The Morning the Screwworm Came North
You are a Texas rancher in Zavala County, or a feedlot hand in Dimmit County, or a livestock hauler running a load of calves up I-35 toward San Antonio. Or you are a ranch worker mending fence under a June sun that has been over ninety degrees since March. You have heard the news on the radio, or seen it on a relative’s phone, or read the flyer the Texas Animal Health Commission sent to your local auction barn. The first confirmed case of New World screwworm in the United States in decades was identified on June 3, 2026 — a three-week-old calf, in your county, or close enough that the difference does not matter. And you are asking the question everyone from Crystal City to Carrizo Springs to Cotulla is asking right now: what does this mean for me, for my animals, for the next six months of my livelihood, for the workers whose hands keep my operation running?
We are writing this page for you. We are The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — Attorney911 — and we work with Texas ranching families, feedlot operators, livestock haulers, and the workers whose backs and hands keep the cattle industry moving. We bring 27+ years of courtroom experience to the work. One of our attorneys, Lupe Peña, spent years inside a national insurance defense firm — the rooms where livestock mortality claims and business interruption claims get priced, where adjusters learn to find a coverage exclusion in your policy, where a recorded statement is engineered to lock you into a number before the full scope of your loss is known. We know the playbook because one of us lived it. We are going to teach you the whole playbook, and the law, and the timeline, before the adjuster calls you — and we are going to do it in English and in Spanish, because the Winter Garden runs on both.
What New World Screwworm Actually Is — and Why This Outbreak Is Different
New World screwworm is a parasitic fly, Cochliomyia hominivorax, whose female lays eggs on the open wound or mucus membrane of a warm-blooded animal. The eggs hatch into larvae — maggots — that burrow into living tissue, feeding as they go, and the infestation can kill the animal within days if untreated. The word that tells you everything you need to know is in the species name: hominivorax — man-eater. The fly does not only attack cattle. It will lay eggs in the wound of a deer, a hog, a dog, a horse, a person. The first confirmed Texas case was a three-week-old calf; the first documented human case of wound myiasis in a Texas agricultural worker in this outbreak has not yet been reported, but the biology does not care whether the warm body is human or bovine.
This is not a new fight. Federal and state authorities eradicated the screwworm from the United States in the 1960s and 1970s using a method that sounds like science fiction and works like a freight train: the Sterile Insect Technique, or SIT. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) worked with a joint U.S.-Mexico commission and a Panama-based production facility — COPEG, the Comisión Panamá-Estados Unidos para la Erradicación y Prevención del Gusano Barrenador del Ganado — to mass-produce sterile male flies. The sterile males were released by the billions into the wild. Wild females mated with sterile males, produced no offspring, and the population collapsed generation by generation. By 1966 the fly was gone from the United States; by the early 1990s, gone from Mexico. The barrier at the Darién Gap in Panama held for thirty years.
The barrier is no longer holding. Mexican officials have reported nearly 28,000 cases of New World screwworm since November 2024. The migration route is south-to-north through Central America and into Mexico, and Texas sits at the end of that line. The first confirmed U.S. case — a single three-week-old calf in Zavala County on June 3, 2026 — is the line crossed. Whether this becomes a contained incident or a generational crisis depends on what happens in the next ninety days: surveillance, sterile-fly release, quarantine discipline, and whether the ranching and feeding industry documents its losses well enough to recover them later.
The Outbreak Status: Zavala County and the First 100 Miles North of the Rio Grande
Zavala County sits on the Rio Grande across from the Mexican state of Coahuila, deep in the Winter Garden region of Southwest Texas. The county seat is Crystal City, once called the ‘Spinach Capital of the World.’ The economy is ranching, farming, and feedlot operations. Temperatures stay above 60°F through most of the year, and the screwworm breeds in any month the mercury does not drop — which, in South Texas, is most of them. The climate, the brush, the open-range grazing, and the wildlife-livestock interface make Zavala County the worst possible place for a U.S. index case and, simultaneously, the place where one was always most likely to land.
Additional infestations have been reported since the first case, and the situation is moving. Federal and state authorities are implementing surveillance zones, fly traps, wildlife monitoring, and sterile fly releases to halt the northward migration. That work is real and it is fast, but sterile-fly release is a generation-by-generation solution — each generation of wild fly takes about three weeks to mature and reproduce. Stopping an outbreak in the wild is not a single event; it is a sustained campaign measured in months, not days. The Texas Animal Health Commission, the lead state agency, is operating under the broad authority granted by the Texas Agriculture Code — and that authority, as we will explain, includes quarantine orders, mandatory testing, and in the worst cases, depopulation of exposed herds.
The $41 Billion at Stake: Why This Is Not Just a Cattle Story
Texas cattle generate roughly $41 billion a year, and that number does not begin to capture the second-order effect. A screwworm outbreak of any meaningful size does not only cost individual ranchers their herds; it triggers a cascade through feedlots, processors, transportation companies, retail grocery, and consumer beef prices. The U.S. beef supply is a single interconnected system, and the moment foreign trading partners detect a U.S. screwworm case, they close their borders to U.S. beef. Mexico, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union have all suspended or restricted U.S. beef imports over livestock disease concerns in the past. A single confirmed case can move commodity markets within hours.
The economic threat to Texas is real, and it is also the reason the legal threats to individual operations are real. Livestock mortality insurance policies, business interruption riders, commercial general liability (CGL) policies for feedlots and haulers, and workers’ compensation coverage for ranch employees — all of these policies are about to be tested, all at once, by an event most of them were never priced for. The insurance industry is not your partner in this. The insurance industry is the entity that will look for the coverage exclusion, the late notice, the alleged biosecurity failure, the supposed pre-existing condition — and will find a way to deny or discount your claim. We have seen it happen with hurricanes, with wildfires, with refinery explosions, and with the BP Texas City litigation in which our firm participated. We will see it happen here.
Who Faces the Highest Risk — and How It Maps to a Legal Claim
Everyone in the food chain is at some level of risk, but the legal exposure is concentrated in three groups.
Ranchers and livestock owners. The direct victims. If your herd is quarantined, if your animals are depopulated, if you are barred from moving cattle to market, you have a property loss that may be covered by livestock mortality insurance, by business interruption coverage, and possibly by a USDA indemnity application. The first two are claims against your insurance carrier. The third is an administrative claim against the federal government, governed by its own rules and timelines.
Ranch and feedlot workers. The human cost. A worker who develops wound myiasis on the job — from a barbed-wire cut, a castration wound, a brand, a dehorning site, a scrape in the brush — is a worker who has sustained a compensable injury under Texas workers’ compensation law if the employer carries coverage, or a personal injury claim against the employer if it does not. Texas is not a mandatory workers’ comp state, but most ranching and feedlot operations of any size carry it. Wound myiasis is a specific injury, not an occupational disease, and the medical and indemnity benefits follow the standard Texas workers’ comp framework.
Livestock haulers and commercial drivers. The bridge in the chain. A livestock hauler running cattle from Laredo to Amarillo, from the Rio Grande Valley to the Panhandle feedlots, is the vector by which a screwworm infestation can move two hundred miles in a single shift. If you operate livestock trucks, the biosecurity expectations of your customer, your insurer, and the federal regulators are about to change — and the question of whether you are an additional insured, a contracted carrier, a negligent bailee, or a covered under your own commercial auto and CGL policies is going to be litigated. We have 27+ years of experience in commercial trucking and 18-wheeler cases, and we know exactly how those fights go.
Veterinarians, livestock-market operators, brand inspectors, and pet owners are also part of the picture, but the legal exposure is heaviest in the three groups above.
The Regulatory Framework: What USDA and TAHC Can Do to You
The Screwworm Eradication Program is a federal program run by USDA APHIS under the Animal Health Protection Act, 7 U.S.C. § 8301 et seq. That statute gives the Secretary of Agriculture the authority to prevent, detect, control, and eradicate livestock pests and diseases — and to do it on your property, with your animals, and at your cost if the indemnity program does not cover you.
At the state level, the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) operates under Texas Agriculture Code, Chapter 161. The statute gives TAHC broad authority to quarantine, test, and depopulate animals to control disease. A TAHC quarantine order can prohibit you from moving animals, can require testing at your expense, can restrict entry to and exit from your premises, and can compel the destruction of exposed animals. The Packers and Stockyards Act, 7 U.S.C. § 181 et seq., governs livestock market practices and may become relevant if access to auction barns and terminal markets is restricted.
Texas Agriculture Code § 161.041 authorizes the Texas Animal Health Commission to ‘act to eradicate or control any disease or agent of transmission for a disease that affects livestock.’ That authority includes the power to establish quarantines, order testing, and — where necessary — require the destruction of exposed animals. The Commission’s regulatory reach extends to the entire chain of custody: ranches, feedlots, auction barns, transport vehicles, and processing facilities.
What this means for you in plain English: the government is not your enemy in this outbreak, but the government is also not your lawyer. The government’s job is to stop the fly. Your job is to make sure that when the fly has been stopped, you can still feed your family. Those two goals are compatible, but they are not the same, and the documentation you do in the next thirty days is what bridges them.
Workers’ Comp Exposure: When a Ranch Hand Develops Wound Myiasis
This is the part of the outbreak most personal-injury law firms will not tell you, because they do not handle it. Wound myiasis in a Texas agricultural worker is a workers’ compensation case.
If you are a ranch hand, a feedlot worker, a dairy employee, or a livestock hauler and you develop a screwworm infestation in a workplace wound — the cut from the fence wire, the brand, the castration, the dehorning, the dog bite in the pasture, the abrasion from loading chute rails — the workers’ compensation system in Texas provides medical care and indemnity benefits. Texas is a non-subscriber state by default, meaning an employer may opt out of workers’ comp, but most mid-sized and larger ranching and feedlot operations carry it. If your employer is a subscriber, you have a workers’ comp claim. If your employer is a non-subscriber, you have a personal injury claim against the employer with a different damages structure and no artificial cap.
The Texas workers’ compensation benefit is generally 70% of your average weekly wage for total disability, plus full medical. The personal injury path in Texas is the modified comparative negligence rule: you can recover if you are 50% or less at fault, and your recovery is reduced by your percentage. The 51% bar in Texas — set by Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.001 — is a real limit and you need to know it exists. An adjuster may try to blame you for the wound in the first place. We know how to fight that argument.
The catch in a myiasis case is that the injury is invisible until it is severe. A worker with a barbed-wire cut that becomes infested may not feel the larvae burrowing in real time. The wound looks infected, or dirty, or just slow to heal — and by the time the screwworm is diagnosed, the worker has been out of work for a week, the ranch has been short a hand, and the insurance carrier is looking for any reason to call it a ‘pre-existing condition’ or an ‘idiopathic injury’ rather than a workplace event. This is precisely the moment the adjuster’s playbook runs. We will teach you the counters in the next section.
Insurance Implications: What Your Policy Actually Covers (and What It Does Not)
Three insurance products are about to collide in the lives of Texas producers: livestock mortality insurance, business interruption coverage, and commercial general liability (CGL) for feedlots and haulers. None of them was priced for a screwworm outbreak, and the carriers are about to test the limits of the policy language.
Livestock mortality insurance pays for the death of covered animals from specified causes. Screwworm is, in most modern policies, a covered cause of death — but the policy will require you to report the loss within a defined window (often 24 to 72 hours from discovery), to provide veterinary documentation, to allow a post-mortem if requested, and to keep the carcass available for inspection. In the South Texas brush country, a carcass left overnight can be destroyed by coyotes, vultures, javelina, and fire ants. If you wait twelve hours to report, the carcass is gone, and the carrier has a reason to deny.
Business interruption coverage pays for lost income and continuing expenses (feed, labor, loan payments) when your operation is shut down by a covered peril. A TAHC quarantine order that prevents you from moving cattle to market may or may not be a covered peril under your policy. Most business interruption policies are triggered by direct physical loss or damage — and a quarantine is not, strictly speaking, physical damage. This is the fight we expect to see, and the policy language will decide it. We read these policies for a living. If you have not read yours, call us before you sign anything.
Commercial general liability (CGL) for feedlots, auction barns, and haulers covers bodily injury and property damage to third parties. If a third party — a neighbor, a customer, a passerby — claims exposure to screwworm from your operation, the CGL carrier will defend and (if necessary) pay. The CGL carrier will also try to deny based on pollution exclusions, biosecurity exclusions, and ‘expected or intended injury’ language. These denials fail more often than carriers admit, but only if you fight them.
What you should do in the next 72 hours regarding insurance: pull every policy you have — mortality, business interruption, CGL, workers’ comp, commercial auto — and find the notice provisions, the exclusions, and the cooperation clauses. Then call us before you call the carrier. We will tell you what to say and what not to say, and we will tell you in English or in Spanish.
The Livestock Hauler’s Special Position
If you operate a livestock hauler — a tractor-trailer running cattle, horses, or sheep between South Texas ranches, Panhandle feedlots, and the major terminal markets — you sit at the intersection of three overlapping legal regimes: federal motor carrier safety regulations, state animal health regulations, and your own commercial insurance tower. Each of them is about to be tested.
The federal framework: 49 CFR Parts 390-399 govern commercial motor vehicles in interstate commerce. The hours-of-service rules in 49 CFR § 395 cap the clock a driver can run. The post-crash testing requirements in 49 CFR § 382.303 govern drug and alcohol testing after reportable crashes. The driver qualification file in 49 CFR § 391.51 governs the records the carrier must keep on each driver. None of these were written with screwworm in mind, but all of them become relevant the moment a hauler is involved in a biosecurity incident.
The animal health framework: the Texas Animal Health Commission can issue movement restrictions on livestock trucks just as it can on ranches. If you cross a quarantine line knowingly, or unknowingly transport an infested load, you face both regulatory penalties and potential civil liability to the destination operation. The biosecurity expectations of your customer, your insurer, and the federal regulators are about to tighten. Wheel washes, trailer disinfection, haul-in documentation — these are the new normal.
The insurance framework: your commercial auto policy, your CGL policy, your cargo policy, and your motor truck cargo policy are four separate documents, each with separate notice requirements, separate exclusions, and separate adjusters. A screwworm claim may touch all four. We have spent 27+ years in commercial trucking litigation, and we know exactly how the adjusters on the four policies coordinate — or fail to. If you are a livestock hauler in this outbreak, you need counsel before the first adjuster calls.
For more on the trucking side of this practice, our commercial trucking practice page walks through how we build those cases from the first preservation letter to the jury verdict.
The Evidence Preservation Playbook: What to Save, Who Holds It, How Fast It Disappears
In the next thirty days, the evidence that will decide your case — against the insurance carrier, in a workers’ comp dispute, or in any future civil claim — is being created and destroyed in real time. The window is short and the consequences of missing it are permanent.
What you must do today:
- Photograph the animal in natural light before any treatment. Close-ups of the wound, the larvae, the discharge. Screwworm larvae have a distinctive appearance (pinkish, with visible dark bands of trachea spiracles) that changes with treatment, time, and death. A photo taken on Day 1 is not the same evidence as a photo taken on Day 5.
- Call your private veterinarian for a clinical examination and a written report. The report should describe the wound, the larval burden, the species confirmation, and the treatment plan. If the vet suspects screwworm specifically, that fact should be in writing.
- Report the case to TAHC at 1-800-550-8242. Reporting is mandatory for suspected cases, and a documented report protects both your indemnity eligibility and your workers’ comp posture if a worker is also involved.
- Preserve the carcass if an animal dies. In the South Texas brush, this means physically protecting it from scavengers — covering, fencing, or moving to a controlled site. If you cannot preserve the carcass, photograph the remains in situ immediately and have a veterinarian certify the cause of death.
- Document all movement records — incoming cattle, outgoing cattle, auctions attended, haulers used, pasture rotations. Movement records are how a screwworm outbreak is traced back to its source, and they are how your own biosecurity is judged if a claim arises.
- Save every TAHC and USDA communication — quarantine orders, test results, inspection reports, indemnity correspondence. These are government records and they are usually obtainable, but the easiest time to get them is when they are being generated.
- Notify your insurance carrier in writing, not by phone. A written notice creates a record. A phone call is the adjuster’s first chance to ask you questions on a recorded line.
- Stop posting about it on social media. The insurance carrier is watching. So is the adjuster. We have seen perfectly valid claims destroyed by a single Facebook post taken out of context.
Evidence is also held by parties you do not control. The USDA lab confirmation reports are FOI-able (Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552) but on a routine schedule, not an emergency one. The TAHC quarantine orders and zone maps are public records under the Texas Public Information Act, but they may take weeks to produce. The veterinary records from your private vet are yours by request, but the vet may move on, change systems, or retire. The earlier you request your own records, the more complete they are. We can send a preservation demand letter to any of these parties the day you call — the day you call, not six months from now.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook — and How to Counter It
Inside the insurance defense firm where Lupe Peña worked, there is a manual for new outbreaks. The manual is not written down in one place, but the plays are consistent across carriers. We are going to name them, because the best defense against a play is to see it coming.
Play 1: The recorded statement. Within forty-eight hours of your reported loss, an adjuster will call — friendly, sympathetic, asking ‘just a few questions’ to ‘get your file opened.’ That call is being recorded. The questions are designed to lock you into a version of events that minimizes the loss, attributes fault to you, or pre-commits you to a number. The counter: do not give a recorded statement without counsel present. You are not required to. Politely tell the adjuster your attorney will return the call, and call us.
Play 2: The quick lowball offer. Before the USDA has even confirmed the species, before the TAHC quarantine is fully scoped, before you have a complete count of exposed or dead animals, the carrier may offer a settlement. The number is low by design — the carrier knows you are under financial pressure, that you have feed bills, loan payments, and a payroll to meet. The counter: do not settle until you know the full scope. The number on Day 7 is not the number on Day 90.
Play 3: The coverage denial based on a niche exclusion. ‘Biosecurity failure,’ ‘pre-existing condition,’ ‘known loss,’ ‘consequential loss,’ ‘pollution exclusion,’ ‘expected or intended injury’ — every commercial policy has a list of exclusions the carrier will read in the most aggressive way possible. The counter: read the policy with us. The exclusions often do not say what the adjuster claims they say, and a denied claim is not a final denial. We file suit.
Play 4: The delay. The longer the carrier can sit on your claim, the more pressure builds on you to accept less. The carrier is using your money, in effect, to negotiate against you. The counter: a written demand with a litigation deadline, followed by suit if the deadline passes. We do not wait.
Play 5: The independent medical exam (IME) for workers’ comp. The carrier will send the injured worker to a ‘neutral’ doctor of the carrier’s choosing. The doctor is rarely neutral. The counter: know that you have the right to question the choice, to provide your own treating physician’s records, and to dispute the IME at hearing.
For more on what to say — and what not to say — to an insurance adjuster, see our guide on what you should never say to an insurance adjuster.
The 72-Hour Roadmap: What to Do Right Now, in Order
If you suspect screwworm in your herd, in an animal at your feedlot, or in a worker on your operation, the next seventy-two hours matter more than the next seventy-two weeks. Here is the order.
Hour 0–6: Stabilize and document. Photograph the animal. Photograph the wound. If a worker is involved, photograph the wound and remove the worker from the exposure environment. Do not destroy the evidence by treatment before documentation.
Hour 6–24: Call the professionals. Private veterinarian first, for clinical diagnosis and treatment. TAHC second, for the mandatory report. Your insurance carrier third, but in writing only. Your attorney fourth, before the carrier’s adjuster calls. We are available 24/7.
Hour 24–48: Preserve the evidence. Secure the carcass if an animal has died. Pull your mortality, business interruption, and CGL policies. Find the notice provisions. Pull your movement records for the affected animal(s). Start a daily log of every cost incurred — feed, vet, labor, lost sales.
Hour 48–72: Notify and document. Notify your lender, your lessor, your landlord, and any contract counterparties. Do not stop performance under a contract without legal advice. Photograph everything. Post nothing.
If an animal or a worker is severely affected, the workplace injury and ranch injury practice at our firm covers what comes next. If the loss is to livestock or to a feedlot business, the insurance claim practice covers how we fight a denied claim.
Damages and Case Value: What a Screwworm Claim Might Be Worth
Damages in a screwworm case depend entirely on which claim you are making.
Livestock loss. A three-week-old calf is worth a few hundred dollars in commodity terms. A registered bull is worth thousands to tens of thousands. A producing cow is worth $1,500 to $3,000 or more on the open market. A quarantined herd of several hundred head is a six-figure to seven-figure loss, before you count the cascading cost of depopulation, disposal, and restocking.
Workers’ compensation. A ranch or feedlot worker who develops wound myiasis is entitled to medical care and disability indemnity under the Texas workers’ comp framework. Texas benefits are calculated at 70% of the average weekly wage for total disability, subject to statutory maximums and minimums. The medical benefits are paid for life if the injury requires it.
Personal injury (non-subscriber employer). If the employer does not carry workers’ comp, the worker can sue in tort. Texas follows modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.001) — meaning you cannot recover if you are 51% or more at fault. The damages available include past and future medical, past and future lost wages, pain and suffering, and in the rare case of egregious conduct, punitive damages. The 2-year statute of limitations under § 16.003 runs from the date of injury.
Business interruption. Lost income, continuing expenses, and extra expense during a covered shutdown. These claims are measured in operating cash flow, not in physical damage. A feedlot or auction barn that loses a quarter of its expected volume to a quarantine is looking at six-figure losses in many cases.
Bad faith. Texas recognizes a common-law and statutory bad faith cause of action against insurance carriers that mishandle claims. The Texas Insurance Code and the common law both provide remedies when a carrier denies a claim without a reasonable basis, fails to investigate, or lowballs in the face of clear coverage. We have brought these cases. We know how they are built.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The screwworm cases that will be filed in 2026 and 2027 are unprecedented. We will tell you honestly what we think your case is worth, after we have reviewed the policies, the records, and the facts.
How These Claims Get Built — The Proof Story
Here is how a screwworm insurance case is actually won, from the first call to the resolution.
On the day you call, we send a preservation demand letter to the insurance carrier, locking down the adjuster’s file, the underwriting file, the claims handling notes, and the carrier’s own investigation records. We send a parallel letter to the TAHC and (if appropriate) to USDA APHIS, requesting the agency’s records, lab confirmations, and quarantine orders. We send a third letter to the private veterinarian, securing the clinical records. None of these records can be created later. The day you call is the day the evidence clock starts working for you instead of against you.
In the next thirty days, we gather the producer’s records — herd inventory, mortality logs, treatment logs, movement records, sale barn tickets, financial statements, tax returns, loan documents. We work with the veterinarian to retain a screwworm expert — typically a board-certified veterinary parasitologist or entomologist — who can testify to the species, the pathology, and the epidemiology. We retain a livestock economist to value the herd and the lost production. We retain an agricultural economist to value the business interruption.
In the next sixty to ninety days, we make a written demand on the carrier with full documentation. If the carrier pays, we resolve. If the carrier denies or lowballs, we file suit. The litigation proceeds through discovery, depositions of the adjuster and the company’s veterinary consultants, expert disclosures, and, if necessary, trial. The Texas statute of limitations gives us two years from the date of injury or loss to file suit, but the evidence preservation clock is much shorter. Do not wait for the SOL to force your hand.
For workers’ comp cases, the path is parallel: report, treat, document, dispute if denied, hearing at the Texas Department of Insurance, and if necessary, appeal to the court. For personal injury cases against a non-subscriber employer, the path is a standard tort case under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. In every path, the work is the same: preserve the evidence, build the value, and fight.
Who We Are and How to Reach Us
We are The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, doing business as Attorney911. Our principal office is in Houston, and we serve clients across Texas. Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, has spent 27+ years in courtrooms — including federal court — fighting insurance companies and corporate defendants. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which is why we write like we are explaining the case to one person at a time, because that is exactly what we are doing. He has been admitted to the State Bar of Texas since 1998 and to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, and he was part of the litigation arising from the BP Texas City refinery explosion. The firm has recovered more than $50 million for Texas families since 1998.
Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, was a third-generation Texan raised in Sugar Land, with family roots tying to the King Ranch. He earned his J.D. at South Texas College of Law Houston and then spent years inside a national insurance defense firm — the rooms where claims like yours are priced, where adjusters learn to find the coverage exclusion, where Colossus-style software is used to undervalue your injuries. He crossed to the plaintiff’s side, and he now fights the playbook he used to run. He is fluent in Spanish and serves families fully in Spanish — Hablamos Español, in the language you actually pray in. For more on Lupe, see his attorney page, and for Ralph, his page.
The consultation is free. We work on contingency — no fee unless we win. If you are a Texas rancher, feedlot operator, livestock hauler, or agricultural worker facing a screwworm loss — a herd quarantine, a denied livestock mortality claim, a denied business interruption claim, a denied workers’ comp claim, or a wound myiasis injury on the job — call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. You can also reach us through our contact page. We pick up. We listen. We tell you whether we are the right firm for your case, and if we are not, we will tell you who is.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The page you are reading is legal information, not legal advice for your specific situation — for that, we need to talk, in English or in Spanish, and there is no cost to find out where you stand.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is New World screwworm dangerous to humans?
Yes, biologically, though confirmed human cases in the United States are rare. The fly Cochliomyia hominivorax — the species name means ‘man-eater’ — will lay eggs in any open wound or mucus membrane of a warm-blooded animal, including a human. Agricultural workers, hunters, and anyone with an open wound in an infested area are at higher exposure. The condition is called wound myiasis, it is treatable, and in Texas it is a workers’ comp or personal injury case depending on whether the employer carries coverage. The injury must be reported, documented, and treated — and the Texas statute of limitations for personal injury gives you two years from the date of injury to file suit.
What should I do first if I think my cattle have screwworm?
Three calls, in this order. First, your private veterinarian for a clinical exam and a written report. Second, the Texas Animal Health Commission at 1-800-550-8242 to make the mandatory report. Third, your attorney — us, at 1-888-ATTY-911 — before you call your insurance carrier. Photograph the animal in natural light before any treatment, because the clinical appearance changes. If an animal has died, preserve the carcass against scavengers (coyotes, vultures, fire ants in the South Texas brush) or photograph the remains in situ and have a vet certify the cause of death. Pull your livestock mortality, business interruption, and CGL policies and find the notice provisions. Do not give a recorded statement to an insurance adjuster without counsel.
Will USDA pay me for animals that are destroyed under a TAHC or USDA order?
Possibly. USDA APHIS historically offers indemnity payments to producers for animals destroyed under eradication programs, but the rules are specific and the application is a separate process from any insurance claim. The amount is generally tied to the fair market value of the animal, but there are caps, depreciation schedules, and eligibility conditions. An indemnity payment from USDA does not usually waive your right to make an insurance claim under your own policies, but coordination between the two requires care. We can help you apply for indemnity and protect the insurance claim at the same time.
Can a ranch or feedlot worker get workers’ compensation if they develop wound myiasis on the job?
Yes, if the employer carries Texas workers’ compensation coverage. Wound myiasis is a specific injury (not an occupational disease) under the Texas workers’ comp framework, and the worker is entitled to medical care and disability indemnity (generally 70% of the average weekly wage for total disability). If the employer is a non-subscriber, the worker can sue in tort under Texas personal injury law, with damages including medical, lost wages, pain and suffering, and in egregious cases, punitive damages. The Texas 51% bar under § 33.001 means you cannot recover if you are 51% or more at fault — the adjuster will try to blame you for the original wound, and we know how to fight that argument.
Does my livestock mortality insurance cover screwworm losses?
Most modern livestock mortality policies cover death from parasitic infestation, but the coverage has conditions. You must report the loss within the notice window (often 24 to 72 hours), provide veterinary documentation, allow a post-mortem if requested, and preserve the carcass. In the South Texas brush, carcass preservation is a real problem — scavengers can destroy the evidence overnight. The carrier will also look for any policy exclusion it can apply (biosecurity failure, pre-existing condition, known loss) and will use any documentation failure as a reason to deny. Read your policy with us before you call the carrier.
What does a TAHC quarantine order actually require me to do?
A TAHC quarantine order under Texas Agriculture Code, Chapter 161, can prohibit you from moving animals on or off your premises, can require testing at your expense, can restrict entry to and exit from your property, and can compel the destruction of exposed animals. Violating a quarantine is a regulatory violation with its own penalties, separate from any civil liability. If you receive a quarantine order, comply with it, document every cost you incur because of it, and call us before you sign anything that waives your rights.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit in Texas for an injury or property loss from screwworm?
Two years from the date of injury or damage, under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003. That deadline is real and unforgiving, but it is the longest clock you are fighting. The evidence preservation clock is much shorter — veterinary records, TAHC orders, USDA confirmations, photographic evidence, and movement records are all easier to lock down now than later. The 2-year statute of limitations is the back wall, not the play clock.
Can I sue USDA over an improper screwworm quarantine?
In narrow circumstances, yes. A Fifth Amendment takings claim can be pursued when government action destroys the value of private property without just compensation. Other administrative remedies may be available depending on the specific conduct. These are not easy cases and they are not fast cases, but they are real. If a TAHC or USDA order has destroyed the value of your herd and no indemnity has been offered, call us and we will tell you honestly whether the claim is worth bringing.
What if my insurance company denies my livestock mortality or business interruption claim?
A denial is not a final denial. Texas recognizes both common-law and statutory bad faith against insurance carriers. If the carrier denied your claim without a reasonable basis, failed to investigate, or lowballed in the face of clear coverage, you may have a separate claim against the carrier for the extra-contractual damages. We have brought these cases. We know how the carriers coordinate (or fail to coordinate) across mortality, business interruption, and CGL policies, and we know the language they use to deny. Call us before the denial becomes final.
Does Attorney911 take screwworm-related cases, and how do I reach you?
Yes. We advise Texas ranchers, feedlot operators, livestock haulers, and agricultural workers on screwworm-related insurance disputes, workers’ comp claims, business interruption claims, and personal injury cases. The consultation is free. We work on contingency — no fee unless we win. Hablamos Español. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 or use our contact page. We are available 24/7 because outbreaks do not wait for business hours, and neither do adjusters.
If you have been following the outbreak, monitoring the situation, and want to understand your legal exposure, we are here. The first call costs you nothing. The work we do together starts with preservation and ends with recovery. The 2-year statute of limitations under § 16.003 is the back wall, but the evidence clock is measured in days. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The page you are reading is legal information, not legal advice for your specific situation. Hablamos Español. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.