The Question Behind the Story
You watched the 2026 Warrior Games on Fox News. You saw Army Maj. Jonathan Turnbull, given 12 hours to live after an ISIS suicide bomber attacked his team in Manbij, Syria on January 16, 2019, compete across eight adaptive sports as a completely blind man. You saw him run an Army 10-miler nine months after doctors said he would never walk again. You saw his wife, Samantha, say the words that every military spouse has felt at least once: “I thought, ‘okay, John’s not here anymore.'” And the question that has been sitting in your chest since then is the same question that sits in the chest of every parent, spouse, sibling, and friend of a service member injured in combat: Can we sue somebody for this?
We are the trial lawyers at Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, and we are going to give you the honest answer in plain English. The honest answer is harder than the question deserves, and it is the answer you need before any law firm takes a dollar from you.
Maj. Turnbull’s case is not a personal injury case we can take. The injury happened in a foreign combat zone, from an enemy attack, and the law that governs that fact pattern is the Feres doctrine — a 1950 United States Supreme Court decision that has barred combat-injury tort claims against the federal government for more than 75 years. We are not his lawyers. We are not going to pretend we are. What we can do is tell you what the law actually says, what benefits are actually available, and where the narrow legal doors remain open for service members and veterans in Texas. That is the conversation this page is built for.
What the Feres Doctrine Actually Says — Plain English
In 1947, a soldier named Feres died in a barracks fire at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, allegedly because of a defective heating system installed by a government contractor. His widow sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (28 U.S.C. § 1346(b)) — the federal law that allows people to sue the government for the negligence of government employees, just as they would sue a private party. The case reached the United States Supreme Court as Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950), and the Court ruled against her. Not because her husband’s death was not real. Not because the government had no negligence to answer for. The Court ruled against her because of a doctrine the Justices created in that opinion, one that bars FTCA claims for injuries “incident to military service.”
Translated into the language of a family sitting at a kitchen table: when a service member is injured in the course of military service, the United States government has not consented to be sued for that injury. The Federal Tort Claims Act, which exists to make the government answerable for its mistakes the same way any employer would be, does not reach injuries to active-duty service members. The Supreme Court’s reasoning rested on three legs: the distinctive relationship between soldier and government, the need for uniform military discipline free of civilian tort suits, and Congress’s provision of a separate compensation system (the military’s disability and retirement benefits) as the substitute remedy.
The rule in plain English: Active-duty service members cannot sue the United States for injuries they suffer in the line of duty, including combat injuries, training injuries, and medical malpractice at military treatment facilities. This is true even when the government’s negligence is conceded.
The doctrine has been narrowed in some respects over the decades — for example, the Supreme Court held in Millbrook v. United States, 569 U.S. 50 (2013), that Feres does not bar an FTCA suit brought by a service member’s spouse for injuries to her that are not derivative of his service. But the core rule — that combat-zone injuries to service members are not actionable in tort against the United States — has never been disturbed. Maj. Turnbull’s injuries, suffered during a counter-ISIS operation overseas, are the paradigmatic Feres scenario.
This means that for the family of any service member injured in combat, the answer to “can we sue the military” is, in almost every case, no. Not because the injury is not real. Not because the government did not make a choice that contributed to the harm. Because the Supreme Court has said the courthouse door is closed for these claims.
Why Combat Injuries Are Different From Every Other Personal Injury Case
If you have ever been the victim of a car crash, a truck wreck, a refinery accident, a slip and fall, or any other personal injury caused by someone else’s negligence in Texas, you know the basic shape of the system: the negligent party (or its insurance company) owes you for your medical bills, your lost wages, your pain, your disfigurement, your loss of enjoyment of life, and (in the worst cases) your family can bring a wrongful death claim. The Texas statute of limitations for personal injury is two years under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003. The defendant’s insurance policy is the source of the recovery. The jury in the county where the injury occurred is the finder of fact.
Combat injuries live in a different universe. Here is the short list of why:
- There is no defendant with insurance. The entity that caused the harm is a non-state terrorist organization with no U.S. assets, no U.S. presence, and no amenability to U.S. jurisdiction. ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and similar groups cannot be served with a lawsuit in a U.S. court.
- The United States is shielded by Feres. The FTCA’s waiver of sovereign immunity is the doorway through which all tort suits against the federal government pass. Feres closes that door for service member combat injuries.
- The compensation system is administrative, not judicial. The Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs operate a system of statutory benefits that substitute for tort recovery. That system is real and substantial, but it is not a jury verdict. There is no “pain and suffering” line item. There is no punitive damages. There is no right to a jury trial of the kind that produces the multi-million-dollar verdicts you see on the news after a commercial truck crash.
- Disability ratings, not jury verdicts, set the value. A service member’s military compensation is largely driven by the percentage disability rating assigned by the military or the VA. A 100% disability rating produces one set of payments; a 60% rating produces less. The system is bureaucratic, and it is what the law has chosen in place of tort recovery.
It is fair to ask: is this just? Many people, including many veterans, believe the system shortchanges those who served. That is a debate worth having, and it is one happening right now in Congress and in veteran service organizations. But it is a debate about the law, not about any individual case — and as a law firm, we have to tell you what the law is, not what we wish it were.
The Benefits That Do Exist: TSGLI, CRSC, Disability Retirement, SCAADL, VA, and TRICARE
Feres closes the courthouse door, but it does not leave combat-injured service members with nothing. The compensation system is real, and the benefits can be substantial. Here is what is available, in the language the family actually hears at the hospital bedside and at the transition briefing.
Traumatic Service Members’ Group Life Insurance (TSGLI)
TSGLI is a tax-free payment of up to $100,000 under 38 U.S.C. § 1980A for service members who suffer a qualifying traumatic loss — including the loss of sight in one or both eyes, loss of a limb, severe burns, or other traumatic injuries meeting the statutory criteria. Maj. Turnbull’s total blindness would qualify. The payment is made by the service member’s life insurance carrier (typically Prudential) directly to the service member, in addition to any base SGLI coverage. The application must be filed within the statutory window after the injury, and a service member who has been medically retired can still apply.
Combat-Related Special Compensation (CRSC)
CRSC, established at 10 U.S.C. § 1413a, is a tax-free monthly payment for retired service members whose disability is combat-related. It exists to make up for the historical offset between military retired pay and VA disability compensation, which the Supreme Court had held permissible in Watson v. Arkansas and related cases. The amount depends on the disability rating and the retired pay base. It is administered by the service member’s branch of service, not the VA, and requires a separate application showing the disability is combat-related.
Disability Retirement
Active-duty service members who are determined to be unfit for continued service by a Medical Evaluation Board and a Physical Evaluation Board receive disability retirement pay. The amount is calculated as a percentage of base pay, determined by the disability rating (typically 0% to 100% in 10% increments). A service member with a 100% disability rating receives two-thirds of base pay. For a Special Operations officer like Maj. Turnbull, that calculation is not small. The disability retirement is taxable; CRSC and VA disability are not.
Special Compensation for Assistance with Activities of Daily Living (SCAADL)
SCAADL is a monthly tax-free payment for service members who require assistance with activities of daily living — bathing, dressing, eating, toileting — as a result of a catastrophic injury or illness. It is specifically designed for the kind of severe, long-term injury Maj. Turnbull sustained. The amount is set by the Secretary of Defense and is paid in addition to other military compensation.
TRICARE
TRICARE is the military health system that provides medical coverage to active-duty service members, retirees, and their dependents. For catastrophically injured service members, TRICARE covers the surgeries, rehabilitation, prosthetics, and ongoing care that would otherwise bankrupt a civilian family. It is, in many ways, the single most valuable benefit the system provides — and it continues for life for medically retired members and their families.
VA Disability Compensation
Separately from the military system, the Department of Veterans Affairs pays tax-free monthly disability compensation to veterans with service-connected disabilities. Ratings range from 0% to 100%. A 100% rating currently pays several thousand dollars per month, plus additional amounts for dependents and for special circumstances like aid and attendance. The VA claims process is administered separately, has its own evidentiary rules, and frequently requires appeal to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals. It is not a fast process, and it is not a friendly process to navigate without help.
The total value of these benefits over a lifetime, for a catastrophically injured Special Operations officer, is substantial — easily in the seven figures when you add together disability retirement, CRSC, SCAADL, VA disability, and TRICARE. It is not, however, a tort verdict. There is no compensation line for the lost mission, the lost identity, the marriage that strains under the weight of recovery, the career that ends. Those are real losses, and the law does not price them.
The Doors That Stay Open: USERRA, SCRA, Civilian-Side Medical Malpractice, and Third-Party Tortfeasors
Feres is a wide bar, but it is not infinite. There are real legal claims that service members and veterans can bring in Texas and in federal court. We are not advertising for combat-injury tort suits. We are telling you what the law actually allows, so you do not waste years chasing what it does not.
USERRA — Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act
USERRA, codified at 38 U.S.C. §§ 4301 through 4335, protects the civilian employment rights of service members who are called to active duty. If a service member’s employer fires them, fails to reemploy them, demotes them, or otherwise discriminates against them because of their military service, USERRA provides a federal cause of action. The remedy can include reinstatement, back pay, lost benefits, and (in cases of willful violations) liquidated damages. USERRA claims can be pursued in state or federal court, or by filing a complaint with the Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS). The deadline structure is not the typical two-year statute of limitations; the Department of Labor complaint must be filed within a defined period, and private actions have their own timing rules. The point is: if your civilian employer punished you for serving, you have a real case under federal law. Our workplace injury practice touches adjacent employment law; USERRA itself is a specialized area, and we will tell you plainly if a USERRA matter is one we handle or one to refer to a colleague who focuses on it.
SCRA — Servicemembers Civil Relief Act
The SCRA, at 50 U.S.C. §§ 3901 through 4043, is a wide-ranging federal law that protects service members in a variety of civil matters — most importantly, predatory lending. The SCRA caps interest rates on pre-service debts at 6% during periods of active-duty service, allows termination of certain residential and vehicle leases upon deployment, and protects service members from default judgments. The Act also prohibits certain creditor actions, including foreclosure, without a court order. A creditor who violates the SCRA can be liable for actual damages, statutory damages, attorneys’ fees, and (in the case of a willful violation) punitive damages. SCRA disputes frequently intersect with insurance claims and consumer credit litigation. Our insurance claim practice often encounters SCRA issues in the context of auto and homeowners claims for deployed service members.
Civilian-Side Medical Malpractice
Feres bars medical malpractice claims against military doctors at military treatment facilities. It does not bar claims against civilian doctors, civilian hospitals, or civilian contractors — even when the service member was referred there by the military. If a service member’s surgery at a civilian hospital goes wrong, or if a civilian contractor’s equipment causes injury, that is a Texas personal injury case. The standard two-year Texas statute of limitations under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 applies. The case is filed in the county where the malpractice occurred, in Texas state court or in federal court if a federal defendant is involved. This is a real case, with real damages, and it is one our brain injury and catastrophic injury practice is built to handle.
Third-Party Tortfeasors
If a service member is injured off-base by a drunk driver, a negligent driver, a defective product, or any other civilian tortfeasor, that claim is not barred by Feres. The case proceeds like any other Texas personal injury case, with the same two-year statute of limitations, the same insurance structure, and the same jury trial. The fact that the injured person happens to wear a uniform does not change the defendant’s obligation. If you are a service member injured in a car crash on a Saturday off-base in San Antonio, you have a Texas personal injury case. We handle those every day.
What the Turnbull Family’s Story Tells Us About How Recovery Actually Works
Maj. Turnbull’s story is not a legal case study. It is a human story about what it actually costs to recover from a catastrophic combat injury, and what it actually takes to come back.
The doctors said 12 hours to live. He survived. The doctors said he would never walk, talk, or remember. He ran the Army 10-miler. The doctors said he would never see again. He competed in the 2026 Warrior Games across eight adaptive sports — archery, cycling, field, indoor rowing, powerlifting, precision air, swimming, and track — as a completely blind man, learning to swim a 25-meter pool in a zigzag pattern because the lane lines only get him so far, and working with coaches to find a way.
Samantha Turnbull’s voice in the article is the voice of a military spouse navigating the system from the other side of the blast. “I thought, ‘okay, John’s not here anymore.'” She watched the security camera footage. She saw her husband’s truck in the video. She lived the next seven years alongside 23 surgeries, the long arc of military medicine, the transition from active duty to retired, and the slow construction of a new identity around adaptive sport.
The legal point of telling you this story is not to suggest that any law firm can sue somebody for what happened. The legal point is that Maj. Turnbull’s actual recovery — medical, financial, and human — came from three places: the military medical system (BAMC, the Center for the Intrepid, the forward surgical teams that saved his life in Syria), the military compensation system (TSGLI, disability retirement, CRSC, SCAADL, TRICARE), and his own extraordinary will, supported by his family and by the adaptive sports community. None of those three sources of recovery involved a jury verdict. All of them were real, and all of them mattered.
If you are a family member sitting with a folder of medical bills and a question about whether the law has anything to offer, the honest answer is: yes, the military compensation system has real benefits, and you need to pursue them aggressively, with a veterans service organization or a military law attorney at your side. And the courthouse door, in almost every case, is closed for the underlying injury itself.
San Antonio and Texas: Where Military Families Find Real Help
San Antonio is not just the site of the Warrior Games. It is the heart of the largest military medical and retirement complex in the United States. Joint Base San Antonio is home to dozens of wounded warrior transition units, the Warrior and Family Support Center, and the military’s most concentrated network of specialty care. Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) at Fort Sam Houston is one of the largest and most respected military hospitals in the country. The Center for the Intrepid, also at Fort Sam Houston, is the military’s showcase rehabilitation facility for amputees, burn survivors, and the catastrophically injured. The Military Health Institute conducts research that flows directly into the care of the wounded.
For Texas veterans specifically, the Texas Veterans Commission operates a network of claims representation and benefits assistance offices across the state, including a major presence in San Antonio. The Commission can help a veteran file a VA claim, navigate the appeals process, and access state-level veterans benefits. Veterans service organizations — the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), the American Legion, and others — maintain offices in San Antonio with accredited claims representatives who can help a veteran build and file a VA claim at no cost. The Wounded Warrior Project and the Travis Mills Foundation provide non-legal support services, including financial assistance, mental health programming, and the adaptive sports community that Maj. Turnbull’s family has come to rely on.
For service members facing USERRA or SCRA issues, the Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS) operates a USERRA complaint process. Private USERRA attorneys, many of them former JAG officers, handle USERRA cases in federal court. The San Antonio Bar Association’s Military Law Section maintains a lawyer referral panel for military-connected legal matters.
The point is that the help is real, and it is here, and it is not primarily a personal injury lawyer. It is a network of federal agencies, veterans service organizations, military treatment facilities, and specialized attorneys. Knowing which one to call is half the battle.
Evidence and Records: What to Preserve, Who Holds It, How Fast It Moves
In a truck case, we send a preservation letter the day you call, because the evidence clock starts ticking the moment the wreck happens. The Feres-barred combat case works differently, but the principle of evidence preservation still matters — because the administrative benefits process is a documentary process, and the VA and the military boards decide on the strength of the record.
- Military medical records from the forward surgical team, the Landstuhl-level facility, and BAMC are the spine of the case for disability and combat-related determinations. These records are permanently retained by the Defense Health Agency and are not at risk of loss — but they are also not always easy to obtain in a usable format. Request your medical records through your service’s medical record portal (MHS Genesis for many, with legacy systems for older records), and get a complete copy, not a summary.
- The DD-214, deployment orders, and military personnel file establish the combat-zone status that triggers Feres, CRSC, and the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion. These are permanent records, but they often need to be requested with the correct form (DD Form 214, NAVPERS, or service equivalent) and from the correct records center (the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis for older records, the service’s personnel command for current records).
- After-Action Reports and AR 15-6 investigations from the incident itself are controlled by U.S. Central Command and protected by military privilege. They are not available for civil discovery and they are not available to a Feres-barred plaintiff. But the existence and findings of an AAR can sometimes be referenced in the administrative process to corroborate the circumstances of the injury, particularly for CRSC determinations.
- The security camera footage referenced in Maj. Turnbull’s story is controlled by DoD. It is not publicly available, and it is not subject to civil subpoena. Its existence matters for the historical record of the event, not for any civil case.
- VA claim file is the running record of the VA’s own adjudication of the veteran’s claim. It grows over time as the veteran files new claims, supplements, and appeals. A well-maintained VA claim file is one of the strongest documents a veteran can have, and it is worth working with a veterans service organization to make sure it is complete.
For the narrow cases that are actionable in civil court — USERRA, SCRA, civilian medical malpractice, third-party tortfeasor — the evidence clock works the way it does in any other case. USERRA complaints have specific deadlines; SCRA claims have a four-year statute of limitations from the date of the violation; civilian medical malpractice in Texas has the standard two-year statute of limitations with the medical-malpractice-specific pre-suit requirements under the Texas Medical Liability Act. The earlier you talk to an attorney, the more evidence can be preserved.
Red Flags: When a Lawyer Promises More Than the Law Allows
We are not the only law firm that advertises to veterans. The veteran legal market has a real problem with firms and individuals that promise more than the law delivers. If a service member or family member hears any of the following from a lawyer, our advice is to walk away and call a veterans service organization instead.
- “We can sue the military for your combat injury.” If the firm does not mention Feres in the first conversation, the firm does not understand the doctrine. Feres is not a minor technicality. It is the entire ballgame for combat-injury tort claims.
- “You just have to find the right defendant.” The reality is that the defendant that caused the harm is almost never reachable in U.S. court, and the defendant that is reachable (the U.S. government) is shielded by Feres. There is no jurisdictional trick that opens a courthouse door that the Supreme Court has closed for 75 years.
- “We’ll get you a million-dollar verdict.” No tort verdict is possible for a combat injury under Feres. Anyone promising one is either ignorant of the doctrine or lying about what the case can produce.
- “Sign this retainer and we’ll start fighting.” The military compensation process is administrative, not adversarial. Filing a TSGLI claim, a CRSC claim, a VA disability claim, or a disability retirement application is done through specific government channels, often with the help of a veterans service organization at no cost. Paying a lawyer an upfront retainer to “fight for your benefits” is a poor use of money that should be preserved for the family.
- “Call now, before the statute of limitations runs.” For the actual benefits, the deadlines are specific to each program and are well-publicized. For the civil cases that ARE actionable, the deadlines are real and matter, but a Feres-barred combat injury has no civil statute of limitations because there is no civil case to limit.
The right people to help with military benefits are the accredited claims representatives at the DAV, the VFW, the American Legion, the Texas Veterans Commission, and the military’s own legal assistance offices. They do not charge a fee for benefits claims. If a paid advisor adds value beyond what these free resources provide, the advisor should be able to say exactly what value, in specific terms, they will deliver for the specific fee they charge.
How Attorney911 Helps Texas Service Members and Veterans (and Where We Don’t)
We want to be straight with you about what we are and what we are not. Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC is a Texas trial firm led by Ralph Manginello, a trial lawyer with 27+ years in courtrooms including federal court, and Lupe Peña, a former insurance-defense attorney who spent years inside a national defense firm learning how insurance companies value and contest claims. We represent Texas families in personal injury cases — commercial truck wrecks, refinery and oilfield accidents, catastrophic injuries, wrongful death, brain injuries, and the cases where an insurance company has treated a good-faith claim as a fight to the last dollar. We have recovered more than $50 million for Texas families since 1998, including truck-crash recoveries, brain-injury settlements, and wrongful-death verdicts, and we have done it on contingency — no fee unless we win. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
We are not a military law firm. We are not a VA claims firm. We are not a USERRA boutique. We do not take Feres-barred combat-injury tort cases, and we will not pretend that we do. The compensation system for combat injuries is real, but it is not our system, and the families dealing with it are better served by the veterans service organizations and military legal assistance offices that work in that system every day.
What we CAN do, and do well, is handle the cases that exist on the edges of military service for Texas service members and veterans:
- The car or truck crash off-base. If a service member is hit by a commercial truck on I-35 outside San Antonio, or by a drunk driver on a Saturday night, that is a Texas personal injury case. We handle those. Our commercial truck practice and our car accident practice are built for it.
- The catastrophic brain or spinal injury in a non-combat setting. If a service member suffers a brain injury in a motorcycle crash, a refinery accident, or any other civilian setting, that is our work. We have recovered $5M+ for brain injury cases and $3.8M+ for amputation cases on behalf of Texas families.
- The civilian medical malpractice case. If a service member is injured at a civilian hospital or by a civilian provider, that is a Texas medical malpractice case, with the standard two-year statute of limitations and the Texas Medical Liability Act pre-suit requirements. We can handle it, or we can refer you to a colleague who focuses on it.
- The USERRA and SCRA matter. USERRA cases and SCRA lending cases fall into the practice areas where we work — the employment retaliation, the predatory lending, the insurance denial that crosses into bad faith. We can represent you, or we can point you to a USERRA specialist if the matter warrants one.
- The wrongful death of a service member off-duty. If a service member is killed in a non-combat setting — a drunk driver, a defective product, a commercial truck — the family has a Texas wrongful death case. Our wrongful death practice is built for the families of those who served.
If you are not sure whether your case fits into one of these categories, call us. The consultation is free, confidential, and honest. We will tell you if we can help, and we will tell you where to go if we cannot. We will not invent a case to take your money. That is the only kind of law practice worth running.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Feres doctrine in simple terms?
Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950), is the Supreme Court decision that bars active-duty service members from suing the United States for injuries they suffer in the line of duty, including combat injuries, training injuries, and medical malpractice at military treatment facilities. The Federal Tort Claims Act allows people to sue the government for negligence, but Feres holds that the FTCA does not reach injuries incident to military service. The result is that combat-injured service members cannot pursue a tort case against the federal government, regardless of how strong the evidence of negligence may be.
Can a service member sue for a combat injury in Texas?
No. A Texas state court would have no subject matter jurisdiction over a combat attack by a foreign enemy in a foreign theater of war. Any attempt to file such a case in Texas state court would be removed to federal court and dismissed under Feres. The four Americans killed in the Manbij attack in 2019 — service members performing their duties in a foreign combat zone — cannot be the subject of a Texas civil wrongful death suit against the United States.
What is TSGLI and how much does it pay?
TSGLI stands for Traumatic Service Members’ Group Life Insurance, established at 38 U.S.C. § 1980A. It provides a tax-free payment of up to $100,000 for service members who suffer qualifying traumatic injuries, including the loss of sight in one or both eyes, the loss of a limb, severe burns, and other traumatic losses meeting the statutory criteria. The payment is made in addition to base SGLI coverage. The application is filed with the service member’s life insurance carrier, and the deadline for filing is set by statute.
What is Combat-Related Special Compensation (CRSC)?
CRSC is a tax-free monthly payment for retired service members whose disability is combat-related, established at 10 U.S.C. § 1413a. It exists to make up for the historical offset between military retired pay and VA disability compensation. The amount depends on the disability rating and the retired pay base. CRSC is administered by the service member’s branch of service, not the VA, and requires a separate application showing the disability is combat-related.
Can a service member sue for medical malpractice at a military hospital?
Generally no. Medical malpractice claims against military doctors at military treatment facilities are barred by Feres. Claims against civilian providers, civilian hospitals, and civilian contractors — even when the service member was referred there by the military — are not barred. The standard Texas two-year statute of limitations under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 applies, along with the pre-suit requirements of the Texas Medical Liability Act.
What is USERRA and what does it protect?
USERRA, the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, is a federal law codified at 38 U.S.C. §§ 4301 through 4335 that protects the civilian employment rights of service members called to active duty. USERRA requires employers to reemploy returning service members in the same or similar position, prohibits discrimination based on military service, and provides remedies including reinstatement, back pay, lost benefits, and liquidated damages for willful violations. USERRA claims can be filed with the Department of Labor’s VETS or in state or federal court.
What is the SCRA and what does it do for service members?
The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, at 50 U.S.C. §§ 3901 through 4043, is a federal law that protects service members in a wide range of civil matters. The most important protections are a 6% cap on interest rates for pre-service debts during active duty, the right to terminate certain residential and vehicle leases upon deployment, protection from default judgments, and protection from foreclosure without a court order. SCRA violations can result in actual damages, statutory damages, attorneys’ fees, and (in willful cases) punitive damages.
How much does it cost to talk to Attorney911 about a case?
The consultation is free, confidential, and costs nothing whether or not we take the case. If we do take the case, we work on contingency — there is no fee unless we win. The free-consultation promise and the no-fee-unless-we-win promise are part of how we work for every Texas family we represent, and the same is true for the service members and veterans who call us about USERRA, SCRA, civilian medical malpractice, third-party tort claims, and catastrophic injury cases.
What should I do first if my family member was injured in combat?
Three things, in this order. First, get an accredited veterans service organization involved — the DAV, the VFW, the American Legion, the Texas Veterans Commission — to help file a VA disability claim and any other benefits the service member qualifies for, including TSGLI, CRSC, and SCAADL where applicable. Second, talk to the military legal assistance office on base (JAG for Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force installations in the San Antonio area) about the administrative side of the case, including the Medical Evaluation Board and Physical Evaluation Board process. Third, talk to an attorney who is honest about the limits of the law if you have a USERRA, SCRA, or civilian-side claim that is not barred by Feres. We are happy to be that third call if one of those matters is what you are dealing with.
Is Attorney911 a military law firm?
No. We are a Texas personal injury trial firm. We do not take Feres-barred combat-injury tort cases and we do not represent service members in the military compensation system. What we do is represent Texas service members, veterans, and their families in the cases that exist on the edges of military service: commercial truck wrecks, car crashes, catastrophic injuries, civilian medical malpractice, third-party tort claims, and the employment and credit issues that USERRA and the SCRA exist to address. If your matter is one we can help with, we will tell you. If it is not, we will tell you where to go.
Talk to a Texas Trial Lawyer Who Will Tell You the Truth
If you are a service member, a veteran, or a family member dealing with an injury that happened off-base, in a non-combat setting, or against a civilian defendant — or if you are dealing with a USERRA, SCRA, or insurance matter that has crossed into bad faith — we want to hear from you. Ralph Manginello brings 27+ years of courtroom experience to the conversation, including federal court. Lupe Peña brings years of experience from inside a national insurance defense firm, where he watched claims get valued and contested, and now uses that knowledge for Texas families on the other side of the table. We serve Texas families in English and Spanish — Hablamos Español. The consultation is free, confidential, and honest. There is no fee unless we win. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 or contact our office to start the conversation.
If what you are dealing with is a combat-injury tort claim, we are not the right firm — and we will tell you that in the first five minutes, not after we have taken a fee. The right place to start is your nearest military legal assistance office, the Texas Veterans Commission, or an accredited veterans service organization. They will not charge you for helping, and the help is real. We will be here if and when the matter on the edges of military service becomes the one we can handle. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
This page is legal information, not legal advice for a specific case. The information here is current as of the date of publication and reflects the laws and regulations in effect at that time. Consulting a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction is the appropriate next step for any specific legal question.