Midland, TX Workplace Shooting: What the Families of Three Killed Employees Need to Know Right Now
You are reading this because someone you love went to work on a Monday morning at a logistics company off North County Road 1140 and Highway 80 in Midland, and did not come home. Three employees are dead. The Midland County Sheriff’s Office and the Texas Department of Public Safety are investigating, and a release is being prepared. The details are still developing. What we can tell you right now, with certainty, is this: the criminal investigation and the civil case are two separate things, and the civil case has a clock that started the moment the first shot was fired. That clock is not the statute of limitations — it is the evidence clock, and the evidence that proves whether this shooting was foreseeable is the evidence that disappears fastest. Surveillance footage overwrites itself in days to weeks. Security policies can be modified after the fact. Prior incident reports can be purged. The preservation letter that freezes those records is the first thing we send, the day you call. Not the week after. Not the month after. The day.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We handle wrongful death claims and workplace fatality cases in Texas, including the Permian Basin, where the energy and logistics economy runs on long shifts, transient staffing, and industrial corridors like the one where this happened. Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña spent years on the other side — inside a national insurance-defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like the one your family now faces. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations without an interpreter. Both of them know what happens in the first 72 hours after a workplace shooting, because the insurance company’s playbook starts running before the scene is clear. This page is the counter to that playbook, and it is written for the person reading at 2 a.m. who needs to know what is true, what is coming, and what to do about it.
The Workers’ Comp Question That Changes Everything in Texas
Texas is the only state in the country that allows employers to opt out of the workers’ compensation system. That single fact creates a fork in the road that determines the entire legal strategy for a family who lost someone to a workplace death — and the company is counting on the family not knowing which fork they are standing at.
Here is what the fork looks like. If JAT Partner Logistics carried workers’ compensation insurance — if it is a “subscriber” — then Texas law generally treats the workers’ comp death benefit as the exclusive remedy against the employer. The family cannot sue the employer directly for negligence. They get whatever the comp system pays: burial expenses and a percentage of the deceased worker’s average weekly wage, capped, paid to eligible beneficiaries, and that is it. There may still be third-party claims — against a property owner, a security contractor, or others — but the employer itself is behind the comp shield.
If JAT Partner Logistics did not carry workers’ compensation — if it is a “non-subscriber” — that shield collapses. And it does not just collapse; it takes the employer’s best defenses with it. A non-subscriber in Texas forfeits the exclusive-remedy protection and loses the common-law defenses of contributory negligence and assumption of risk. That means the employer cannot argue the employee was partly at fault. The employer cannot argue the employee accepted the risks of the job. The employer faces direct tort liability for the death, with no cap on damages and its primary defenses stripped away.
Texas is uniquely the only state that permits employers to opt out of the workers’ compensation system; non-subscriber employers forfeit the exclusive-remedy bar and critical common-law defenses, exposing them to uncapped tort liability for workplace fatalities.
This is not a technicality. This is the difference between a capped death benefit check and a full tort recovery that includes lost earning capacity, mental anguish, loss of companionship, and — if the facts support it — punitive damages. The subscription status is a matter of public record through the Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers’ Compensation. It can be confirmed early. It must be confirmed early, because it gates the entire case.
The company will not volunteer this information. The family will not be told at the scene, or at the hospital, or by the HR representative who calls to express condolences. The insurance adjuster who calls the family in the days after — and the adjuster will call — is not calling to help. That adjuster is calling to lock in a narrative, take a recorded statement, and potentially offer a fast check with a release attached. Everything about that call is designed to close the case before the family has had a chance to learn what the workers’ comp fork even looks like.
Our workers’ compensation practice page covers the comp side of this equation; what matters here is that the non-subscriber question is the first door we open when a family calls us about a workplace death in Texas. If the employer is a subscriber, the strategy shifts to third-party claims. If the employer is a non-subscriber, the strategy shifts to direct tort liability against the employer itself — and that is where the numbers change by an order of magnitude.
Texas Wrongful Death and Survival Law: The Two Claims Every Family Has
When a person is killed by someone else’s negligence in Texas, the law opens two doors, not one. They are separate claims, with different beneficiaries and different damages, and a family that walks through only one of them leaves money on the table that the defense is happy to keep there.
The first door is the wrongful death action, governed by the Texas Wrongful Death Act. This claim belongs to the surviving family — the spouse, the children, and the parents of the person who died. It compensates the family for what they lost: the financial support the deceased would have provided, the household services they would have performed, the companionship and society that was taken, the mental anguish of losing them. The beneficiaries are defined by statute: surviving spouse, children, and parents. A person outside that statutory class — an unmarried partner, a sibling, a grandparent — generally cannot bring a wrongful death claim no matter how close the relationship was. Getting the standing question right early can decide everything.
The second door is the survival action, governed by the Texas Survival Statute. This claim belongs to the estate of the deceased, not to the family directly. It carries the claims the deceased person could have brought had they survived — including the pain and suffering they experienced between the injury and death, however brief that interval was. If there was conscious suffering — even minutes, even seconds — between the shooting and death, that is compensable through the survival action. Medical expenses incurred between injury and death are also recoverable here.
Both claims have a statute of limitations. Under the Texas Wrongful Death Act, the deadline to file is generally two years from the date of death. The same two-year window applies to survival actions. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing in a kitchen that still has someone’s coffee cup on the counter, but it is not — because the evidence that proves the case does not survive for two years. It survives for weeks, sometimes days. The statute of limitations is the backstop; the evidence clock is the real deadline.
Texas also applies a modified comparative negligence standard with a 51% bar under its proportionate responsibility framework. What that means in plain language: if the person killed was found to be more than half at fault for their own death, the family recovers nothing. In a workplace shooting, the defense will look for any way to pin fault on the deceased — were they in a restricted area, did they have a conflict with the shooter, did they fail to follow a safety protocol. Every percentage point the defense can assign to the deceased is money subtracted from the recovery. This is why the investigation has to be thorough and why the family should never give a recorded statement to an insurance adjuster without counsel: the statement is being built to assign fault.
Negligent Security: When a Business Is Civilly Liable for Someone Else’s Violence
A business in Texas is not automatically liable when a crime happens on its property. But it is not automatically immune, either. The legal doctrine that reaches a business for a third party’s criminal act is called negligent security, and it is a form of premises liability. The principle is straightforward: a business that invites employees onto its property owes them a duty of reasonable care, and that duty includes protecting them from criminal acts that were foreseeable.
The employee-employer relationship creates a status the law calls “business invitee.” That is the highest duty category in Texas premises law. A business owes its invitees not just a duty not to injure them, but a duty to inspect the premises for dangers, to repair dangers it finds, and to protect against dangers it knows about — or should know about. When the danger is a criminal act by a third party, the question becomes: should the business have seen it coming?
This is where the negligent security claim lives. A logistics company in an isolated industrial corridor near North County Road 1140 and Highway 80 — an area characterized by oilfield service companies and industrial commercial development — may face security risks that a retail store in a shopping center does not. Long shifts, transient staffing, isolated locations, and limited security infrastructure are all well-documented workplace violence risk factors in the occupational safety literature. If the business knew about prior incidents — threats, disturbances, security breaches, police calls to the property — and did nothing, or did too little, the law says the business is on the hook for the consequences.
The negligent security claim can reach multiple defendants. The business operator — JAT Partner Logistics — is the primary target. But if the property owner is a different entity from the operating company, the property owner may have its own duty to maintain safe conditions on the premises, including access control, lighting, fencing, and any duty to warn of or protect against criminal activity known to occur in the area. If a third-party security contractor was hired to provide patrols, monitoring, or access control, that contractor may be liable for inadequate performance — insufficient patrols, monitoring failures, or failure to implement recommended security measures. Each of these is a separate investigation, a separate set of records, and potentially a separate insurance policy.
Our premises liability and negligent security practice covers these claims in depth; what matters here is that the negligent security doctrine is the bridge between a criminal act and civil accountability. The shooter pulled the trigger. But the question the civil case asks is whether the business created the conditions that made the shooting possible — and whether it should have known.
Foreseeability: The Evidence That Proves the Business Knew the Danger
Foreseeability is the single most contested element in a negligent security case. It is the battleground. Everything turns on whether the business knew, or should have known, that this kind of violence was a risk — and whether it did anything about it.
Foreseeability is proven through evidence, and the evidence falls into several categories. The first is prior incidents at the property — previous threats, disturbances, fights, security breaches, or police calls to the JAT Partner Logistics location. If the Midland County Sheriff’s Office had been called to the property before, that is a record. If employees had filed internal complaints about safety, that is a record. If a prior threat was reported and the company’s response was inadequate or nonexistent, that is not just evidence of foreseeability — it is evidence of the company’s conscious choice to ignore a known danger.
The second category is area crime data — the crime profile of the neighborhood around North County Road 1140 and Highway 80. If this industrial corridor had a pattern of violent crime, break-ins, or security incidents at nearby businesses, that data informs what a reasonable business in that location should have anticipated. A business in a high-crime industrial area has a different security obligation than one in a low-crime commercial park. The standard of care is not the same everywhere — it is calibrated to the risk profile of the place.
The third category is industry standards — what other logistics companies in the Midland industrial corridor do for security, and what professional security standards recommend for a facility of this type in this location. A board-certified security expert can assess whether the business’s security posture met the standard of care: was there access control? Was there surveillance? Were there patrols? Was there a protocol for identifying and responding to threats? Was there a workplace violence prevention program? OSHA has published voluntary guidelines for workplace violence prevention and has cited employers for workplace violence hazards under the General Duty Clause — the federal requirement that employers furnish a workplace “free from recognized hazards” likely to cause death or serious physical harm. While no specific federal workplace violence prevention standard exists yet, the General Duty Clause itself establishes that workplace violence is a recognized hazard that employers have a duty to address.
The fourth category — and potentially the most powerful — is the shooter’s relationship to the business. If the shooter was an employee or contractor at JAT Partner Logistics, the entire theory of the case shifts. A shooting by a current or former employee triggers the doctrine of negligent hiring, retention, or supervision. If the shooter had a history of violence, prior threats, disciplinary problems, or a disqualifying background that the company should have caught — and did not, or caught and ignored — the company can be liable for placing a dangerous person in proximity to other workers. The personnel file, the background check, the disciplinary record, and any prior complaints about the shooter become the spine of the case. This is why the personnel records must be preserved immediately — they are the documents most likely to be sanitized, altered, or “lost” after a catastrophic incident.
If the shooter was an outsider — not connected to the business — the negligent security theory still applies, but the battleground shifts to access control, perimeter security, and whether the business should have had measures in place to prevent an unauthorized person from entering the facility and reaching employees. A business that left its doors uncontrolled, its parking lot unmonitored, and its facility without any barrier to entry by an armed stranger may have breached its duty of care to the employees inside.
The Evidence That Is Disappearing Right Now
The evidence that proves foreseeability is the evidence that disappears fastest. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how quickly it can legally die — and this is why the preservation letter goes out the day you call, not the week after.
Business surveillance camera footage — interior and exterior. The cameras at JAT Partner Logistics captured the timeline of the shooting, the points of entry, whether access controls were functioning, and whether security personnel were present or responsive. CCTV systems in commercial settings typically overwrite on a rolling cycle — commonly 7 to 30 days. After that cycle, the footage is gone unless someone has ordered it preserved. The preservation demand must go out within days. Once the footage overwrites, it does not come back, and the company’s explanation of what the cameras “would have shown” becomes the only version a jury ever hears.
Security policies, procedures, and access control logs. These demonstrate whether the business had security measures in place, whether they were followed, and whether access to the facility was controlled or unrestricted. Policies can be modified post-incident — and they frequently are, as a company retroactively “improves” its written security program after a tragedy. Access logs may be overwritten on short cycles. The preservation letter must demand the security policies as they existed on the date of the incident, not as they exist today, and must demand the access control logs before they cycle out.
Prior incident reports, police calls, and internal security complaints. These are the foreseeability engine. Prior threats, disturbances, or security breaches at this location establish that the business was on notice of criminal risk and failed to act. Records may be purged, altered, or “lost” after a catastrophic incident. The litigation hold must issue immediately. The Midland County Sheriff’s Office dispatch records — the 911 calls and the call-for-service history for the property address — are obtainable through public records requests, but agency retention schedules vary and some records are archived or purged within a few years.
Employee and personnel records — including the shooter if employed there. If the shooter was an employee, the hiring records, background checks, disciplinary history, and any prior threats or complaints about the shooter are central to the negligent hiring and retention claims. Personnel files can be sanitized. Employment separation documentation may be created post-incident to frame the narrative. The preservation demand must reach the HR department, not just the general counsel, and must name the specific records by category.
Witness statements and 911 call recordings. Earliest accounts are most reliable. Witness memory degrades rapidly — within days — and can be influenced by media coverage and official narratives. 911 recordings are generally preserved per agency retention policy, but witness recollections fade within days. Immediate private investigation is essential. The first person a witness talks to sets the frame for what they remember; if that person is a company representative or an insurance investigator, the witness’s memory may be shaped before a plaintiff’s investigator ever reaches them.
Workers’ compensation subscription status verification. This is the threshold determination that gates the entire litigation strategy. It is a public record through the Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers’ Compensation — but it must be confirmed early because it determines whether the family is limited to death benefits or has access to uncapped tort recovery. A family that waits to confirm this status may discover, months later, that the window for certain third-party claims has narrowed.
When a defendant lets required evidence die after receiving a preservation demand, the law answers. An adverse-inference instruction may be available — the jury can be told to assume the lost record was as bad as the plaintiff says it was. Sanctions may be available. In some circumstances, a separate claim for spoliation may exist. The bar for the harshest sanctions is high, but the leverage begins the moment the preservation letter is on file. That letter is not a formality — it is the legal instrument that converts routine destruction into sanctionable conduct. And it only works if it goes out before the evidence is gone.
What a Case Like This Is Worth
Three deaths generate three distinct wrongful death claims and three survival claims. The value of each claim depends on a set of facts that are still developing — the workers’ comp subscription status, the foreseeability profile, the earning capacity of each decedent, and whether the facts support a gross negligence finding for punitive damages. The range is wide because the variables are binary: the workers’ comp question and the foreseeability question each compress or expand the value dramatically.
At the low end — if JAT Partner Logistics is a workers’ comp subscriber, the foreseeability evidence is minimal, and only modest third-party claims are available — the recovery may be in the range of $2 million or more across the three claims, primarily through death benefits and limited third-party recovery. This is the scenario the company’s insurance adjuster is hoping the family accepts.
At the high end — if JAT Partner Logistics is a non-subscriber, the foreseeability evidence is strong (prior threats, prior incidents, inadequate security), a gross negligence finding supports exemplary damages, and the decedents were high-earning workers in the Permian Basin energy or logistics sector — the combined exposure across three deaths can reach $45 million or more. Each claim independently carries multi-million-dollar potential when liability is clear, and three deaths compound the exposure.
Here is what drives the number. Economic damages include lost earning capacity — and in the Permian Basin, earning capacity for energy and logistics workers can be substantial. A forensic economist models lifetime earning capacity based on the decedent’s age, occupation, wage history, and regional wage data. Fringe benefits — health insurance, retirement contributions, paid leave — add roughly 30% on top of the wage, per federal labor data. Household services — the cooking, the childcare, the repairs, the driving the deceased person did for free — are valued at the replacement cost and added to the economic stream. Funeral and burial expenses are recoverable. Any medical expenses incurred between injury and death are recoverable through the survival action.
Non-economic damages include mental anguish — the grief, the shock, the loss of the person who was supposed to be there. Loss of companionship and society — what the family lost when the relationship was taken. Loss of inheritance — what the decedent would have accumulated and passed on. These are the losses no receipt can measure, and Texas law allows a jury to compensate them.
Exemplary damages — punitive damages — require proof of gross negligence. Under Texas doctrine, gross negligence means an act or omission involving an extreme degree of risk, combined with the actor’s actual awareness of and conscious indifference to that risk. This is not ordinary negligence. This is the company that knew the danger, knew someone could die, and did not care enough to act. Exemplary damages in Texas are subject to a statutory cap, but the cap is calculated relative to the economic and non-economic damages, and three deaths with strong gross negligence facts can push the total exposure into the highest range. The discovery that supports a gross negligence finding — prior threats that were ignored, security recommendations that were rejected, employee complaints that went nowhere — is exactly the discovery that the evidence clock is racing to destroy.
The case is worth what the evidence supports, and the evidence is worth what the preservation letter saves. Those two facts are connected, and the connection is the reason the first phone call matters more than any other step in the process.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook: What They Will Try
Lupe Peña sat in the rooms where these decisions were made — on the defense side. He knows the plays because he ran them. Here is what is coming, in the order it usually arrives, and here is the counter to each.
Play 1: The “Just Checking In” Recorded Statement Call. Within days, someone friendly will call the family to express condolences and ask, “Can you just tell us what happened?” The call is recorded. Every word is being built to create a narrative that limits the company’s exposure — to establish that the deceased was at fault, that the company had no way to prevent this, that the family is not really suffering. The counter: do not take the call. Do not give a statement. Do not sign anything. If the adjuster has already called, do not return the call without counsel. Every question the adjuster asks is designed to produce an answer that can be quoted back at a deposition, in a motion, or to a jury.
Play 2: The Fast Settlement Check. A check may arrive quickly — sometimes within weeks — with a release attached. The release may be buried in the paperwork, printed on the back, or presented as a routine “acknowledgment.” Once signed, it can extinguish the family’s right to sue entirely, for a fraction of what the case is worth. The strategy is to get the release signed before the family has counsel, before the medical records are complete, and before the workers’ comp subscription status is known. The counter: never sign anything from an insurance company without a lawyer reviewing it. A check that arrives in two weeks is not a favor — it is an investment in closing the case cheaply.
Play 3: The “This Was Unforeseeable” Narrative. The company will begin building its defense from day one, and the centerpiece will be the argument that the shooting was a random, unforeseeable act that no business could have prevented. The adjuster may say this directly to the family. The company’s lawyers will say it in every filing. The counter: foreseeability is proven by evidence, not by assertion — and the evidence of prior incidents, prior threats, and inadequate security is sitting in the company’s own files right now. The preservation letter is what forces those files into existence before they can be “lost.”
Play 4: The Social Media Watch. The insurance company’s investigators will monitor the family’s social media accounts. A photo of the family at a restaurant, a post about feeling “okay,” a comment about the investigation — all of these can be screenshotted and used to argue the family is not suffering, the loss was not significant, or the family is not cooperating. The counter: set all social media to private, do not post about the case, the loss, or the investigation, and do not discuss the case with anyone outside the family and counsel. Defense investigators monitor for statements that could be used to undermine claims.
Play 5: The IME Doctor. If there are any medical records — even records from the emergency response — the insurance company may send the family to a doctor of their choosing for an “independent medical examination.” That doctor is not independent. The IME doctor is selected by the insurer, paid by the insurer, and frequently produces a report that minimizes or contradicts the treating physicians’ findings. The counter: the family chooses their own doctors. Do not attend an insurer-arranged examination without understanding your rights.
Play 6: The Delay Aimed at the Statute. The insurer may stall — slow responses, requests for more documentation, “we need more time” — aimed at running the family past the statute of limitations. The counter: the statute of limitations is a hard deadline, and a case that is not filed before it expires is dead forever. The preservation letter, the investigation, and the filing all happen on the plaintiff’s timeline, not the insurer’s.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is how a case like this moves from a kitchen table at 2 a.m. to a recovery that pays for a family’s future.
Week One: The preservation letter goes out. The day the family calls, a written demand goes to JAT Partner Logistics, its property owner if separate, its security contractor if one exists, and any third-party data vendor (surveillance system provider, access control company). The letter names every record by category: CCTV footage, security policies, access logs, prior incident reports, personnel files, 911 recordings, and witness statements. It orders the company to preserve everything and notifies them that destruction after receipt of the letter is sanctionable. The same week, the workers’ comp subscription status is confirmed through the Texas Department of Insurance. The fork in the road is identified.
Weeks Two Through Four: The investigation begins. A private investigator reaches witnesses while their memories are fresh and before the company’s representatives have shaped them. The Midland County Sheriff’s Office dispatch records and the call-for-service history for the property address are requested through public records. Area crime data for the North County Road 1140 and Highway 80 corridor is pulled. If the shooter was an employee, the employment relationship is documented and the personnel record is demanded. A board-certified security expert is retained to assess whether the business’s security posture met the standard of care for a logistics operation in this location.
Months One Through Three: The personal representative is appointed. Before any wrongful death lawsuit can be filed, a court appoints a personal representative — the one person Texas law authorizes to bring the family’s case. We handle that appointment. The official report is completed by the investigating agencies. The case strategy is locked in based on the workers’ comp subscription status: if a non-subscriber, the complaint targets the employer directly; if a subscriber, the complaint targets the property owner, security contractor, and other third parties.
Months Three Through Twelve: Written discovery and depositions. The records that were preserved by the letter come out in discovery. The security policies as they existed on the date of the shooting are produced. The prior incident reports, if any, are produced. The personnel files, if the shooter was an employee, are produced. The facility manager, the security personnel, and the human resources representatives are deposed under oath. The security expert reviews the produced records and issues a report on whether the standard of care was met. A forensic economist models the lifetime earning capacity of each decedent based on Permian Basin wage data.
The Number Is Built. The demand that goes to mediation is not a number plucked from the air. It is built from the preserved evidence, the deposition testimony, the expert reports, and the economic model. The life-care planner and the forensic economist convert the human loss into a defensible figure. The defense’s first offer will be a fraction of it. Mediation is unlikely to be productive until the subscription status is confirmed and the foreseeability evidence profile is developed — which is why patience, and a case that is built right, produces the result.
The First 72 Hours: A Practical Roadmap
What the family does in the first 72 hours after a workplace shooting matters more than what happens in the next 72 days. Here is the hour-by-hour, day-by-day roadmap.
Hour 1 Through 24: Medical and Family First. If any family member is injured, get medical attention immediately — and understand that some injuries, including psychological trauma, may not show symptoms right away. Do not speak with insurance adjusters, employer representatives, or media without counsel. Do not sign anything. Do not discuss the case on social media. Set all social media accounts to private.
Hour 24 Through 48: The Preservation Letter. Contact a lawyer. The preservation letter goes out the same day. This letter orders the company to freeze every piece of evidence: CCTV footage, security policies, access logs, prior incident reports, personnel files, and witness statements. The workers’ comp subscription status is confirmed through the Texas Department of Insurance. The fork in the road is identified.
Hour 48 Through 72: The Investigation. A private investigator reaches witnesses. Public records requests go to the Midland County Sheriff’s Office for dispatch records and the call-for-service history at the property address. The area crime profile is pulled. If the shooter was an employee, the employment relationship is documented. The family is advised on how to handle the ongoing contacts from the insurance adjuster — which is to say, do not handle them at all without counsel.
What Not To Do. Do not give a recorded statement to the insurance adjuster. Do not sign a release or any document from the company or its insurer. Do not post about the case, the loss, or the investigation on social media. Do not discuss the case with anyone outside the family and counsel. Do not assume the company’s expressions of concern are anything other than a risk-management strategy. Do not wait. Every day that passes is a day the evidence degrades.
The Medical Reality of Gunshot Injuries
The families of the three employees killed in this shooting are facing a medical reality that extends beyond the moment of death. In a wrongful death and survival case, the medical records document two things: what happened to the deceased between the shooting and death, and what the economic cost of the lost life was.
For the survival action, the interval between injury and death matters. If there was conscious pain and suffering — even briefly — before death, that is compensable. The emergency medical records, the ambulance run sheets, and the hospital records (if the deceased was transported) document this interval. In a shooting, the mechanism of injury is penetrating trauma — a projectile that enters the body and damages tissue, organs, and blood vessels along its path. The severity depends on the location of the wound, the caliber of the weapon, and whether vital structures were struck. Some gunshot wounds cause death within seconds; others allow minutes or longer of consciousness. The medical records establish which, and the survival claim is built from that interval.
For the wrongful death claim, the economic cost is driven by the decedent’s earning capacity. In the Permian Basin, energy and logistics workers can earn substantial incomes — incomes that support families, build retirement, and create a standard of living that the family depended on. A forensic economist models what the deceased person would have earned over their remaining working life, adjusted for age, occupation, wage history, education, and regional wage data. The fringe benefits — health insurance, retirement, paid leave — add roughly 30% on top of the wage. The household services — the work the person did at home that now has to be replaced — add more. The economic loss alone, for a young worker in the Permian Basin, can run into the millions. The non-economic loss — the grief, the lost companionship, the empty chair — is what the jury is asked to value on top of it.
The medical records must be preserved. The ambulance run sheets, the emergency department records, any imaging, and any surgical records are part of the case. Hospitals operate on fixed retention schedules — adult records are often retained for a set number of years, then destroyed. The family has a right to those records, and securing them early is part of the preservation effort.
Why This Firm Handles These Cases
Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in courtrooms — Texas state courts and federal court, including the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the evidence tells. He handles wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases, including the active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi at the University of Houston. He approaches these cases with the conviction that a company that fails to protect its employees has answered the most basic question a business can ask — whether the people who work for it are worth protecting — and answered it wrong.
Lupe Peña spent years on the other side of this table. He worked inside a national insurance-defense firm, where he learned how claims are valued using software like Colossus, how reserves are set in the first 48 hours after a death, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is deployed, and how delay tactics are structured. He knows the playbook because he was part of it. Now he uses that knowledge for injured people and grieving families. He is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — and for families in the Permian Basin, where the energy and logistics workforce is substantially Spanish-speaking, that is not a convenience. It is the difference between a family understanding their rights and a family being talked past.
Our firm has been involved in mass shooting litigation — cases where the question of whether a business should have foreseen and prevented a shooting is the central legal fight. The principles are the same: a business that creates a venue, invites people in, and fails to protect them from a foreseeable danger is accountable for what follows. The Route 91 Harvest Festival litigation and the negligent security cases we handle share the same legal spine — foreseeability, duty, and the gap between what the business knew and what it did.
We work on contingency. The fee is 33.33% if the case settles before trial, 40% if it goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The call is answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — by live staff, not an answering service. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. But the information in it is the information the insurance company is counting on the family not having, and the day the family has it is the day the power balance shifts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the employer if my loved one was killed at work in Texas?
Yes — but the path depends on whether the employer carried workers’ compensation insurance. If the employer is a workers’ comp subscriber, the exclusive-remedy doctrine generally bars a direct lawsuit against the employer, and the family is limited to death benefits through the comp system. However, third-party claims against a property owner, a security contractor, or other entities may still be available. If the employer is a non-subscriber — meaning it opted out of the workers’ comp system — the employer loses the exclusive-remedy shield and its common-law defenses, and the family can pursue a direct tort claim for the full measure of damages, with no cap. The subscription status is a public record through the Texas Department of Insurance, and it is the first thing that must be confirmed.
What if the company doesn’t carry workers’ compensation?
If the employer is a non-subscriber, the legal landscape changes dramatically in the family’s favor. The employer cannot raise the exclusive-remedy defense, cannot argue contributory negligence, and cannot argue assumption of risk. The family can pursue full tort recovery against the employer, including lost earning capacity, mental anguish, loss of companionship, and potentially punitive damages if gross negligence is proven. Texas is the only state that allows this opt-out, and the consequences for a non-subscriber employer after a workplace fatality are severe — which is exactly why the confirmation of subscription status is the threshold strategic determination.
How long do I have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
The statute of limitations for a wrongful death claim in Texas is generally two years from the date of death, under the Texas Wrongful Death Act. The same two-year window applies to survival actions. However, the evidence that proves the case does not last two years — surveillance footage overwrites in weeks, witness memory degrades in days, and security policies can be modified. The two-year deadline is the legal backstop; the evidence clock is the real deadline, and it is measured in days, not years.
What is negligent security and how does it apply to a workplace shooting?
Negligent security is a form of premises liability that holds a business accountable for failing to protect its employees (or customers) from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. In a workplace shooting, the claim asks whether the business knew or should have known that violence was a risk — through prior incidents, threats, area crime patterns, or industry standards — and whether it took reasonable steps to prevent it. If the business had no access control, no surveillance, no security personnel, and no response to prior warnings, a jury can find that the business breached its duty of care and is liable for the consequences.
How much is a wrongful death case worth in Texas?
The value depends on the workers’ comp subscription status, the foreseeability evidence, the earning capacity of the deceased, and whether gross negligence is proven. At the low end — subscriber status, minimal foreseeability, modest third-party claims — the recovery may be $2 million or more across three claims. At the high end — non-subscriber status, strong foreseeability, gross negligence, high-earning decedents in the Permian Basin economy — the combined exposure can reach $45 million or more. Three deaths compound the exposure because each claim carries independent multi-million-dollar potential. The case is worth what the evidence supports, and the evidence is worth what the preservation letter saves.
What evidence disappears fastest after a workplace shooting?
Surveillance camera footage is the fastest-dying evidence — commercial CCTV systems typically overwrite on a 7 to 30 day cycle, and once the footage is gone, it cannot be recovered. Security policies and procedures can be modified post-incident. Access control logs may overwrite on short cycles. Prior incident reports can be purged or altered. Personnel files can be sanitized. Witness statements degrade in memory within days. The preservation letter that freezes these records is the single most time-critical step in the first 72 hours, and it only works if it goes out before the evidence is destroyed.
Can I still recover if my loved one’s employer had workers’ comp?
Yes, but the recovery against the employer itself is generally limited to the death benefits provided by the workers’ compensation system — burial expenses and a percentage of the deceased worker’s average weekly wage, paid to eligible beneficiaries. However, if a third party — a property owner, a security contractor, an equipment manufacturer, or another entity — contributed to the harm, a separate negligence claim can be pursued against that third party. The third-party claim is not limited by the comp system and can include the full measure of damages, including pain and suffering and loss of companionship.
What should I not say to the insurance adjuster?
Do not give a recorded statement. Do not sign anything. Do not discuss the facts of the shooting, your loved one’s work history, your family’s financial situation, or your emotional state. Do not accept the adjuster’s characterization of what happened. Do not agree to meet with the adjuster or any investigator the adjuster sends. Do not post about the case on social media. The adjuster is not calling to help — the adjuster is calling to build a file that limits the company’s exposure. Every word the family says to the adjuster can be used to reduce or deny the claim.
Who can file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
Under the Texas Wrongful Death Act, the surviving spouse, the children, and the parents of the deceased person may bring a wrongful death claim. If none of these beneficiaries file a claim within three months of the death, the executor or administrator of the deceased person’s estate may file the claim — unless the surviving spouse, children, or parents direct the executor not to file. A person outside this statutory class — an unmarried partner, a sibling, a grandparent — generally cannot bring a wrongful death claim regardless of the closeness of the relationship.
Does the shooter have to be convicted before I can sue?
No. The criminal case and the civil case are separate legal proceedings with different standards of proof, different parties, and different goals. A civil wrongful death claim does not depend on a criminal conviction. The civil case must prove negligence or gross negligence by a preponderance of the evidence — a lower standard than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard in a criminal prosecution. The criminal case may produce evidence that is useful in the civil case, but the civil case proceeds on its own timeline and does not wait for the criminal case to resolve.
If Your Family Lost Someone at JAT Partner Logistics
Three people went to work on a Monday morning in Midland and did not come home. The investigation is ongoing. The company is preparing its response. The insurance adjuster is preparing to call. The evidence is preparing to disappear. The question is not whether the family has rights — they do. The question is whether those rights are protected before the window closes.
The call is free. The consultation is confidential. The fee is contingency — we do not get paid unless we win. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. 1-888-ATTY-911. Live staff, 24 hours a day. Hablamos Español.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the information on this page is the information the other side is counting on the family not having — and the day the family has it is the day the fight changes.