What Happened at North County Road 1140 and Highway 80 — and What It Means for Your Family
You are reading this because someone you love went to work in Midland and did not come home. The headline says several people are dead after a shooting at or near the intersection of North County Road 1140 and Highway 80, and the reporting indicates that employees were among those killed. You may be standing in a hospital hallway, sitting at a kitchen table at 3 a.m., or staring at a phone that keeps ringing with people who say they are sorry. We are sorry too. And we are going to tell you the truth about what comes next — not to sell you anything, but because the decisions made in the first weeks after a workplace death are the decisions that determine whether a family gets answers or gets silence.
Here is the first thing you need to hear: a criminal prosecution — if one happens — is not your case. The district attorney’s office prosecutes the shooter. That case is about punishment under the criminal law. It does not pay your family’s bills. It does not replace the income your loved one earned. It does not answer the civil question that matters most: did the employer or the property owner fail to take reasonable steps to protect these employees from a danger they should have seen coming?
That question — the civil question — is a completely separate fight. It is the fight we handle. And in Texas, it is a fight with layers most people never hear about, including one that exists in almost no other state: if the employer opted out of the workers’ compensation system, your family may have a direct negligence claim against that employer with the employer’s normal defenses stripped away. That single fact — whether the employer subscribes to workers’ comp or not — can transform the entire case. We check it first.
Midland, the Permian Basin, and Why This Location Matters
Midland sits in the heart of the Permian Basin, one of the most active oil and gas production regions on the planet. The intersection of North County Road 1140 and Highway 80 sits in the northern portion of Midland County, an area dominated by oilfield service companies, drilling support operations, and industrial facilities. Highway 80 is a major east-west arterial that connects Midland’s commercial corridors to remote oilfield sites. The rural county road system in this area features limited lighting, sporadic cellular coverage, and extended law-enforcement response times.
Every one of those geographic facts matters to a negligent-security case. A worksite in this corridor that operates with minimal security — no controlled access, no surveillance cameras, no on-site security presence, no lighting in the parking areas — is making a choice about how much risk it is willing to transfer to its employees. When a shooting happens at a remote industrial site, the question of whether law enforcement could even reach the scene in time is not an abstract policy debate. It is a question about whether the employer or property owner should have known that the distance from help was a hazard it had a duty to address.
Permian Basin oilfield workers earn premium wages. A rig hand, a wireline operator, a frac crew member, a truck driver hauling produced water — these are not minimum-wage jobs. They are dangerous, skilled trades that command compensation well above the national average. That matters for the damages calculation. When a 35-year-old oilfield worker earning $85,000 to $120,000 a year is killed, the lost earning capacity across the decades they would have worked is a number that climbs into the millions — and that is before you count the human losses that no receipt can measure.
Who Can Be Liable — The Defendant Map
A workplace shooting is rarely a single-defendant case. The person who pulled the trigger is the criminal actor, and they are likely what the law calls judgment-proof — meaning they have no assets and no insurance to collect against. Naming them in a civil suit establishes the criminal act element, but the real recovery comes from the entities that had the duty to protect the people on that property. Here is the defendant map for a case like this:
The employer / operating entity at the site. This is the company that sent your loved one to work at this location. It owed them a duty of care. If it subscribed to workers’ compensation, the exclusive-remedy bar generally prevents a direct negligence suit against the employer — but the family may still pursue a third-party claim against the property owner, a security contractor, or other entities. If the employer was a Texas non-subscriber (it opted out of workers’ comp), that bar is lifted, and the family may pursue a direct negligence claim against the employer without the employer’s common-law defenses. This is the fork that changes everything.
The property owner / lessor of the site. Under Texas premises-liability law, a property owner owes a duty to business invitees — which includes employees working on the property — to protect them from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. The question is whether the shooting was foreseeable: were there prior incidents at this location? Were there threats, assaults, unauthorized accesses, or domestic-violence spillover? Was the location’s remoteness and lack of law-enforcement proximity a known risk factor? If the answer to any of these is yes, the property owner may be liable for failing to implement reasonable security measures.
The security contractor, if one was engaged. If the site had a security company under contract, that company may bear direct negligence for failing to implement adequate patrol, surveillance, or access-control protocols. Did the guards actually patrol, or did they sit in a booth? Were the cameras monitored, or were they decoration? Was access to the site controlled, or could anyone drive onto the property unchallenged?
The shooter. Named for completeness and to establish the criminal-act element of the negligent-security claim, but likely judgment-proof. The civil case is not about collecting from the shooter. It is about collecting from the entities that had the duty and the resources to prevent this.
Texas Wrongful Death Law: Who Can File, What Can Be Recovered, and How Long You Have
Texas wrongful death actions are governed by the Texas Wrongful Death Act. The law permits recovery by surviving spouses, children, and parents of the deceased. If none of these statutory beneficiaries file a claim within three months of the death, the personal representative of the estate may file on their behalf — but the beneficiaries can always step back in and take over the case.
The statute of limitations for a Texas wrongful death claim is generally two years from the date of death. This is the clock that kills cases silently. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing in a hospital hallway. It is not. Grief moves slowly. Insurance companies move fast. The two-year window closes while families are still trying to figure out how to live without the person they lost, and the defense is counting on exactly that.
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. This means a plaintiff is barred from recovery only if they are more than 50% at fault. If the defense tries to pin fault on the victim — and they will try — every percentage point below 51 is money. This is why the insurance adjuster works so hard to build a narrative that puts responsibility on the deceased: “Why was he there? Why didn’t she leave? Why didn’t he call for help?” Every question is designed to move the needle.
Texas imposes no statutory cap on non-economic or punitive damages in non-medical-malpractice wrongful death cases. This is critical. In many states, a legislature has capped what a family can recover for the human losses — the grief, the loss of companionship, the empty chair at every holiday for the rest of their lives. Texas has not done that for this case type. The jury decides what a life was worth, and the number is not artificially truncated.
“Each employer … shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.”
— OSH Act of 1970, Section 5(a)(1), 29 U.S.C. 654(a)(1)
That is the General Duty Clause — the federal catch-all that requires every employer in America to protect workers from recognized hazards, including workplace violence in certain contexts. OSHA has issued enforcement guidance and citation authority for workplace violence prevention failures, particularly in industries with known risk factors. A remote oilfield worksite with limited law-enforcement access and no security measures is an environment where the hazard of third-party violence may be recognized. If OSHA investigates this incident and issues citations, those findings are discoverable and can establish notice of hazardous conditions.
The Texas Non-Subscriber Fork: The Law That Changes Everything
Texas is one of the only states in the country that permits employers to opt out of the workers’ compensation system. When an employer chooses not to subscribe to workers’ comp, the legal landscape shifts dramatically — and in the employee’s favor.
Here is what happens when the employer is a subscriber: workers’ comp is the exclusive remedy against the employer. The family gets death benefits under the comp system — a capped, scheduled payment that bears no relationship to what the person’s life was actually worth. The family cannot sue the employer for negligence. The family can still pursue third-party claims against the property owner, the security contractor, and others, but the employer itself is behind the comp wall.
Here is what happens when the employer is a non-subscriber: the exclusive-remedy bar is lifted. The family can file a direct negligence claim against the employer. And — this is the part that changes the math — the employer loses its common-law defenses. In an ordinary negligence case in Texas, the defendant can argue that the employee assumed the risk, that the employee’s own negligence caused the injury, or that a fellow servant’s negligence was the real cause. A non-subscriber employer cannot raise any of those defenses. If the employer’s negligence played any part in the death, the employer is on the hook for the full measure of damages.
This is why confirming the employer’s subscription status is a first-order priority. We pull this early. We pull it before we file. We pull it because it determines the entire architecture of the case — whether the employer is a defendant or behind a wall, whether the family gets a capped check or a full recovery, whether the employer’s own negligence is even in play.
If your loved one was killed at an oilfield worksite, a drilling-support facility, or an industrial operation in the Permian Basin, there is a meaningful chance the employer is a non-subscriber. Some of the largest operators in the basin have chosen this path. The families who never check are the families who never know what they were owed. If you want to understand how the workers’ compensation system interacts with workplace death claims, we explain it plainly — because this fork is the single most important fact in a Texas workplace death case.
Negligent Security and Premises Liability: When a Property Owner Answers for a Third Party’s Violence
A property owner or operator is not an insurer of everyone’s safety. The law does not require that every workplace be a fortress. What the law does require is that the owner take reasonable steps to protect invitees — including employees — from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties.
Foreseeability is the engine of a negligent-security case. The question is not whether this specific shooting was predicted. The question is whether the kind of harm — violent crime at this location — was something the owner knew about or should have known about. We prove foreseeability through several channels:
Prior incidents at the site. Were there prior threats, assaults, unauthorized accesses, weapons incidents, or domestic-violence spillover at this location? Every one of these is a brick in the foreseeability wall. We pull police calls for service to the address. We pull internal employer incident reports. We pull OSHA Form 300 logs and workplace injury records. We pull security-complaint files. If employees had been complaining about safety and the employer did nothing, that is not just evidence — it is the foundation of a punitive-damages claim.
Location-specific risk factors. The northern Midland County corridor has specific, knowable risk characteristics: limited lighting, sporadic cellular coverage, extended law-enforcement response times, and a workforce that operates in shifts around the clock. A property owner in this corridor who installs no lighting, no cameras, no access controls, and no security presence is making a choice about how much risk to transfer to the people who work there. A board-certified security expert with ASIS International CPP credentialing can opine on what industry-standard security measures look like for comparable oilfield and industrial sites — and what the absence of those measures means.
Industry standards. What do comparable facilities do? What does the American Society of Industrial Security recommend for remote worksites? What did the employer’s own security plan say — if one existed? If the employer had a written security plan and did not follow it, that gap is its own kind of evidence. If the employer had no security plan at all, that absence speaks for itself.
Negligent Hiring, Retention, and Supervision: When the Shooter Was Inside the Building
If the shooter was an employee — or a former employee, a contractor, or someone known to the workforce — the case may expand beyond negligent security into negligent hiring, retention, and supervision. This is a direct-negligence claim against the employer that does not depend on premises-liability foreseeability at all. It asks a different question: did the employer know, or should it have known, that this person was dangerous, and did it fail to act?
The evidence we look for: hiring records of the shooter. Disciplinary history. Prior complaints about violent behavior, threats, or intimidation. Psychological evaluation records if any existed. Whether the employer had a process for removing dangerous individuals from the workplace. Whether prior complaints were investigated or ignored. Whether the employer had a workplace-violence prevention program — and if it did, whether it was followed.
If discovery reveals that the employer had actual knowledge of prior threats or violent indicators and consciously disregarded the risk, the case may rise to gross negligence — the standard for punitive damages in Texas, which requires clear and convincing evidence of conscious disregard. Gross negligence is what unlocks the punishment damages that juries use to send a message. And in Texas, those damages are not capped in this case type.
The Evidence Clock: What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Dies
This is the section that determines whether your case is strong or whether it is gone. Every piece of evidence that proves what happened at North County Road 1140 and Highway 80 is on a clock. Some of those clocks run out in days. Some in weeks. The defense is counting on you not knowing that.
Surveillance and CCTV footage. If the incident site or surrounding properties had cameras — and many industrial sites in the Permian Basin do, even if only for perimeter monitoring — that footage is the single most important piece of evidence in the case. It shows the shooter’s access point, the duration of the incident, the security measures that were present or absent, and the response times. Most commercial DVR and NVR systems overwrite within 7 to 30 days. Oilfield remote sites may have shorter retention or offsite storage with limited backup. The preservation letter that freezes this footage has to go out within days, not months. Every day that passes without a preservation demand increases the risk that the footage is gone forever — legally erased by the system’s own overwrite cycle.
Security plans, protocols, and access-control logs. These demonstrate what security measures existed, who was authorized on site, and whether access controls were functioning. They are directly relevant to the duty and breach analysis in a negligent-security claim. Physical logs may be discarded per routine retention policies. Digital access records may auto-purge within 30 to 90 days. We demand these in the same preservation letter.
Prior incident reports, security complaints, and law-enforcement calls for service. This is the foreseeability engine. Prior similar incidents — threats, assaults, unauthorized access, domestic-violence spillover at this site — establish that the property owner or operator knew or should have known of the risk. Police dispatch records require formal public-records requests and may be purged per agency retention schedules. Internal employer incident reports may be destroyed per document-retention policies. The earlier these are requested, the more likely they survive.
Employment records of the shooter, if workplace-connected. If the shooter was an employee, hiring records, disciplinary history, prior complaints, and any psychological evaluation records establish the negligent-hiring and retention claims. Employment records are subject to routine destruction schedules. Personnel files of terminated employees may be purged within one year under many employer policies. These have to be locked down before the destruction cycle runs.
OSHA Form 300 logs and workplace injury records. OSHA requires five-year retention of these logs. They may document prior workplace violence incidents or security-related injuries at the site, supporting foreseeability and OSHA General Duty Clause violations. The five-year retention is a floor, not a ceiling — but employers may have incomplete records or fail to maintain logs properly. We request these promptly through discovery.
911 call recordings and dispatch records. These establish the timeline, the nature of the initial reports, and the law-enforcement response time. They are relevant to whether delayed response contributed to multiple casualties and whether the site’s remote location was a foreseeable risk factor. Texas 911 recordings are generally retained for limited periods depending on the Public Safety Answering Point. Formal preservation requests should issue immediately.
Cell phone records and digital communications of the shooter. These may reveal planning, motive, prior threats, or communications that should have been detected by the employer. This supports foreseeability and punitive-damages theories. Carriers retain text and call records for limited periods. Content may be purged quickly. Preservation requires prompt legal process.
Here is what the preservation process actually looks like: the day you call our firm, we draft a spoliation-preservation letter naming every one of these records by category. That letter goes to the employer, the property owner, any security contractor, and any third-party data vendor. The letter puts them on formal notice that the evidence is relevant to litigation and must be preserved. If they destroy evidence after receiving that letter, the jury can be told to assume the missing evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says — an adverse-inference instruction. The preservation letter is the first move because the evidence clock is the first thing that kills a case.
The Insurance-Adjuster Playbook: What They Do in the First Weeks and How to Counter It
Within days of a workplace shooting, the employer’s insurance carrier and its third-party administrator open a file. They set a reserve — an internal dollar estimate of what the claim might cost. They assign an adjuster. And that adjuster begins building a narrative designed to minimize what the company pays. Here is what they do and how we counter each move:
Play 1: The friendly “just checking in” call. Within the first week, someone will call the family. The voice will be warm. The words will be “I just want to see how you’re doing” and “can you tell me what happened.” The call is recorded. Everything said is built to be quoted against you later. The counter: do not take the call. If it already happened, do not take another one. Every word spoken to the adjuster before you have counsel is a word that can be shaped, taken out of context, and used to build the narrative that the family “seemed fine” or that the victim “was responsible for being there.” The first thing we tell every family: let every call go to us.
Play 2: The fast check with a release buried under it. A check may arrive fast — sometimes within weeks. It may be framed as a “goodwill payment” or a “workers’ compensation death benefit.” It will come with a release — a document that, once signed, extinguishes the family’s right to pursue the real case. The amount on the check is a fraction of what the case is worth. The release is the entire point. The counter: never sign anything from an insurance company without your attorney reading it first. A release signed in grief is still a release. The adjuster is counting on the grief.
Play 3: The “criminal act was unforeseeable” narrative. The defense will begin building the story that this was a random, unpredictable act of violence that no one could have prevented. They will say there were no prior incidents. They will say the shooter had no connection to the workplace. They will say the location had no history of crime. The counter: we pull the police calls for service, the internal incident reports, the employee complaints, and the OSHA logs. If there were prior incidents — and in most negligent-security cases there were — we find them. The defense’s “no one could have seen this coming” argument collapses the moment we produce a prior incident report for the same kind of hazard at the same location.
Play 4: The worker’s-comp-is-your-only-option wall. If the employer subscribed to workers’ comp, the adjuster will tell the family that the comp death benefit is the only recovery available. This is true only as to the employer. It is false as to every other defendant. The property owner, the security contractor, and any other entity that controlled the conditions that allowed the shooting to happen are still reachable. And if the employer is a non-subscriber, the adjuster’s statement is a lie. We confirm subscription status immediately and we tell the family exactly what is available.
Play 5: Surveillance and social-media monitoring. The adjuster’s investigators will monitor the family’s social media. They will look for photos of the family at a dinner, at a birthday, at a football game. They will use those photos to argue the family is not really suffering. The counter: we tell every client to change nothing about their social media and to post nothing about the case. Grief does not look the way an insurance adjuster thinks it should. A family at a birthday is a family carrying an invisible weight. We make sure the jury understands that.
Case Value: What a Midland Workplace Shooting Wrongful Death Case Is Worth
The value range for a case like this is exceptionally wide because liability clarity is the dominant variable. The forensic dossier on this incident suggests a range from $2,000,000 on the low end to $25,000,000 or more in aggregate.
At the low end, if the shooting was an unforeseeable random criminal act with no prior similar incidents and no security failures, recovery may be limited to workers’ compensation death benefits if the employer subscribed, or a modest negligent-security settlement against a property owner with limited coverage.
At the high end, if discovery reveals prior threats or incidents at the location, inadequate security at a known high-risk remote worksite, and a non-subscriber employer or a deep-pocket property owner, multiple wrongful death and survival claims with punitive-damages exposure could push aggregate recovery well above $25,000,000 in a sympathetic venue. The number of victims — several dead — is a critical multiplier. Three or more fatalities against a viable defendant with real coverage could produce an aggregate exposure that reaches eight figures.
Here is how the number is built. Each deceased victim’s estate and statutory beneficiaries pursue wrongful death damages including lost earning capacity — particularly significant if the victims were oilfield workers earning premium Permian Basin wages — along with loss of care, maintenance, support, and society, mental anguish, and loss of inheritance. Survival claims capture pre-death pain and suffering and medical expenses incurred between injury and death. A life-care planner builds the cost stream. A forensic economist reduces it to present value. The economist starts with how many working years a person of your loved one’s age and training was statistically expected to have left, using federal labor data — and that is the foundation everything else is stacked on.
The employer’s own words can become the proof. If the company had a written safety policy that promised security measures it never implemented, that gap between the promise and the practice is the kind of evidence a jury understands immediately. We look for it in every case.
For families researching what a wrongful death claim involves, the most important thing to understand is that the first offer from an insurance company is almost never a fraction of what the case is actually worth. It is a number designed to close the file before the family has time to understand what they lost.
How We Build the Case: From Preservation to Resolution
Here is what the case actually looks like from the inside, week by week:
Week one. The preservation letter goes out. It names every record category: CCTV footage, security plans, access-control logs, incident reports, OSHA logs, employment records, 911 recordings, cell phone records. It goes to the employer, the property owner, any security contractor, and any data vendor. We confirm the employer’s workers’ comp subscription status — the first-order priority. We open the public-records requests for police calls for service to the address.
Weeks two through four. The records come in — or they do not, which is itself evidence. We begin the corporate-structure analysis: who actually owns the site? Who holds the lease? Who is the registered agent? The name on the front gate is not always the entity with the money. We pull the live OSHA establishment search for the specific site — its inspection history, any citations, any prior safety complaints. We identify the forensic experts we will need: a board-certified security expert for the standard-of-care opinion, and a forensic economist for the earning-capacity projection at Permian Basin wage rates.
Months two through six. Discovery. We depose the safety director under oath. We ask whether the company had a workplace-violence prevention program. We ask whether anyone complained about security before the shooting. We ask what the company did with those complaints. We pull the personnel file of the shooter if the shooter was an employee. We pull the security contractor’s patrol logs and find out whether the guards actually patrolled or sat in a booth. We pull the camera system’s retention settings and find out whether footage was preserved or overwritten — and if it was overwritten after our preservation letter, we file for an adverse-inference instruction.
Months six through twelve. Expert reports. The security expert opines on what industry-standard security looked like for a comparable site and what the absence of those measures means. The economist quantifies the lost earning capacity. If the facts support it, we build the gross-negligence case for punitive damages — the prior threats the employer knew about, the warnings it ignored, the conscious disregard.
Resolution. If an insurance policy is identified and a demand is made within policy limits, we evaluate Texas Stowers-style bad-faith exposure — the doctrine that lets us pressure the insurer toward settlement by exposing it to liability above the policy limits if it unreasonably refuses. If the case does not settle, we try it. The jury will be twelve people from the reader’s own county — Midland County residents who know the oilfield, who know the roads, who know what it means to work in the Permian Basin. That home field belongs to the family, not to the company.
For a deeper look at how we approach workplace accident cases, the same principles of evidence preservation, corporate-structure analysis, and non-subscriber liability apply.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
If your loved one was killed in this shooting — or if you are reading this in the hours and days after — here is the practical roadmap:
Do seek medical and grief support first. If you were present at the scene, get checked. If you were not, call the people who love you. Grief is a physical event. It affects your ability to make decisions. You need people around you.
Do not give a recorded statement to anyone. Not the employer’s insurance company. Not the employer’s “investigator.” Not the employer’s HR department. Not a third-party administrator. Any statement you give will be transcribed and used to build the narrative that minimizes what the company owes. If someone calls and says they “just want to ask a few questions,” say: “I am not ready to talk about this. Please call my attorney.” Then call us.
Do not sign anything. No release. No authorization. No “goodwill” check acceptance. No workers’ comp paperwork from the employer without your attorney reviewing it. A release signed in grief is still a release. The insurance company knows this. It is the oldest play in the book.
Do not post about the case on social media. Do not post about the shooting. Do not post about the employer. Do not post about the investigation. The insurance company’s investigators are monitoring your accounts from the day the news breaks. Every post is a potential exhibit. Change nothing about your life, but post nothing about the case.
Do preserve physical evidence. If your loved one had a phone, do not wipe it. If there are text messages, emails, or communications about the workplace, about security concerns, about threats — save them. If there are photos of the worksite, save them. Do not delete anything.
Do confirm the employer’s workers’ comp subscription status. This is the first-order legal priority. It determines the entire architecture of the case. We do this for you — but if you have access to any employment paperwork, benefits documentation, or onboarding materials, preserve them.
Do call a wrongful death attorney immediately. Not next month. Not after the funeral. Now. The evidence-preservation letter has to go out before the footage is overwritten and the logs are purged. Every day that passes without that letter is a day the defense gains and the family loses.
Para nuestras familias hispanohablantes en Midland y la cuenca del Pérmico: nos importa servir a su familia completamente en español. Entendemos que este momento es devastador. La ley de Texas le da derechos específicos: el plazo para presentar una demanda por muerte por negligencia es generalmente de dos años desde la fecha del fallecimiento, pero la evidencia que demuestra lo que pasó — el video de las cámaras, los registros de seguridad, los reportes de incidentes anteriores — puede desaparecer legalmente en cuestión de días o semanas. Llame al 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos con usted en su idioma, sin costo por la primera consulta, y no cobramos nada a menos que ganemos su caso.
Who We Are: Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña
Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, as the managing partner of Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. He is a journalist before he was a lawyer — he went to South Texas College of Law Houston, he holds a bachelor’s from UT Austin in Journalism and Public Relations, and he approaches every case the way a reporter approaches a story: find the documents, find the witnesses, find the truth the other side is hiding. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. He has spent his career taking on insurance companies and corporate defendants, and he hates losing. You can read more about Ralph Manginello’s background and experience.
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 the families reading this page. He sat in the meetings where claims were priced and defenses were built. He knows how the Colossus valuation software works. He knows which IME doctors the insurers pick. He knows the surveillance tactics. He knows the delay strategies. Now he sits on your side of the table. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. He is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch. If you want to understand the perspective Lupe Peña brings from inside the insurance industry, it comes down to this: he knows every play the adjuster is going to run before the adjuster runs it, because he used to be the one running them.
The firm has recovered more than $50,000,000 in aggregate — a marketing figure that includes $5M+ in a brain-injury settlement, $3.8M+ in an amputation settlement, $2.5M+ in a truck-crash recovery, and $2M+ in a maritime back-injury settlement. We say these numbers honestly: past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can tell you is that we know how these cases are built, how they are valued, and how to take them apart.
Why the Permian Basin Context Matters for This Case
The Permian Basin oilfield and industrial corridor is not just a location. It is an economic engine that shapes every aspect of a wrongful death case that happens within it. Oilfield workers earn premium wages — a fact that drives the lost-earning-capacity calculation up significantly compared to the same death in a different industry. The remote locations of many worksites — with their limited lighting, sporadic cellular coverage, and extended law-enforcement response times — are directly relevant to the foreseeability analysis in a negligent-security case. The industrial culture of the basin, with its shift-work schedules and transient contractor workforce, creates security challenges that a reasonable employer or property owner should anticipate.
When a shooting happens at a worksite in this corridor, the question is never just “who pulled the trigger.” The question is whether the people who controlled that site — who chose its security measures, who set its access policies, who decided how many cameras to install and whether to monitor them — made choices that turned their employees into targets. That is the civil question. That is the one that pays the family’s bills. And that is the one we answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the employer if my loved one was killed at work in Texas?
It depends on whether the employer subscribes to workers’ compensation. If the employer subscribes, workers’ comp is generally the exclusive remedy against the employer, but you can pursue third-party claims against the property owner, security contractor, or others. If the employer is a non-subscriber — it opted out of the workers’ comp system — you can file a direct negligence claim against the employer, and the employer loses its common-law defenses. This is the first thing we check.
How long do I have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
The statute of limitations for a Texas wrongful death claim is generally two years from the date of death. However, the evidence that proves the case — surveillance footage, security logs, witness statements — can disappear in days or weeks. The two-year deadline is the legal clock. The evidence clock is much shorter. Do not wait.
What damages can I recover in a wrongful death claim?
Wrongful death damages include lost earning capacity (significant for oilfield workers earning premium Permian Basin wages), loss of care, maintenance, support, and society, mental anguish, and loss of inheritance. Survival claims capture pre-death pain and suffering and medical expenses. Texas imposes no statutory cap on non-economic or punitive damages in non-medical-malpractice wrongful death cases. If the defendant’s conduct was grossly negligent — conscious disregard of a known risk — punitive damages may be available.
Is a criminal prosecution of the shooter the same as a civil case?
No. The criminal case is brought by the district attorney and seeks punishment under the criminal law. The civil case is brought by the family and seeks compensation from the entities that had a duty to protect the victim — the employer, the property owner, the security contractor. The criminal case does not pay the family’s bills. The civil case does. They are completely separate proceedings with completely different standards and completely different defendants.
What if the shooting was a random act — can I still recover?
Even if the shooting itself was unpredictable, the question is whether the type of harm — violent crime at this location — was foreseeable. If the location had prior incidents, if the area had known crime risks, if the site’s remoteness created a foreseeable security gap, the property owner or operator may still be liable for failing to implement reasonable security. Foreseeability is about the category of risk, not the specific event.
How much is my case worth?
The range depends entirely on the facts discovery reveals. If the shooting was unforeseeable with no prior incidents and no security failures, recovery may be limited to comp benefits or a modest settlement. If discovery reveals prior threats, inadequate security, and a non-subscriber employer or deep-pocket property owner, the aggregate across multiple victims could reach well above $25,000,000. The number of victims — several dead — is a critical multiplier. We evaluate every case honestly and tell you the real range, not a number designed to sign you up.
What should I do if the insurance company calls me?
Do not take the call. If you already spoke with them, do not take another one. Everything you say to an insurance adjuster is recorded and can be used to minimize your claim. Say: “I am not ready to talk about this. Please contact my attorney.” Then call 1-888-ATTY-911. We handle every communication with the insurance company from that point forward.
How much does it cost to hire Attorney911?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We don’t get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. We have 24/7 live staff — not an answering service, but real people who can take your call at any hour. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.
Why This Firm
We are not the firm that puts up a billboard and hopes you call. We are the firm that reads the OSHA inspection file, pulls the police dispatch records, deposes the safety director under oath, and finds the prior incident report the employer hoped no one would ever see. We are the firm that checks the employer’s workers’ comp subscription status on day one — because we know the Texas non-subscriber fork is the difference between a capped check and a full recovery. We are the firm that sends the preservation letter before the funeral, not after, because we know the cameras are already recording over themselves.
Ralph Manginello has been doing this for 27+ years. Lupe Peña sat in the rooms where insurance companies decided how to deny claims, and now he sits on your side of the table. We handle cases across Texas — from our Houston offices, our Austin office, and our Beaumont client-meeting locations — and we take wrongful death and workplace fatality cases throughout the state, including Midland County and the Permian Basin.
We serve families fully in English and in Spanish. Hablamos Español. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. We don’t get paid unless we win your case. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 — 1-888-288-9911 — at any hour, any day. The evidence is already on a clock. The clock started the moment the shooting happened. The only question is whether someone is freezing the proof before it disappears.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.