Three Workers Dead at a Midland Trucking Business — What Their Families Need to Know Right Now
If your husband, your son, your father, or your brother was one of the three workers killed at that trucking business off East Highway 80 near the Interstate 20 frontage road in Midland, you are reading this at a kitchen table that has a hole in it where a person used to sit. We know that. Nothing on this page brings anyone back. What this page does is tell you the truth about what happens next — what the law allows, what the company is already doing, what evidence is disappearing while you grieve, and what choices you have that nobody has explained to you yet.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes Texas wrongful death and workplace accident cases. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña sat on the other side of the table for years — inside a national insurance-defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. He conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. We say that with pride, because the Permian Basin workforce includes families whose first language is not English, and they deserve to understand their rights in the language they think in.
Here is the first thing you need to hear: what happened at that trucking business is not just a crime. It is a civil case that may be worth far more than anyone has told you — but only if the right path is identified before the evidence disappears and the deadlines close. The single most important fork in a Texas workplace death case is something most families have never heard of: whether the employer carried workers’ compensation insurance. That one fact changes everything about who you sue, what you can recover, and what defenses the company is allowed to raise. We will explain it plainly. But first, the timeline you are up against.
What Happened at the Midland Trucking Business
The Midland County Sheriff’s Office responded to a shooting at a trucking business off East Highway 80 near the I-20 frontage road in Midland, Texas. Three workers at the business were found dead from gunshot wounds. The suspect’s fate was unknown at the time of the initial report. Officials could not confirm whether the suspect was or had ever been an employee of the trucking business.
That last detail — whether the shooter was an employee — matters enormously for the civil case, and it is one of the first questions a thorough investigation answers. But it is not the only question. Even if the shooter was a complete stranger who walked in off Highway 80, the business that employed those three workers may bear legal responsibility for failing to protect them from a foreseeable danger on its premises. And if the shooter was an employee or former employee, or if the shooting was connected to a domestic-violence situation involving one of the victims and the business had been warned — the liability picture shifts again, and the exposure climbs.
Midland sits in the Permian Basin, the highest-producing oilfield region in the United States. The commercial corridors along Highway 80 and I-20 are dense with trucking, oilfield service, and logistics companies supporting energy-sector operations. The specific intersection — East Highway 80 near the I-20 frontage road — is an industrial-commercial zone with high commercial vehicle traffic, large unpaved or partially lit lots, and businesses that frequently operate extended or 24-hour shifts. Industrial properties in this corridor often have limited access controls, inconsistent surveillance coverage, and perimeter conditions that create foreseeable security vulnerabilities for workers on-site. That is not speculation — it is the reality of industrial security in the Permian Basin industrial corridor, and it is the backdrop against which a jury will judge whether this business did enough.
The Texas Workers’ Compensation Fork — The Single Most Important Procedural Decision
Here is the thing that no one has told you, and that the employer’s lawyers hope you never learn: Texas is one of the only states in the country where employers can choose not to carry workers’ compensation insurance. That choice creates two completely different legal worlds, and which world your case lives in depends on one fact that can be confirmed through the Texas Department of Insurance.
If the employer is a workers’ compensation subscriber, the employer’s workers’ comp policy pays death benefits to the surviving family. Those benefits are capped — they follow a statutory schedule, not the actual value of the life lost. In exchange for those capped benefits, the employer receives what Texas law calls the “exclusive remedy” protection: the family generally cannot sue the employer directly for negligence. There is one critical exception. Under Texas’s gross-negligence framework, if the employer was grossly negligent — meaning it acted with conscious indifference to a known, extreme risk — the family can pursue exemplary (punitive) damages against the employer even though it is a subscriber. That exception is the crack in the wall, and it is where the foreseeability evidence becomes the entire case.
If the employer is a non-subscriber — meaning it did not carry workers’ compensation coverage — the landscape transforms entirely. The family can pursue a full tort claim against the employer for negligence. And here is the part that makes Texas non-subscriber law unique: the non-subscriber employer loses the traditional common-law defenses of contributory negligence and assumption of risk. The only defense the non-subscriber can raise is that the injured worker’s own negligence caused the harm — a defense that is essentially impossible to mount in a shooting where the victims were workers targeted at their place of employment. A non-subscriber case against an employer whose worker was shot on the job is, from a liability standpoint, one of the strongest positions a plaintiff can occupy in Texas law.
This determination — subscriber or non-subscriber — must be locked down before any claim is filed. It is confirmed through the Texas Department of Insurance. It is the first strategic move, and it changes the entire architecture of the case. If you take nothing else from this page, take this: do not let anyone file anything before the workers’ comp coverage status is verified.
Negligent Security and Premises Liability — When a Business Is Responsible for Third-Party Violence
Texas premises law imposes a duty on a landowner or business operator to protect its invitees — which includes its workers — from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. That duty is not automatic. It requires foreseeability. The question a jury ultimately answers is: did the business know, or should it have known, that this kind of danger existed on its property? And if it did know, did it take reasonable steps to protect the people who worked there?
“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.”
— 29 U.S.C. 654(a)(1), OSH Act General Duty Clause
That federal statute is the Occupational Safety and Health Act’s General Duty Clause. It is not a private cause of action — no worker sues “under the General Duty Clause.” But it is the recognized national standard for what an employer must furnish, and OSHA has increasingly cited employers for workplace-violence failures under this authority. In a civil negligent-security case, it becomes the measuring stick: the business knew that workplace violence is a recognized hazard, and the question is whether it did what a reasonable business would do to address it.
Foreseeability in a Texas premises case is built from evidence. The strongest foreseeability evidence includes:
Prior incidents at the same address. If there were previous 911 calls, police responses, threats, or security incidents at this trucking business — or at this specific location — that history is the foundation of foreseeability. The Midland County Sheriff’s Office dispatch records and the business’s own internal incident logs are where this proof lives. Those records are retrievable, but the internal complaint logs can be destroyed if no one demands them in time.
Threats that were reported to management. If any worker, family member, or third party warned the business that a specific person posed a danger — a former employee who made threats, a domestic partner who showed up at the workplace, a dispute that escalated — and the business did nothing to increase security or protect the targeted worker, that is the foreseeability linchpin. A warning that goes unheeded converts a random act into a foreseeable harm. This is the most powerful fact pattern in a workplace-shooting negligent-security case, and it is the one most likely to trigger exemplary damages.
The security conditions of the property itself. Was there access control? Were there functioning cameras? Was there lighting in the lot where workers parked and walked? Was there a fence, a gate, a locked door — or was the business open to anyone who walked in off Highway 80? In an industrial corridor near I-20 where businesses operate extended shifts and the Midland County Sheriff’s Office patrols unincorporated areas where response times can lag, the security posture of the property is not a minor detail. It is the physical evidence of whether the business took the danger seriously.
Our firm handles premises liability cases, and the principles that govern a hotel’s duty to protect guests from foreseeable crime apply with equal force to a trucking business’s duty to protect its workers. The duty runs to the invitee. The question is always the same: was the harm foreseeable, and did the business do what was reasonable?
The Domestic-Violence Nexus — When the Workplace Becomes the Battleground
The initial reporting on this incident referenced an estranged wife and a Stone Oak standoff, suggesting a possible connection between the workplace shooting and a broader interpersonal conflict. If that connection holds — if the shooter targeted a worker at the business because of a domestic relationship, and if the business had any warning that this person posed a danger to its employee — the foreseeability analysis changes dramatically.
Domestic violence spilling into the workplace is a recognized, documented pattern. It is not a freak occurrence. Employers across the country, including in Texas, are trained to recognize the warning signs: a partner who shows up uninvited, a worker who reports being stalked or threatened, a restraining order, a pattern of escalating conflict. When an employer receives that kind of warning and fails to act — fails to increase security, fails to alert law enforcement beyond the initial report, fails to separate the threatened worker from the danger, fails to change a shift or a parking spot or a door code — and the threatened worker is then killed at work, that is not an unforeseeable tragedy. That is a predictable outcome that the employer chose not to prevent.
The evidence that proves this nexus lives in specific places: the worker’s personnel file (did she report threats to HR or management?), the business’s internal incident reports (was there a prior confrontation at the workplace?), 911 call history for the address (were police called before?), and the Midland County Sheriff’s Office dispatch records. Those records are the case — and they are the records that can disappear fastest.
Who Can Be Held Responsible — The Defendant Map
A workplace shooting generates a more complex defendant map than most families expect. The shooter is the direct tortfeasor — the person who pulled the trigger. But the shooter may have no assets, no insurance, and no collectibility. The civil case, as a practical matter, often lives or dies on whether a corporate defendant with assets and insurance bears legal responsibility for failing to prevent the shooting.
The trucking business / operating entity. This is the entity that employed the three workers and controlled the premises. It owed them a duty to provide a safe workplace — a duty that includes reasonable protection from foreseeable third-party criminal acts. If the business is a non-subscriber to workers’ compensation, it faces full tort liability. If it is a subscriber, the exclusive-remedy protection applies unless gross negligence is proven. The business’s identity, DOT number, corporate structure, and insurance coverage must be confirmed through the Midland County Sheriff’s Office report and county business filings.
The premises property owner. If the property is owned by a different entity than the operating business — which is common in industrial real estate, where a holding company owns the land and a separate LLC operates the business — the property owner owes its own duty to maintain safe conditions for business invitees, including reasonable security measures against foreseeable criminal intrusion.
Any third-party security contractor. If the business retained a security company to patrol, monitor, or control access to the property, that contractor has its own contractual and tort duties. If the security was inadequate — insufficient patrols, no monitoring, failure to respond to a prior incident — the contractor may be separately liable.
The employer, if different from the premises owner. In some industrial arrangements, the employer is a staffing company or a contractor that sends workers to a premises it does not own. In that case, the employer’s duty to provide a safe workplace runs alongside the premises owner’s duty, and both may be defendants.
The shooter is the moral culprit. But the civil case — the case that pays for the funeral, replaces the income, and holds a corporation accountable for choices it made about security — runs through the corporate defendants. Identifying every one of them is the difference between a recovery that reflects what was lost and a recovery that reflects only what was easy to collect.
The Evidence That Is Disappearing Right Now
This is the section that matters most to the family reading at 2 a.m. The proof that decides a workplace-shooting case is perishable. It dies on clocks that the law sets and that no one extends for grief.
Premises surveillance footage. The cameras at the trucking business — if they existed and were functioning — captured who entered, how they entered, whether access controls worked, whether security was present, and the sequence of the shooting. This is the central evidence in any negligent-security proof. Most commercial DVR systems overwrite on a rolling cycle — commonly 7 to 30 days. The footage from the incident date must be preserved immediately through a litigation hold or spoliation letter. If no one sends that letter, the footage records over itself and is gone forever. This is not a risk. It is a certainty on a timeline.
Employment records of all three victims and the suspect. If the suspect was an employee or former employee, the personnel file may contain disciplinary records, prior workplace-violence complaints, domestic-violence indicators, or termination history that establishes the business knew or should have known of the danger. The victims’ employment records establish the employment relationship, workers’ comp subscriber status, and any prior complaints they may have made about safety. Employers may purge or alter records — a preservation letter must issue within days.
The Midland County Sheriff’s Office incident report and evidence inventory. This is the official crime-scene documentation — ballistics, witness statements, suspect identification, and any prior calls to the same address. Public records requests can be filed immediately. Active-investigation exemptions may delay release, but the evidence is preserved automatically in the criminal file. The parallel criminal and civil investigations must be tracked together.
Security system audit logs and access-control records. These show whether doors, gates, or badge systems were functioning and whether the suspect had authorized access or breached security. Electronic logs may auto-purge — they must be demanded immediately.
Prior incident reports, 911 call history, and internal security complaints. This is the notice and foreseeability engine. Prior crimes, threats, or domestic-violence calls to this location establish the premises owner’s knowledge of risk. 911 records are retrievable through public records requests, but internal complaint logs can be destroyed — they must be preserved via litigation hold and subpoena.
Texas Department of Insurance workers’ comp coverage verification. This determines whether the employer is a subscriber or non-subscriber — the single most important procedural determination. Coverage status as of the incident date must be confirmed before the claim path is selected.
The preservation letter that freezes these records goes out the day you call a lawyer. Not the week after the funeral. Not after the criminal case resolves. The day you call. Every day that passes is a day the surveillance footage gets closer to recording over itself, a day the access logs get closer to auto-purging, a day a witness’s memory gets less sharp. We do not say this to create panic. We say it because it is the truth, and because the families who hear it early are the families whose cases survive.
Damages — What a Life Is Worth Under Texas Law
Texas wrongful death and survival actions are governed by the Texas Wrongful Death Act and the Texas Survival Statute. Together, they allow surviving spouses, children, and parents to recover for the losses that flow from a wrongful death. The categories of damages are specific, and each one matters.
Wrongful death damages belong to the surviving family members. They include lost earning capacity — the income the decedent would have earned over their working life, reduced to present value. In the Permian Basin trucking sector, workers often earn above-average wages. A decedent in their 30s or 40s with a long remaining work life can produce a seven-figure economic loss per claim. The family also recovers for loss of care, support, maintenance, advice, counsel, and counsel — the human losses that no receipt can measure. Mental anguish and loss of companionship are recoverable without a statutory cap for private defendants.
Survival damages belong to the decedent’s estate. They capture what the decedent lost between the injury and death — pre-death pain and suffering, medical expenses incurred before death, and funeral costs. In a shooting where death may not have been instantaneous, the survival claim can be significant. If any victim survived temporarily after being shot — even briefly — the pre-death consciousness and suffering are compensable, and a trauma-reconstruction expert may be needed to establish the survival period.
Exemplary damages are available if gross negligence or intentional conduct is proven. Texas applies a clear-and-convincing standard for exemplary damages, and caps may apply under the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. The caps generally scale with economic damages, meaning a case with strong economic losses can support a larger exemplary award. In a workplace-shooting case where the employer ignored specific threats or maintained obviously inadequate security, exemplary damages are the mechanism by which a jury punishes the company’s conscious indifference.
The case value range for three fatalities in this setting spans from approximately $3,000,000 on the low end — assuming workers’ compensation death benefits as the exclusive remedy against a subscriber employer with no viable third-party claims and modest decedent earning profiles — to $30,000,000 or more on the high end, assuming non-subscriber status or a strong negligent-security claim against the premises owner with clear foreseeability evidence, plus exemplary damages for three oil-industry-wage earners with long work-life expectancies. Three deaths with gross-negligence aggravators against a commercial defendant can push aggregate exposure into the eight-figure range in Midland-Odessa venues, which tend to be more plaintiff-friendly than other Texas metros on workplace safety cases.
These are not predictions. They are the architectural range — the floor and the ceiling — based on how the facts develop. The actual number is built from the decedent’s age, earnings, dependents, the foreseeability evidence, the security failures, the corporate defendant’s conduct, and the venue. A forensic economist builds the lost-earning-capacity projection. A security expert establishes the standard of care the business breached. A life-care planner is not needed in a death case, but the economic-loss analysis serves the same structural role — it converts a life into a number a jury can award.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook — What the Company Is Already Doing
Lupe Peña knows this playbook from the inside because he used to run it. Here is what happens in the hours and days after a workplace fatality, from the insurance side.
Play 1: The friendly “check-in” call. Within days of the shooting, someone will call the family. The voice will be warm, sympathetic, professional. The purpose is to get the family talking — to capture a recorded statement that can later be quoted against them. The adjuster is not calling to help. The adjuster is calling to build a defense file. The counter: do not give a recorded statement to anyone — not the employer’s insurer, not a “security consultant,” not an “investigator” — without a lawyer present. Every word you say will be transcribed and used to minimize the claim.
Play 2: The fast settlement offer. A check may arrive quickly, with a release attached, before the full scope of the loss is known. The purpose is to close the file cheaply before the family understands what the case is actually worth. In a three-fatality workplace shooting, the initial offer — if one comes — will be a fraction of the true value. The counter: never sign a release without understanding the full damages picture, the workers’ comp status, and the third-party claims. A release signed in the first weeks of grief can extinguish claims worth millions.
Play 3: The workers’ comp “exclusive remedy” wall. If the employer is a subscriber, its insurer will tell the family that workers’ comp death benefits are the only recovery available. This is often incomplete — it omits the gross-negligence exception, the third-party claims against the premises owner, and any claims against a security contractor. The counter: verify the subscriber status independently, evaluate the gross-negligence evidence, and identify every third-party defendant before accepting that the wall is real.
Play 4: Blaming the victim. In a shooting, the defense may argue the workers assumed the risk of working in a dangerous area, or that their own conduct contributed to the harm. In a non-subscriber case, these defenses are stripped away by Texas law. In a subscriber case, comparative fault still applies to third-party claims. The counter: establish that the victims were workers doing their jobs, targeted by a third-party criminal, and that the business — not the workers — controlled the security conditions that allowed the shooter access.
Play 5: The spoliation gamble. The company may “inadvertently” lose or overwrite surveillance footage, access logs, or internal incident reports before the family’s lawyer requests them. The counter: a preservation letter sent the day you call creates a legal duty to preserve. If the company destroys evidence after receiving that letter, the court can impose an adverse-inference instruction — meaning the jury is told to assume the lost evidence would have been as bad for the company as the family says it was. The preservation letter is not a formality. It is the first shot in the litigation.
The First 72 Hours — What Families Should Do Now
Hour 1 through 24: Grieve. Be with your family. Let someone else handle the phone calls. The instinct to “do something” is real and understandable, but the first day is for being human. The legal system will still be there tomorrow.
Day 2: Do not sign anything and do not give statements. If an adjuster calls, say: “I am not ready to discuss this. I will contact you when I am ready.” If a release arrives, do not sign it. If an “investigator” shows up, do not let them in and do not answer questions. Everything you say in the first days will be the cleanest, most usable evidence the defense collects — because you are in shock, and shock produces statements that can be taken out of context.
Day 2 through 3: Preserve evidence. This is where a lawyer’s involvement changes the trajectory of the case. The preservation letter goes out to the trucking business, the property owner, any security contractor, and any entity that holds surveillance footage, access logs, or employment records. That letter creates a legal duty to preserve. Without it, the footage overwrites itself, the logs auto-purge, and the internal incident reports “cannot be located.”
Day 3: Verify workers’ comp status. The Texas Department of Insurance can confirm whether the employer carried workers’ compensation coverage on the date of the shooting. This single fact — subscriber or non-subscriber — determines the entire claim architecture. It is public information. It can be checked immediately.
Day 3 through 7: Identify the defendants. The trucking business’s corporate structure — operating LLC, property company, parent entity, security contractor — must be mapped from county business filings, the Midland County Sheriff’s Office report, and the property records. Naming the wrong entity or missing a defendant can shrink or kill the recovery.
Day 7 and beyond: Build the foreseeability case. The 911 call history for the address, prior incident reports, internal security complaints, employment records, and the domestic-violence nexus — if one exists — are pulled through public records requests and discovery. A security expert is retained to evaluate the premises and establish the standard of care. A forensic economist begins the lost-earning-capacity projections for three separate decedents.
The Proof Story — How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk from the day a family calls to the day a number is put on the table.
Week one: The preservation letter. It goes to every entity that holds evidence — the trucking business, the property owner, any security contractor, the camera-system vendor. It names, specifically, the surveillance footage, the access-control logs, the employment records, the internal incident reports, the 911 call history, and the security-system audit trails. It creates a legal duty to preserve. From the moment that letter is received, destruction of those records is spoliation.
Week two through four: The records demands. Public records requests go to the Midland County Sheriff’s Office for the incident report, dispatch records, and prior calls for service at the address. A Texas Department of Insurance inquiry confirms the workers’ comp status. The corporate structure is mapped from Secretary of State filings and county property records.
Month two through three: The expert retention. A premises-security expert walks the property, evaluates the access controls, the lighting, the surveillance coverage, and the staffing — and writes a report on whether the business met the standard of care for a trucking operation in an industrial corridor near I-20. A forensic economist builds three separate lost-earning-capacity projections based on each decedent’s age, occupation, earnings history, and work-life expectancy. If survival periods are at issue, a trauma-reconstruction expert establishes the pre-death consciousness and suffering.
Month three through six: Discovery and depositions. The records come out. The surveillance footage — if it was preserved — shows the entry point, the timing, whether access controls functioned, and the sequence of the shooting. The employment records show whether there were prior complaints, threats, or warnings. The internal incident reports and 911 history show whether the business had notice of danger. The depositions of managers, security personnel, and HR staff reveal what the company knew and when it knew it.
The number. The demand that goes out at the end of this process is built from all of it — the economic losses, the human losses, the foreseeability evidence, the security failures, and the exemplary-damages exposure. It is not a guess. It is a number constructed from verified evidence, expert opinions, and the specific facts of three lives lost at a business that may not have done enough to protect them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we sue the employer if the shooter was not an employee?
Yes — potentially. Even if the shooter was a stranger, the employer and the premises owner owe workers a duty to protect them from foreseeable criminal acts. If the business lacked reasonable security — no access control, no functioning cameras, no lighting, no patrols — and the danger was foreseeable based on prior incidents or the known risks of the industrial corridor, the business can be held liable for negligent security. The shooter’s employment status affects the negligent-hiring analysis but does not eliminate the premises-liability claim.
How long do we have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations on wrongful death and survival actions, generally running from the date of death. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing at a funeral. It is not. The evidence disappears in days and weeks — not years. The surveillance footage overwrites itself within weeks. The access logs auto-purge. The witnesses’ memories fade. The two-year clock is the outer deadline, but the real deadline is the evidence-preservation clock, which runs in days. The preservation letter goes out the week you call, not the month before the statute runs.
What if the employer says workers’ compensation is our only option?
That statement is often incomplete. If the employer is a workers’ comp subscriber, death benefits are the exclusive remedy against the employer — unless the employer was grossly negligent, in which case exemplary damages are available. And workers’ comp does not preclude claims against third parties: the premises owner, a security contractor, or any other entity whose negligence contributed to the harm. The families in a workplace shooting almost always have more than one path to recovery, even when the employer points to the exclusive-remedy wall.
What is the difference between wrongful death damages and survival damages?
Wrongful death damages belong to the surviving family — the spouse, children, and parents. They compensate for what the family lost: the income the decedent would have earned, the care and support they would have provided, the companionship, the guidance, the mental anguish of the loss. Survival damages belong to the decedent’s estate — they capture what the decedent personally lost between the shooting and death: pre-death pain and suffering, medical expenses, and funeral costs. In a shooting where death was not instantaneous, the survival claim can be significant, because the pre-death consciousness and suffering are compensable.
How much is a workplace shooting wrongful death case worth?
The range depends on the facts. On the low end — assuming workers’ comp death benefits as the exclusive remedy with no viable third-party claims — the recovery may be in the range of several million dollars across three claims. On the high end — assuming non-subscriber status or a strong negligent-security claim with clear foreseeability evidence, plus exemplary damages for three wage earners with long work-life expectancies — the aggregate exposure can reach $30,000,000 or more. The actual number is built from each decedent’s age, earnings, dependents, the foreseeability evidence, the security failures, and the venue. Midland County juries understand industrial workplace dangers and tend to hold employers to high safety standards.
Can we pursue punitive damages?
Yes — if the evidence supports gross negligence or intentional conduct. Texas allows exemplary (punitive) damages when the defendant’s conduct shows conscious indifference to a known, extreme risk. In a workplace-shooting case, the gross-negligence theory rests on foreseeability: if the business was warned of a specific danger — threats, a domestic-violence situation, prior incidents — and did nothing to increase security or protect its workers, a jury can find conscious indifference. Exemplary damages are subject to Texas’s clear-and-convincing standard and statutory caps that generally scale with economic damages.
What if the shooter had a domestic-violence connection to one of the victims?
That connection, if it exists, is the foreseeability linchpin of the entire case. If the business knew — or should have known — that one of its workers was being threatened or stalked by a domestic partner, and it failed to take reasonable steps to protect that worker (and the other workers who were collateral damage), the shooting converts from a “random act” to a “foreseeable harm.” That conversion is the difference between a weak negligent-security claim and a strong one. The evidence of that nexus lives in the worker’s personnel file, internal incident reports, 911 call history, and the Midland County Sheriff’s Office dispatch records.
Should we talk to the insurance adjuster who called us?
No. Not without a lawyer. The adjuster’s call is not a welfare check. It is evidence collection. Everything you say will be recorded, transcribed, and used to minimize the claim. The adjuster may sound warm and concerned — and may genuinely feel sympathy — but the purpose of the call is to build the defense file. The correct response is: “I am not ready to discuss this. I will have my attorney contact you.” Then call us.
Is it too early to call a lawyer?
It is never too early. It is frequently too late. The surveillance footage at that trucking business is on a overwrite cycle that may be as short as seven days. The access-control logs may auto-purge on a shorter cycle. The internal incident reports can be “lost” at any time. The preservation letter that freezes those records is the first thing we send — the day you call. Waiting a week can mean the difference between a case built on video evidence and a case built on contested witness statements. The call is free. The consultation is free. The cost of waiting is evidence you can never get back.
What does it cost to hire Attorney911?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The preservation letter is part of the representation. We advance the costs of investigation, records requests, and expert retention. You pay nothing out of pocket. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing for our time. That is not a marketing line — it is the fee structure, stated plainly, because the families who need a lawyer most are the families who cannot afford to pay one by the hour.
Who We Are — And Why It Matters for This Case
Ralph P. Manginello is the Managing Partner of Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — 27-plus years of trial practice, including admission 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 was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he was trained to find the story the facts actually tell — not the story the defense wants the jury to hear. He is the lead counsel in the active $10 million-plus Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston hazing lawsuit in Harris County. He does not lose cases because he was outworked. You can read more about Ralph Manginello on his attorney page.
Lupe Peña is an Associate Attorney at the firm, licensed in Texas since December 2012. He is a former insurance-defense attorney — he spent years inside a national defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered. He knows how the quick check with the release on the back works. He now uses all of that knowledge for injured clients and grieving families. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. You can read more about Lupe Peña on his attorney page.
We handle workers’ compensation cases and the third-party tort claims that run alongside them. We know the fork — subscriber versus non-subscriber — and we know how to identify it before the employer’s lawyers use it to close the door. We know how to build a negligent-security case from the ground up, from the 911 call history to the security expert’s report to the deposition of the manager who decided how many cameras were enough. And we know the Permian Basin — its corridors, its industries, its courts, and the juries that sit in them.
What the First Call Feels Like
When you call 1-888-ATTY-911, you reach a live person — not an answering service, not a menu, not a bot. Our staff is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The first conversation is free. It is confidential. It is not a sales call. We listen. We ask questions. We tell you, honestly, whether we believe there is a case and what the path looks like. If we are not the right fit for your situation, we will tell you — and we will point you toward someone who is.
If we take the case, the first thing that happens is the preservation letter. It goes out the same day. It names every record, every device, every log, every file that the trucking business and the property owner and any security contractor must freeze. That letter is the difference between a case built on evidence and a case built on excuses.
You will be kept informed at every stage. No settlement of any kind will be presented without your fully informed consent. The decision to pursue legal action is entirely yours. Taking time to grieve is not only acceptable — it is respected. But the evidence clock does not pause for grief, which is why the preservation letter goes out while you grieve, not after.
The Permian Basin Reality
Midland is not Houston. It is not Austin. It is a city whose economy runs on the oilfield, whose corridors are lined with trucking companies and oilfield service operators, and whose workforce drives those trucks and works those yards in conditions that the rest of the state never sees. The juries in Midland County understand industrial workplace dangers. They know what an unprotected industrial lot looks like at 4 a.m. They know what a trucking business on Highway 80 does and does not do to keep its people safe. And they hold employers to a standard that reflects the real dangers of the work.
That local knowledge is an asset. A negligent-security case tried in Midland County is a case tried in front of jurors who do not need to be taught that an industrial corridor near I-20 at night is a dangerous place. They already know. The question for them is not whether the danger existed — it is whether the business did what a reasonable business would do to protect its people from it.
Hablamos Español
If your family’s first language is Spanish, you deserve to understand every word of this conversation — your rights, your deadlines, your options — in the language you think in. Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Our staff is bilingual. The law does not change because of the language you speak. The quality of your representation should not either.
The Bottom Line
Three workers went to their jobs at a trucking business off Highway 80 in Midland, Texas, and did not come home. Their families are grieving. The evidence that explains why they did not come home — and who is legally responsible — is disappearing on clocks that do not wait. The workers’ comp status that determines the entire claim architecture can be verified today. The preservation letter that freezes the surveillance footage and the access logs can go out tomorrow.
The call is free. The consultation is free. There is no fee unless we win your case. 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. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.