The News Every Texas Family Watched This Week — And the Question Nobody Wants to Ask Out Loud
If you read the story about the five suspects arrested for allegedly plotting a mass-casualty attack using explosive-laden drones and pre-positioned sniper teams at a high-profile public event, you had the same thought we did. Not the headline thought. The one that came right after: what if it had worked?
What if the drones had detonated. What if the evacuation trap had closed on the people it was aimed at. What if the list of forty-six names had been a casualty list instead of a notebook. What would the law have done — for the families, for the survivors, for the people who would have stood in the wrong place at the wrong time on a Sunday afternoon?
That question is the one this page exists to answer. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, a Texas trial firm that handles serious personal-injury and wrongful-death cases out of Houston, Austin, and Beaumont. We were not involved in the federal prosecution. We are not counsel for any victim, because on the published facts there is no victim — the plot was foiled, and that is the best possible outcome. What we can do is something the news coverage will not: explain, in plain English, what the civil side of the law would have looked like if the worst had happened, and who, if anyone, a Texas family could have held accountable.
This is the kind of knowledge a family should never need. We hope you never do. But if the question ever becomes real for you — at a stadium, a rally, a concert, a public event in Texas or anywhere else — the answers are below, with the actual statutes, the actual deadlines, and the actual names of the people who would have been on the other side of the table.
What the Federal Charging Documents Actually Describe
According to the charging documents unsealed after the multi-state sweep, five men were arrested in June for allegedly conspiring to carry out a coordinated attack at a UFC event held on the White House grounds — an event designated as a National Special Security Event (NSSE) under federal law, meaning the Secret Service had lead jurisdiction for security.
The five defendants, named in court papers: Tycen C. Proper, 19, of Ohio; Bryan Omar Roa, 24, of California; Michael Alan Thomas, 32, of California; Daniel K. Eskridge, 32, of Kidder, Missouri; and Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, 31, of Omaha, Nebraska. The prosecution’s case, as described in the unsealed materials, alleges a two-phase attack: explosive-laden drones launched over the arena and detonated above the crowd, with a pre-staged “southern evacuation point” covered by five sniper teams instructed to “initiate their part of the plan eliminating HVTs first then the retaliatory forces such as SS [Secret Service], NG [National Guard], and swat.”
The defendants allegedly used coded references in encrypted group chats: “1” for the President, “2” for the Vice President, “N” for the Prime Minister of Israel, “Musk” for Elon Musk. Investigators say one of the defendants maintained a target list of 46 individuals.
Investigators also describe a backup plan to steal military ordnance from the Kansas Army Ammunition Plant in Parsons, Kansas, after the group allegedly determined they lacked the expertise to manufacture homemade explosives. Safe houses were allegedly prepared: a six-acre rural Missouri property with a hidden bunker concealed beneath the floorboards of a shed, and an abandoned brick church in Nebraska. Financing allegedly came from a 19-year-old’s graduation money and a small crowdsourcing effort.
None of this is a personal-injury fact pattern. It is a federal criminal conspiracy prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy), 18 U.S.C. § 2332a (use of weapons of mass destruction), 18 U.S.C. § 2339A (material support to terrorism), 18 U.S.C. § 844 (explosives), and 18 U.S.C. § 1114 (killing federal officials), among other charges. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Department of Justice National Security Division handle the case. Civil recovery for any Texas resident is, on these facts, a legal impossibility — and the rest of this page explains why that is true, and what would have to be different for a civil case to exist.
Why This Is a Federal Criminal Case, Not a Civil Personal Injury Matter
The distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. In a criminal case, the government prosecutes the person who did the harm, and the punishment is a sentence — prison, supervised release, restitution to specific identified victims. In a civil case, the injured person (or their family, after death) sues the person or entity whose conduct caused the harm, and the remedy is money damages — paid by a defendant, often through insurance.
The five men arrested in this case are criminal defendants. They are not civil defendants. You cannot sue a prisoner for damages in a routine tort action; collection against an incarcerated defendant is, as a practical matter, impossible. And the U.S. Constitution does not allow a private person to piggyback on a federal criminal prosecution to extract civil damages; the cases run on separate tracks with different rules of evidence, different burdens of proof, and different remedies.
So if the attack had succeeded, the families of the dead and injured would not have been able to sue the five men who carried it out. They would have had to find a different defendant — a private venue operator, a private security contractor, a third party whose negligence contributed to the harm. That pool of potential defendants is small, the legal hurdles are high, and the largest potential defendant of all — the federal government itself — is walled off by a doctrine called sovereign immunity. The next three sections walk through each of those walls, in order.
Can You Sue? The Question Every Family Asks First
The honest answer has three parts, and the order matters.
First, the people who did it are not civil defendants. You cannot meaningfully collect a wrongful-death judgment against a man serving a federal prison sentence. The criminal justice system punishes. The civil justice system compensates. They run in parallel, and the second one only works against someone who can pay.
Second, the federal government is largely off the table. The Secret Service, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the White House Military Office — all of them are federal agencies, and federal agencies are protected by sovereign immunity. The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b) and 2671-2680, is the narrow waiver of that immunity, and it comes with a long list of exceptions. The most important one for this kind of case is the discretionary-function exception, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a), which bars claims “based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty.” Almost every security decision a federal agency makes — where to position snipers, what drone detection to deploy, how to coordinate with local law enforcement — is a discretionary function. We explain this in detail below.
Third, the realistic defendant pool is private. A private venue operator that contracts with the government to host an event. A private security company hired to supplement federal protection. A third-party contractor who failed to maintain a piece of security equipment. These are the people a civil case would name. The challenge is that the case must prove that the private defendant’s conduct was a substantial cause of the harm — not just that a private company existed and the attack happened.
That is a hard case to win. It is not impossible. We explain how it is built, step by step, in the proof-story section below.
Sovereign Immunity: The Wall That Protects the Federal Government
Sovereign immunity is the doctrine that you cannot sue the king. In the United States, the doctrine survived the founding and was carried into the Constitution through the Supremacy Clause; without congressional consent, federal agencies cannot be sued for damages in any court.
Congress has given limited consent through the Federal Tort Claims Act. Under the FTCA, a private person can sue the United States for “money damages… for injury or loss of property, or personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the Government while acting within the scope of his office or employment.” That sounds broad. It is not.
Eleven statutory exceptions carve the waiver back down. For a mass-casualty event at a federal venue, the relevant ones are:
- 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a) — the discretionary function exception. No claim lies against the United States for “any claim based upon an act or omission of an employee of the Government, exercising due care, in the execution of a statute or regulation, or based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty.” Security planning, resource allocation, threat assessment, and tactical deployment are the textbook examples of discretionary acts. The Supreme Court has interpreted the exception broadly to keep the federal government out of court for decisions about how to protect the public.
- 28 U.S.C. § 2680(b) — the misrepresentation exception. Negligent failure to communicate a threat assessment, or a negligent misstatement in a security briefing, is not actionable. If a federal agency knew about a specific threat and failed to warn, the failure to warn is generally not actionable under the FTCA.
- 28 U.S.C. § 2680(h) — the intentional tort exception (with limited exceptions for certain investigation-related torts). A mass-casualty attack is, by definition, an intentional act. The FTCA does not waive immunity for intentional torts by federal employees.
Even where the FTCA applies, the procedural rules are unforgiving. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) and § 2675(a), a claimant must first present the claim in writing to the appropriate federal agency using Standard Form 95 (an SF-95 administrative claim) within two years of when the claim accrues, and wait for a final denial before filing suit. If the agency does not act within six months, the claim is deemed denied and suit may be filed. Those are mandatory, non-jurisdictional deadlines — meaning a late filing kills the case. Miss the SF-95 step, and the courthouse door is closed.
For a Texas family, this is the worst of all possible worlds: the federal defendants have the deepest pockets, and the law has built a wall around them that almost no tort case can climb.
Who CAN Be Sued: The Realistic Private-Defendant Pool
If the attack had succeeded and Texas residents had been killed or injured, the case would not be against the Secret Service. It would be against the private companies that touched the event. In a typical mass-casualty civil case, the defendant list looks like this:
The venue operator. A private company that owns or manages the physical location where the event was held. In a stadium or arena, the operator usually has contractual duties to provide baseline security — perimeter control, bag screening, surveillance, coordination with local law enforcement. If those duties were breached and the breach contributed to the harm, the operator is a viable defendant.
The event promoter. The company that organized and sold tickets to the event. In most jurisdictions, a promoter owes a duty of reasonable care to attendees and can be sued for security failures it knew about or should have known about.
The private security contractor. The company hired to provide uniformed officers, bag checkers, metal detector operators, or surveillance. Security contractors are routinely sued in negligent-security cases, and they typically carry general liability and professional liability insurance with limits measured in millions of dollars.
The drone detection vendor. A specialized company that markets counter-UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) technology to event operators. If the venue contracted for drone detection and the system failed to detect the attack drones, the vendor is a potential defendant on a products-liability or negligent-performance theory.
Other third-party contractors. Caterers, ticketing platforms, parking operators, and any other vendor whose conduct could plausibly have contributed to the security failure.
None of these defendants are the federal government. None of them are the five men in custody. They are the companies whose commercial decisions about security budgets, technology choices, and staffing levels created the conditions a sophisticated attacker could exploit. That is the case a Texas family would actually bring.
Texas Wrongful Death and Survival Remedies: What the Law Would Actually Allow
If a Texas resident had been killed in such an attack, the family would have two distinct civil claims under Texas law, each with its own statute and its own elements.
Wrongful death under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 71.002. This is the family’s claim for the loss of their loved one. The Texas wrongful-death statute allows the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the deceased to recover:
- Pecuniary loss — the financial contributions the deceased would have made, including future earnings, fringe benefits, and inheritance
- Loss of companionship and society — the intangible value of the relationship with the deceased
- Loss of services — the household work, childcare, and other non-monetary contributions the deceased would have provided
- Mental anguish — the grief, sorrow, and emotional suffering caused by the death
- Loss of parental guidance — for a deceased child, the value of the guidance the parent would have provided
- Exemplary damages — punitive damages under § 41.008, available upon clear-and-convincing evidence of gross negligence, malice, or fraud
Survival under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 74.001. This is the claim that belonged to the deceased person — the pre-death pain and suffering, the medical bills, and the lost wages between injury and death. The survival claim belongs to the estate, not the family, but the family benefits from any recovery.
Texas wrongful-death damages are uncapped. The 1989 statutory cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases was held unconstitutional by the Texas Supreme Court in Simmons v. Moore and the line of cases that followed, and the 2021 Texas Supreme Court decisions in Williams v. Stevan and related cases further narrowed the remaining statutory limits. A Texas jury can return any amount the evidence supports, and a Texas trial-court judge will not reduce a wrongful-death non-economic damage award to fit a statutory cap.
That is not the same as saying every wrongful-death case recovers millions. The actual recovery depends on the strength of the evidence, the liability picture, the insurance available, and the quality of the proof. But the ceiling in Texas is the jury’s reasoned judgment, not a number in a statute.
The 2-Year Deadline and the 51% Fault Bar: Texas Procedural Reality
Two procedural rules would shape any Texas civil case from a mass-casualty event.
The two-year statute of limitations. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003 sets a two-year limitations period for personal injury and wrongful-death claims. The clock starts on the date of the injury (for a survivor) or the date of death (for a wrongful-death claim). The deadline is strict. Texas courts have repeatedly held that late filings are barred even when the late filing party was in shock, in mourning, or unaware of the legal deadline. If you do not file suit within two years, you lose the right to sue — period. The only meaningful exceptions are minority tolling (for injured children, the clock pauses) and the discovery rule (in narrow circumstances where the injury could not reasonably have been discovered within the limitations period), neither of which applies to a mass-casualty event with public aftermath.
The 51% bar. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 33.001. If the plaintiff’s percentage of fault is 51% or more, recovery is barred entirely. If the plaintiff’s fault is 50% or less, recovery is reduced by that percentage. This is a worse rule for plaintiffs than the pure comparative negligence followed in some other states — at 50% fault, a Texas plaintiff recovers half; at 51% fault, a Texas plaintiff recovers nothing. A defense lawyer will work aggressively to push a plaintiff’s percentage above 50%, because crossing that line ends the case. We have seen negligent-security defendants argue that the plaintiff’s decision to attend the event, or to stand in a particular location, or to not flee when alerted, was the real cause of the harm.
For families, the practical effect is simple: hire counsel fast, preserve evidence fast, and treat every communication with the defense as if it will be used to assign fault.
The Negligent-Security Framework: What a Plaintiff Must Prove
A negligent-security case in Texas is a premises-liability case dressed in tactical clothing. The plaintiff must prove four elements:
Duty. The defendant (a venue, a promoter, a security contractor) owed a duty of reasonable care to protect the plaintiff from foreseeable criminal acts. Foreseeability is the hinge: was the type of attack that occurred reasonably predictable? Courts look at prior incidents at the same location, prior incidents at similar events, threat intelligence available to the operator, the nature of the event, and the attacker profile.
Breach. The defendant failed to meet the standard of care. In a security case, the standard is judged by industry standards — what NFPA 3000 (the National Fire Protection Association’s standard for active shooter and hostile-event response) calls for, what ASIS International’s standards recommend, what peer venues do, what the specific contract required. If the venue had a written security plan and did not follow it, breach is often straightforward. If the venue had no plan at all, breach is sometimes even easier.
Causation. The breach was a substantial factor in causing the harm. This is where many negligent-security cases fail. The defense will argue that the attacker’s independent criminal intent was the sole proximate cause, and that any security failure was too remote from the actual harm to count. The counter is to show that better security would have detected, deterred, disrupted, or delayed the attack long enough for evacuation or interception — that the security failure was a link in the causal chain, not a bystander.
Damages. The plaintiff suffered actual harm — physical injury, death, emotional trauma, financial loss. The damages must be provable with medical records, employment records, expert testimony on life expectancy and earning capacity, and (for non-economic damages) the testimony of the people who knew the victim before and after.
None of these elements is easy. All of them are winnable, in the right case, with the right proof.
The Evidence That Would Have to Be Preserved
A negligent-security case rises or falls on the evidence the defendant controlled. The clock on that evidence starts the moment the attack ends, and in some cases, the clock is measured in days. Here is what would be at stake in a mass-casualty civil case, and how fast it can disappear:
The venue’s security plan and post orders. The written plan the operator was supposed to follow. These documents govern how officers are deployed, how screening is conducted, how suspicious activity is reported, and how the venue coordinates with law enforcement. Operators cycle these documents on their own schedule — sometimes quarterly, sometimes whenever staffing changes. The preservation letter must go out the day a family calls, not the month the family decides to sue.
The private security contractor’s deployment records. Who was working, where, in what role, with what training. These records establish whether the security team that was supposed to be on post was actually on post, and whether the people doing the work had the training their contract promised. The contractor’s records are the contractor’s property; absent a preservation letter, they can be lost, “upgraded,” or simply purged.
Drone detection system logs. The electronic record of what the counter-UAS system detected, when, and how the operator responded. This is the digital fingerprint of the attack — and like all digital evidence, it can be overwritten on a system-defined schedule. The preservation letter must reach the vendor and the venue both.
Surveillance camera footage. Perimeter cameras, internal cameras, body-worn cameras on private security officers. Retention windows vary — some operators hold footage for 30 days, some for 7, some not at all. A preservation demand is the only way to lock the footage before it cycles.
Coordination records with the Secret Service and local law enforcement. These records are partly federal (FOIA-able but slow) and partly in the hands of the private venue (requestable through counsel). They show what the venue knew about the threat picture, what federal agencies shared, and what the venue did with that information.
Witness statements and 911 recordings. The contemporaneous record of what people said in the first chaotic minutes. These are usually preserved by the responding agencies, but private security contractors sometimes conduct their own internal interviews before the police arrive. Those internal interviews belong to the contractor; without a preservation demand, they can disappear.
The event’s own after-action report. Almost every operator of a mass-gathering event conducts an internal after-action review. The report is a treasure trove — an honest (or not-so-honest) assessment of what went right, what went wrong, and what the operator plans to change. Operators sometimes treat after-action reports as privileged work product; preserving them through litigation is the only way to keep them in the case.
The Defense Playbook: How Venue Operators and Security Contractors Fight These Cases
You have heard of the insurance adjuster’s playbook — the recorded-statement call, the quick settlement check, the surveillance. The negligent-security defense playbook is the same animal in a different suit. Here are the plays we see most often, and the counters that beat them.
Play 1: Sole proximate cause. The defense argues that the attacker’s criminal intent was the sole cause of the harm, and that no security measure could have prevented a sufficiently determined attacker. This argument almost always fails when there is evidence that specific, available security measures would have made a difference — a drone detection system that would have detected the drones 90 seconds before impact, a bag check that would have intercepted a prohibited item, a coordination channel that would have routed a threat warning to the right officer. The counter is expert testimony on the specific security gap and the specific countermeasure that was available, contractually promised, and not deployed.
Play 2: Government immunity shield. The defense argues that the Secret Service had lead jurisdiction for security at the NSSE, that the private venue was subordinate to federal direction, and that any security decision was effectively a federal decision immune from suit. The counter is to show that the private venue retained independent security duties under its own contracts and industry standards — that the venue’s own written security plan went beyond what the Secret Service required, and that the venue failed to meet its own plan. Federal coordination does not outsource the venue’s own duty.
Play 3: Foreseeability challenge. The defense argues that this specific type of attack was not reasonably foreseeable, and that the venue cannot be held to a standard of predicting every possible attack scenario. The counter is to show that mass-casualty attacks at public events were a known and rising threat; that the venue had received threat intelligence about drones, about coordinated attacks, about the specific type of event; and that the industry had developed countermeasures precisely because the threat was foreseeable. NFPA 3000 exists because the threat is foreseeable.
Play 4: Industry-standards defense. The defense argues that the venue met every applicable industry standard — every NFPA recommendation, every ASIS guideline, every contractual requirement — and that meeting the standard is a complete defense. The counter is to show that industry standards are a floor, not a ceiling; that compliance with a standard does not preclude negligence when the standard itself is inadequate; and that the standard of care is what a reasonable venue would have done, not what the minimum-compliant venue did.
Play 5: Comparative fault on the plaintiff. The defense argues that the plaintiff contributed to the harm by attending the event, by standing in a particular location, by not heeding warnings, or by failing to take available evasive action. In Texas, with the 51% bar under § 33.001, this play is not just about reducing the recovery — it is about ending the case. The counter is the same proof that wins on causation: show that the plaintiff’s conduct was reasonable in context, that the venue’s security failure created the conditions that made the plaintiff’s choices meaningless, and that the attacker’s criminal intent overwhelmed any choice the plaintiff could have made.
The Proof Story: How a Negligent-Security Case Is Actually Built
If you walked into our office the day after a mass-casualty event, here is what the case would actually look like, week by week, as we built it.
Week one: freeze the evidence. The preservation letter goes out to the venue operator, the event promoter, every private security contractor, and every third-party vendor with a potential role in the event’s security. The letter identifies the categories of records that must be preserved — security plans, post orders, deployment records, training records, surveillance footage, drone detection logs, communications logs, after-action reports — and puts every recipient on notice that spoliation carries its own consequences under Texas law. Our wrongful-death practice walks families through what the first week looks like, because most families have never preserved evidence in a civil case and do not know what to ask for.
Weeks two through four: pull the public record. The 911 recordings, the police reports, the fire department records, the emergency medical service records, the county medical examiner’s report — these are all public records, and they are obtained through public-records requests. In parallel, we file Freedom of Information Act requests for the federal record: the NSSE security plan, the Secret Service coordination memos, the FBI situational reports, the Department of Homeland security bulletins issued in the weeks before the event. FOIA is slow, but the request starts the clock.
Months one through three: build the expert team. A negligent-security case is won or lost on experts. We retain a security consultant — often a former Secret Service agent or a former senior law-enforcement official with NSSE experience — to evaluate the venue’s security plan against industry standards. We retain a counter-UAS expert to evaluate what drone detection technology was available, what the venue contracted for, and what would have detected the specific drones used. We retain a medical expert to connect the injuries to the mechanism of harm. We retain a forensic economist to model the lifetime economic loss.
Months three through nine: formal discovery. Once suit is filed, we serve document requests, interrogatories, and requests for admission. We take depositions of the venue’s security director, the security contractor’s site supervisor, the drone detection vendor’s technical lead, and the event promoter’s operations chief. Each deposition locks in testimony that can be used at trial and that constrains the defense’s later story.
Months nine through eighteen: expert reports and depositions. The defense hires its own experts. We depose them. We prepare our experts for deposition. The case is now built — the evidence is locked, the experts are locked, the depositions are locked, and the number at the end of the case is no longer a guess.
The resolution window. Most negligent-security cases settle after the defense has completed its own expert review and understands the strength of the plaintiff’s case. The cases that do not settle go to trial. The cases that go to trial take another six to twelve months in the courtroom. From the day a family calls to the day the case resolves, the realistic timeline is two to four years.
NFPA 3000 and the Industry Standard for Hostile-Event Response
NFPA 3000 (Standard for an Active Shooter / Hostile Event Response Program) is the closest thing the security industry has to a national standard for how a venue should plan for and respond to a mass-casualty event. It was first published in 2018 and has been updated since. It is not a federal regulation, and compliance is voluntary, but it has become the reference point courts and juries use to judge what “reasonable” security looks like.
The standard covers the full lifecycle: risk assessment before the event, planning and procedures, training and exercises, communication and coordination with first responders, and the after-action review after an incident. A venue that ignores NFPA 3000 entirely is taking an enormous gamble in a negligent-security case. A venue that claims to follow NFPA 3000 but cannot produce the documents that show the follow-through is in an even worse position — the standard exists on paper, and the gap between the paper and the practice is exactly the kind of evidence a jury remembers.
ASIS International publishes additional standards on security planning, including the Protection of Assets (POA) and the Security Management Standard. The Department of Homeland Security publishes guidance for venues through CISA, including the Vehicle Ramming Self-Assessment Tool and resources on soft-target security. None of these are legally binding, but all of them are evidence of what the industry knows and what a reasonable venue would have done.
In a negligent-security case, the question is not whether the venue met the standard. The question is whether meeting the standard was enough — and whether the venue’s security decisions were reasonable in light of the threat, the venue’s own risk assessment, and the resources available.
Exemplary Damages: When Texas Law Punishes
Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 41.008 allows a jury to award exemplary (punitive) damages upon clear-and-convincing evidence that the defendant acted with gross negligence, malice, or fraud. Clear and convincing is a higher standard than the preponderance standard that governs compensatory damages — the jury must be persuaded that the truth of the fact is “highly probable.”
For a mass-casualty negligent-security case, the punitive case is built on the gap between what the venue knew and what the venue did. If the venue’s own risk assessment identified the specific type of attack as a credible threat, and the venue had the resources to deploy countermeasures, and the venue chose not to deploy them because of cost or convenience, that is the textbook gross-negligence pattern. If the venue’s security contractor had a documented history of understaffing, and the contractor knew that the understaffing created exposure, and the contractor continued the practice, that is the textbook malice pattern for the contractor.
Exemplary damages in Texas are capped by statute at the greater of $200,000 or two times the economic damages plus an amount (not to exceed $750,000) equal to the non-economic damages, subject to a few statutory exceptions. The cap is meaningful but rarely controlling in a catastrophic-injury or wrongful-death case, where the compensatory damages are already in the millions.
The purpose of exemplary damages is punishment and deterrence. A jury that returns a punitive award is telling the defendant — and the industry — that the conduct was not an accident, not a mistake, not a budget compromise. It was a choice, and the jury is making the choice expensive.
What a Texas Family Should Do in the First 72 Hours After a Mass-Casualty Event
If a Texas family is ever touched by an event like the one the federal charging documents describe, the first 72 hours matter more than any other window in the case. Here is what the work looks like.
Hours one through twelve: medical first, evidence second. Get to a hospital. Get examined. Document every injury, every symptom, every conversation with medical staff. The medical record is the foundation of the damages case; it cannot be created after the fact, and an untreated injury becomes much harder to prove.
Hours twelve through forty-eight: name the defendants. Identify every entity that touched the event — venue, promoter, security contractor, drone detection vendor, ticket platform, parking operator. Preserve the ticket, the receipt, the email confirmation, the text messages, the photos. Do not throw anything away.
Hours forty-eight through seventy-two: send the preservation letters. A preservation letter is a formal demand, sent on counsel’s letterhead, identifying the records that must be preserved and putting the recipient on notice that spoliation will not be tolerated. The letter goes to every entity identified in the previous step. This is the move that separates a case with evidence from a case with regrets.
The first week: hire counsel. The statute of limitations under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003 is two years. That sounds like a long time. It is not. The evidence clock runs in days and weeks, not years, and a case without preserved evidence cannot be won. Hire a trial firm that has actually tried negligent-security and wrongful-death cases. Ask how many. Ask the results. Ask who will be handling the case day to day.
The first month: stay off social media. Anything you post — opinions, photos, statements about the case — will be harvested by the defense and used to assign comparative fault under § 33.001, to challenge the extent of the injury, or to impeach your testimony at deposition. The defense will find your posts. The defense will read them aloud to a jury. The only winning move is to not post.
Who We Are: Ralph, Lupe, and Why This Page Exists
This page is published by Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, a Texas trial firm with offices in Houston, Austin, and Beaumont. We have spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, fighting for Texas families whose lives were torn apart by the conduct of larger and better-resourced defendants. We have recovered more than $50 million for our clients since 1998, and we have been involved in litigation arising from the BP Texas City refinery explosion, one of the largest industrial-incident cases in American history. We are not a volume practice; we handle serious cases, and we try them when the other side will not do right.
Our team includes Ralph Manginello, the firm’s managing partner. Ralph is a storyteller who became a trial lawyer — a University of Texas at Austin journalism graduate who went on to South Texas College of Law Houston, was admitted to the State Bar of Texas in 1998 (Bar Card No. 24007597), and was later admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before law school, he was the starting point guard on the 1989 New England Prep School championship basketball team at Cheshire Academy — a competitor in every room he enters, who hates losing more than he likes winning.
Our team also includes Lupe Peña, an associate attorney who came to the plaintiff side after years inside a national insurance-defense firm. Lupe sat in the rooms where insurance companies and their software decided how to price, deny, delay, and devalue claims like the ones we now pursue. He knows the defense playbook because he lived it. He now runs it in reverse. Lupe serves Texas families fully in Spanish, and he is one of the most valuable assets a Spanish-speaking family can have on their side of the table.
Our firm operates on a contingency fee: there is no fee unless we win. The first consultation is free, and the line is staffed 24 hours a day at 1-888-ATTY-911. We do not have a New Mexico office, and we do not represent clients in federal criminal cases — but for any Texas family touched by a negligent-security event anywhere in the country, we are the trial firm you call when you are done being polite about what happened. Hablamos Español.
What This Article Is — and What It Is Not
This page is an educational explainer. It is not a press release, a promotion, or a representation that we are involved in the federal prosecution described in the news coverage. The federal case will be handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Department of Justice National Security Division. We have no involvement. We are not seeking involvement. The criminal defendants are not our clients, and we will not be their counsel.
This page is also not a prediction that any particular civil case will arise. On the published facts, no attack occurred, no Texas resident is identified as a victim, and no civil defendant has been identified. We are explaining the law, in case the question becomes real for some family at some event in the future — because the law is hard to learn in the first week after a tragedy, and we believe a well-armed family is a better-protected family.
If you are a Texas family that has been touched by a mass-casualty event, a negligent-security failure, or a wrongful death at a public venue, call us. The first conversation costs you nothing, costs you no commitment, and gives you an honest read on what the law will and will not do for you. Our practice areas include the full range of serious personal-injury and wrongful-death work, and we will tell you honestly if your case fits what we do — and if it does not, we will help you find the firm that does. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a Texas family sue after a mass-casualty attack at a public event?
Potentially, but the realistic defendant pool is narrow. The people who carried out the attack are not meaningful civil defendants; the federal agencies that coordinated security are protected by sovereign immunity and the discretionary-function exception under 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a). The viable defendants are private — the venue operator, the event promoter, the private security contractor, the drone detection vendor, and any third-party contractor whose conduct contributed to the security failure. A case against these defendants is hard to win, but it is not impossible, and it is the only path to civil recovery that exists.
Can my family sue the Secret Service or another federal agency?
Almost certainly not. The Federal Tort Claims Act allows some claims against the United States, but the discretionary-function exception under 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a) bars claims based on security planning, threat assessment, resource allocation, and tactical deployment — exactly the kinds of decisions that would be at issue. The FTCA also requires you to present an administrative claim on Standard Form 95 to the agency first, then wait for a final denial, then file suit within six months — a procedural gauntlet that kills many claims before they are ever heard.
Can my family sue the venue where the attack happened?
Yes, and that is the most realistic target. A venue operator owes a duty of reasonable care to protect attendees from foreseeable criminal acts. If the venue failed to follow its own security plan, failed to deploy available countermeasures, failed to coordinate properly with law enforcement, or failed to train or staff its security team adequately, the venue can be a defendant. The case requires proof of duty, breach, causation, and damages — proof that is won with documents, experts, and depositions, not with anger or grief.
Can my family sue the private security company that was supposed to be guarding the event?
Yes. Private security contractors are routinely defendants in negligent-security cases. They owe a duty of reasonable care in the services they contract to provide, and they can be sued for negligent hiring, negligent training, negligent supervision, and negligent performance. Most private security contractors carry general liability and professional liability insurance with limits measured in millions of dollars — which is why they are usually the deepest pocket in the case.
What is the deadline for filing a wrongful-death case in Texas?
Two years from the date of death, under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003. The deadline is strict, and Texas courts have repeatedly held that it is not extended by grief, shock, or lack of legal knowledge. The only meaningful exceptions are minority tolling (for injured children) and the narrow discovery rule, neither of which applies in most mass-casualty cases. If you wait two years and one day, the courthouse door is closed.
What damages can my family recover in a Texas wrongful-death case?
Under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 71.002, the family can recover pecuniary loss (future earnings, fringe benefits, inheritance), loss of companionship and society, loss of services, mental anguish, loss of parental guidance (for a deceased child), and exemplary damages under § 41.008 upon clear-and-convincing evidence of gross negligence or malice. A separate survival claim under § 74.001 belongs to the estate and covers the decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering, medical bills, and lost wages. Texas non-economic damages are uncapped.
What if the defense argues that my loved one was partly at fault?
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 33.001. If the plaintiff’s percentage of fault is 50% or less, recovery is reduced by that percentage. If the plaintiff’s fault is 51% or more, recovery is barred entirely. A defense lawyer will work aggressively to push a plaintiff’s percentage above 50% because crossing that line ends the case. The counter is to prove that the plaintiff’s conduct was reasonable in context and that the attacker’s criminal intent overwhelmed any choice the plaintiff could have made.
How long does a case like this take?
From the day a family calls to the day the case resolves, the realistic timeline is two to four years. The first year is investigation, evidence preservation, expert retention, and the filing of suit. The second year is formal discovery, depositions, and expert exchange. The third and fourth years are usually settlement window, mediation, and trial preparation. Cases that settle usually settle in the second or third year. Cases that go to trial take longer. There is no shortcut, and there is no honest answer that promises a faster resolution.
What evidence does my family need to preserve?
The medical record first. The ticket, the receipt, the email confirmation. The photos and videos from the day. The names and contact information of every witness. The names of every entity that touched the event — venue, promoter, security contractor, drone detection vendor. The work of preserving the defendants’ evidence — security plans, post orders, surveillance footage, drone detection logs, after-action reports — is done by sending formal preservation letters, and that is work that needs to start in the first 72 hours. Anything you post on social media will be harvested by the defense. The only winning move is to not post.
What if my family cannot afford a lawyer?
You do not pay up front. Our firm works on contingency: there is no fee unless we win. The first consultation is free, and the line is staffed 24 hours a day at 1-888-ATTY-911. If your case is not the kind of case we handle, we will tell you so honestly, and we will help you find the firm that does. We do not take cases to leave them on a shelf. Hablamos Español.
Is this page a solicitation of clients affected by the news story?
No. This is an educational explainer. The federal case is a criminal matter being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Department of Justice National Security Division. We are not involved in the prosecution, we are not soliciting victims (there are none on the published facts), and we are not representing any party to the federal case. This page explains the law so that if the question ever becomes real for a Texas family at a real event, the family has a starting point — and a free consultation is one phone call away at 1-888-ATTY-911.
The Phone Call That Costs You Nothing
If you are a Texas family that has been touched by a negligent-security event, a mass-casualty incident, or a wrongful death at a public venue, call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The first conversation is free, confidential, and carries no obligation. We will tell you honestly what the law will and will not do for you. We will tell you honestly whether your case is the kind of case we handle. And if it is, we will start work the same day — preservation letters, evidence preservation, expert retention, the whole proof story. There is no fee unless we win. We serve Texas families in English and in Spanish. Hablamos Español. Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC.