not just a defense: a service member whose SCRA rights have been violated can sue the violating party for damages and attorneys’ fees. Like USERRA, the SCRA is enforced in federal court, and it is a real civil remedy for real civil injuries.
Off-Duty Personal Injury in a Civilian Setting. If a service member is injured in a car crash, a truck crash, a motorcycle accident, a premises liability incident, or any other personal-injury event while off duty and not subject to military orders, the resulting claim against the responsible civilian defendant is not barred by Feres. The service member is in the same legal position as any other Texas personal injury plaintiff, with access to the Texas civil justice system, the Texas two-year statute of limitations under § 16.003, the Texas modified comparative negligence rule under Chapter 33, and the full range of Texas personal injury damages. This is the work Attorney911 does every day: trucking cases, refinery cases, brain injury cases, wrongful death cases, motorcycle cases, car crash cases. The same legal framework that would apply to a civilian applies to a service member in this context.
Insurance Bad Faith. If a service member’s insurance company — auto, homeowners, life, disability, or any other line — mishandles a claim in violation of Texas insurance law, the resulting bad-faith claim is a civil claim against the insurer, not against the United States. Texas Insurance Code provisions, the common-law duty of good faith and fair dealing, and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act all apply. A service member who is being mistreated by their own insurance company has the same right to sue the insurer for bad faith that any Texas policyholder has.
What Attorney911 Actually Does for Texas Service Members and Veterans
Now we need to be honest about scope. Attorney911 is a plaintiffs’-side trial firm. We have spent 27+ years in courtrooms fighting corporate defendants — motor carriers, oilfield operators, insurance companies, refineries, and other large institutions. Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, has been a Texas trial lawyer since 1998, is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, and was part of the BP Texas City refinery explosion litigation, one of the largest industrial-incident litigations in American history. We have recovered more than $50 million for Texas families since 1998. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. That record is what it is, and it is the foundation of every case we take.
Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years on the other side of the table as an insurance defense lawyer before he joined us. He knows how insurance companies set reserves, how claims handlers build their files, and how Colossus-style settlement software undervalues injuries. He is also fully bilingual and provides complete legal service in Spanish, which is a meaningful resource for Texas military families whose first language is Spanish.
Here is the honest scope statement, and we mean it: Attorney911 does not handle combat-injury claims that are barred by the Feres doctrine. We will not take a Feres-barred case, charge a fee on one, or tell a wounded warrior’s family that we can pursue a civil case against the United States for combat injuries. We have turned down those cases, and we will turn down more. The Feres doctrine is not a problem we can work around with creative lawyering, and the last thing a combat-injured service member needs is a contingency-fee contract that consumes a percentage of their military benefits in exchange for a civil case that will be dismissed on a motion to dismiss.
What Attorney911 can do for Texas service members, veterans, and their families is real, and it is substantial:
- USERRA claims against civilian employers who deny reemployment, discriminate on the basis of military service, or retaliate against service members who assert their rights. These are federal-court claims we handle on contingency.
- SCRA claims against lenders, landlords, and other parties who violate the 6% interest cap, the foreclosure protections, or the lease-termination rights of active-duty service members.
- Civilian medical malpractice claims where the care was provided at a non-military facility by a civilian provider.
- Third-party tortfeasor claims where a non-government defendant’s negligence contributed to a service member’s injury.
- Off-duty personal injury cases — car, truck, motorcycle, refinery, construction, oilfield, brain injury, wrongful death — handled under the same Texas civil justice system that applies to any Texas plaintiff. The service member’s status as a service member does not strip them of their rights as a Texas personal injury victim when they are off duty and in a civilian setting.
- Insurance bad-faith claims under Texas law against insurers that mishandle a service member’s claim.
If you are a Texas service member or veteran with one of these cases, we want to hear from you. The consultation is free, the contingency-fee promise is real, and the work is the same work we do for every Texas family who has been injured by someone else’s negligence. If you have a Feres-barred combat injury claim, we will tell you that, and we will point you to the resources that can actually help you. You can review the full set of practice areas on our site to see exactly what we handle.
The Administrative Record and the Evidence That Matters
A combat-injury case does not have a discovery clock the way a civil case does. The “evidence” in the military administrative system is not the kind of evidence that gets exchanged in litigation — it is the medical record, the personnel record, the deployment order, the DD-214, the MEB and PEB findings, the VA claims file, and the supporting medical opinions that go into each of those documents. The “clock” that matters is the administrative deadline clock: 365 days to file a TSGLI application, 1 year from discharge to file a VA claim for full benefits, 60 days to appeal an MEB finding, 1 year to file a Notice of Disagreement with a VA rating decision, and the specific deadlines that govern each benefit program.
The military medical record is the spine of every combat-injury case. It begins in the forward surgical team, continues through the higher-level military treatment facility, and is consolidated at the receiving MTF in the United States — for a service member injured in Syria in 2019, that receiving facility would most likely be Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and then Brooke Army Medical Center at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston. The record includes the operative reports, the imaging studies, the medication administration records, the nursing notes, the discharge summaries, and the consultation reports. The record is permanent. It is also requestable, but copies take time. The family of a wounded service member should request certified copies of the entire record as early as possible, because the record will be needed for every subsequent claim — TSGLI, MEB, PEB, VA, CRSC, SCAADL, and any future private insurance application.
The DD-214 and the personnel file document the service member’s dates of service, the character of discharge, the deployment history, and the awards. The DD-214 is the single most important document a veteran will ever receive, and a family should obtain multiple certified copies as soon as the member separates.
The MEB and PEB records document the disability evaluation process. The Medical Evaluation Board is a group of military physicians that determines whether the service member’s condition renders them unfit for continued service. The Physical Evaluation Board assigns the disability rating. Both records are critical to the disability retirement, and both can be appealed. The MEB’s findings can be challenged on the medical record, and the PEB’s rating can be challenged on the rating criteria. Missing the appeal window means accepting whatever rating the PEB assigns, and that rating is often lower than the actual disability.
The VA claims file is the VA’s record of the veteran’s claim for VA disability compensation. The file includes the application, the VA medical examination reports, the rating decision, and the supporting evidence. The file is requestable by the veteran, and the veteran has a right to submit additional evidence at multiple stages of the claim process.
The TSGLI application is the time-critical document. The 365-day filing window begins on the date of the traumatic injury, and it requires documentation of the injury, the treatment, and the qualifying condition. Missing the window without good cause means losing the $100,000 tax-free benefit. There is no more important deadline in the first year after a combat injury.
The After-Action Report and AR 15-6 investigation from the incident are classified or controlled by the Department of Defense. They are not civilly discoverable, and they are not part of the administrative record a service member’s family can request. The security camera footage Samantha Turnbull described watching — the video of the truck in the moments before the explosion — is a military investigative record, not a piece of evidence a family can keep. This is part of the legal reality of combat injury: the record is incomplete, and the rest lives in classified files the family will never see.
The Military and VA Claims Playbook (and How to Counter It)
The VA claims process has its own version of the insurance adjuster playbook. Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years watching the other side build files that minimize the value of an injury, and the tactics he observed have a near-perfect analog in the VA claims process. The system is not corrupt. The people inside it are mostly well-intentioned. But the system has predictable patterns, and the families who understand the patterns are the families who end up with the right rating and the right benefits. Here are the plays to watch for.
Play 1: The “let’s get you on the schedule” delay. The VA medical examination that drives a disability rating is scheduled months out. A veteran who files a claim in March may not see a VA examiner until August. The delay is built into the system, and the longer the delay, the longer the family waits for the rating. The counter is to file the claim early, request a decision based on existing medical evidence when appropriate, and follow up with the VA regional office in writing. A claim filed with a complete medical record and a clear nexus letter from a treating physician can sometimes be decided on the record without the examination, which cuts months off the timeline.
Play 2: The low first rating. VA rating decisions frequently underrate severe disabilities on the first examination. The veteran receives a 30% rating for an injury that the medical record clearly supports at 60% or higher. The low rating is not necessarily an act of bad faith — it is the predictable result of a system that processes millions of claims through examiners who have never met the veteran, working from a paper record, applying rating criteria that often fail to capture the full functional loss of a severe injury. The counter is to file a Notice of Disagreement within one year of the rating decision, submit additional medical evidence, request a Decision Review Officer review, and continue appealing through the Board of Veterans’ Appeals if necessary. A veterans service organization — DAV, VFW, American Legion — provides free representation in the VA claims process, and a service-connected veteran with a complex claim is well served by having a VSO involved from the first filing.
Play 3: The “pre-existing condition” denial. The VA will sometimes deny a claim on the theory that the disability pre-existed service, or that it is not service-connected. The denial is often based on a single notation in a service treatment record or a single gap in the medical record. The counter is to rebut the pre-existing condition theory with the buddy statement, the medical literature, the treating physician’s opinion, and the post-service medical record that shows progression. A combat injury that occurred overseas is presumptively service-connected in many cases, and the VA’s denial of that presumption can be appealed.
Play 4: The “we need another examination” request. The VA will sometimes schedule a second examination months after the first, often with a different examiner, often with a different result. The second examination can be useful — a thorough examiner can produce a better rating — or it can be harmful, depending on the examiner and the case. The counter is to attend every scheduled examination prepared: bring copies of the medical record, bring a list of symptoms and functional limitations, and consider bringing a friend or family member who can corroborate the daily impact of the disability. The examination is the veteran’s opportunity to describe the injury in their own words, and the description matters.
These are the four most common plays in the VA claims process. There are more. The point is not that the VA is an adversary — it is not, in the way an insurance company is — but the system is large, the caseload is heavy, and the family that understands the process is the family that gets the benefits the system was designed to provide. The Veterans Benefits Administration has its own appeals structure, its own decision review officers, and its own Board of Veterans’ Appeals. The appeals system works. It works better when someone is paying attention to the deadlines and the evidence.
Texas Resources for Wounded Warriors and Their Families
For a service member or veteran in San Antonio, in Bexar County, or anywhere in Texas, the local resources are real. The Military City USA nickname is not marketing — it reflects the largest concentration of military medical infrastructure in the Department of Defense. Here is a list of the resources that a Texas wounded warrior’s family should know about in the first days and weeks after a combat injury.
Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC). BAMC is the DoD’s largest inpatient military treatment facility, located at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston. It is the receiving facility for many of the most severely injured service members evacuated from overseas combat operations, and it houses the Center for the Intrepid, the DoD’s flagship rehabilitation center for amputees and service members with severe extremity injuries. BAMC’s burn center, polytrauma program, and vision-rehabilitation services are among the most sophisticated in the military medical system. For a service member who has lost both eyes, BAMC is the receiving facility for the initial rehabilitation, and the medical team there has the experience of treating thousands of catastrophically injured service members over two decades of combat operations.
JBSA Warrior Transition Battalion. The Warrior Transition Battalion at Joint Base San Antonio provides command and care coordination for wounded, ill, and injured service members who are assigned to the San Antonio area for medical treatment. The WTB assigns a squad leader, a nurse case manager, and a primary care manager to each service member in transition, and it coordinates appointments, pay, and family support during the often-lengthy treatment and evaluation period.
Texas Veterans Commission (TVC). TVC is the state agency that advocates for Texas veterans. The TVC provides free claims assistance for VA disability claims, state benefit navigation, and employment services for veterans. The TVC’s veteran claims representatives are accredited by the VA and can represent a veteran in the VA claims process at no charge.
Disabled American Veterans (DAV), Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), and the American Legion. These three congressionally chartered veterans service organizations provide free representation in the VA claims process. The DAV in particular has a strong national presence and a long history of representing catastrophically injured veterans. A family that does not have a VSO involved in the claim is leaving the appeal work to themselves, and the appeal work is the part of the process that determines the final rating.
Wounded Warrior Project. WWP provides a range of non-legal support services to wounded post-9/11 veterans, including transition programs, physical health and wellness programs, mental health support, and long-term follow-up. WWP is not a legal services organization, and it does not file VA claims, but it is a meaningful resource for the long-term support that combat-injured veterans and their families need beyond the medical and benefits systems.
Travis Mills Foundation. The Travis Mills Foundation serves recalibrated veterans — those who have sustained life-changing injuries including amputations, traumatic brain injuries, and severe burns. The Foundation operates a retreat in Maine and provides programs specifically for severely injured service members and their families. For a service member with the level of injury Maj. Turnbull sustained, the Foundation’s programming is designed for precisely that population.
Military OneSource. Military OneSource is the DoD’s central information and referral resource for service members and their families. It provides free non-medical counseling, financial counseling, legal referrals (separate from the JAG legal assistance offices), and information on every DoD program and benefit. The 24/7 phone number is 1-800-342-9647.
These resources are the real infrastructure of combat-injury recovery in Texas. A family that connects with them in the first 30 days is a family that has begun the administrative work that the country designed for their situation. The work is real, the deadlines are real, and the benefits are real. The legal system is not the answer to a combat injury. The military administrative system, the VA claims system, and the network of supporting organizations are the answer, and the work is to use them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a service member injured in combat sue the United States government for damages?
In most cases, no. The Feres doctrine, a 1950 U.S. Supreme Court case, bars civil claims against the United States for injuries to active-duty service members that arise out of or are incident to military service. Combat injuries are the paradigmatic Feres case. The country provides a separate system of military and Veterans Affairs benefits as the substitute for civil tort recovery. There are very narrow exceptions for medical malpractice at non-military facilities and for claims against non-government third parties, but the general rule is that the civil courthouse door is closed.
What is the Feres doctrine in plain English?
Feres is the Supreme Court rule that says the federal government cannot be sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries to active-duty service members that are incident to their military service. The Court was worried about two things: that lawsuits would interfere with military discipline, and that the United States already has a separate system of military and VA benefits to compensate injured service members. The rule has been in place since 1950, and it has been applied broadly to combat, training, and military medical care cases. The exceptions are narrow.
What is TSGLI and how much does it pay?
TSGLI stands for Traumatic Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, established under 38 U.S.C. § 1980A. It is a one-time, tax-free payment of up to $100,000 to a service member who suffers a severe traumatic injury, including the loss of sight, the loss of a limb, and injuries requiring specific intensive-care interventions. The payment is $100,000 for the most severe qualifying losses. The application must be filed within 365 days of the injury, with limited extensions available. The 365-day deadline is the most important filing deadline a wounded service member’s family faces in the first year.
Can a service member who was injured in combat and medically retired still file a VA disability claim?
Yes. The DoD disability retirement and the VA disability compensation are separate systems, and a service member can receive both, subject to the rules of each. The CRSC (Combat-Related Special Compensation) program, established under 10 U.S.C. § 1413a, allows certain combat-related retirees to receive both their DoD retired pay and their VA disability compensation. The application for CRSC goes through the individual service’s CRSC office, and the disability must be documented as combat-related.
What is the USERRA, and can a service member sue a civilian employer under it?
USERRA is the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, a federal statute that protects the civilian employment rights of service members. It requires civilian employers to reemploy returning service members in the same or similar position, with the same seniority and benefits, after a period of military service. USERRA also prohibits discrimination on the basis of military service. A service member whose civilian employer violates USERRA can sue in federal court. The statute of limitations is generally four years from the violation. Attorney911 handles USERRA claims for Texas service members and veterans.
What is the Feres exception for medical malpractice at a civilian hospital?
The Supreme Court has held that the Feres doctrine does not necessarily bar a medical malpractice claim that arises from care received at a non-military facility. If a service member is treated by a civilian doctor, a civilian hospital, or a non-military clinic, and the care falls below the standard of professional practice, the resulting claim against that civilian provider is not barred by Feres. The military-civilian line matters: care at a military treatment facility is generally covered by Feres; care at a non-military facility is generally not.
Can the family of a service member killed in combat file a wrongful death lawsuit?
The same Feres doctrine that bars the service member’s own claim generally bars a wrongful death claim brought by the family for a service member’s combat death. The recovery pathway for a family that loses a service member in combat runs through the Survivor Benefit Plan, the death gratuity, TSGLI, the VA’s Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, and the military’s various survivor programs. There are narrow exceptions for third-party tortfeasors and for deaths that occur in non-military contexts, but a combat death does not generally give rise to a civil tort claim against the United States. For a more complete explanation of how Texas wrongful death cases work in the civilian context, see our wrongful death practice page.
What if the service member is injured in a car accident while on leave?
A service member injured in a car, truck, or motorcycle accident while on leave and in a civilian setting has the same Texas personal injury claim against the at-fault civilian driver that any other Texas plaintiff would have. The Texas two-year statute of limitations under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 applies. The Texas modified comparative negligence rule under Chapter 33 of that code applies. The service member’s military status does not strip them of their rights as a Texas personal injury plaintiff when the injury occurs in a civilian context. This is exactly the kind of case Attorney911 handles every day, from car accidents to commercial truck crashes.
What is the Warrior Games, and is Attorney911 involved?
The Warrior Games is a Department of Defense adaptive sports competition for wounded, ill, and injured service members. The 2026 Warrior Games were held in San Antonio, Texas. Nearly 200 service members competed in 12 adaptive sports, including archery, cycling, swimming, track, powerlifting, and precision air. Attorney911 is not involved in the Warrior Games. The Games are operated by the Defense Health Agency’s Office of Warrior Care Policy. The Games are a meaningful recovery and reintegration program for catastrophically injured service members, and they are the kind of program that the country should be proud to fund. We are proud of Maj. Turnbull. We are proud of every wounded warrior who has competed. We are also honest that the legal system is not the answer to combat injuries, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. For a deeper look at how brain injuries like the kind combat veterans often sustain are proven and valued in the civilian legal system, our guide to brain injury lawsuits walks through the medical and legal proof problems.
If You Are a Texas Service Member or Veteran, Here Is What We Will Do
If you are reading this because you are a service member, a veteran, or a family member of one, and you have a legal question about a USERRA violation, an SCRA violation, a civilian medical malpractice claim, a third-party tortfeasor claim, an off-duty personal injury case, or an insurance bad-faith claim, we want to hear from you. The consultation is free. The contingency-fee promise is real: there is no fee unless we win. We do not charge a fee unless we win.
Ralph Manginello brings 27+ years of trial experience to every case, including federal court practice and the BP Texas City refinery explosion litigation pedigree. Lupe Peña spent years on the other side of the table as an insurance defense lawyer and now fights for the people that system was designed to undervalue. We serve Texas families in English and in Spanish — Hablamos Español — and we will pick up the phone at 1-888-ATTY-911.
If you have a Feres-barred combat injury claim, we will tell you that, and we will point you to the Veterans Service Organizations, the Texas Veterans Commission, and the Military OneSource resources that can actually help you. We are not going to take your case and tell you that we can beat a doctrine the Supreme Court has enforced for over seventy years. That is not the firm we built. The firm we built tells you the truth about your case, and then we do the work the truth requires.
This page is legal information about the law that applies to combat injuries and the benefits available to wounded service members. It is not legal advice for any specific case. If you have a specific question about your own situation, call us at 1-888-ATTY-911, or reach out through our contact page. The consultation is free, confidential, and we will tell you what the law actually says about your case — not what we wish it said. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Hablamos Español. 1-888-ATTY-911.