Oilfield Burn Injury Lawyer in Odessa and West Texas
A serious burn is the one injury where the first settlement offer is almost always wrong, because nobody knows what the injury costs yet. The surgeries are not finished. Often they have barely started.
Alex Horton is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Burn cases turn on evidence that is destroyed within days and on damages that take two years to understand, and the two problems pull in opposite directions. If you or someone in your family was burned on a lease, a rig or at a plant, call before you agree to anything.
Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Named a Texas Super Lawyer for more than ten years. Former briefing attorney at the Supreme Court of Texas. More about Alex Horton
Burn cases are different from every other injury claim.
The evidence has to be secured in days. The damages cannot be valued for two years. Every adjuster knows both of those things, and the offer that arrives in month three is built on the second one. Below: how oilfield burns happen, why burned workers end up in Lubbock, why the early offer is always too low, what Texas law lets you recover, and the evidence in a burn case.
How People Get Burned in the Patch
Not all burns are fire. Four of the five common mechanisms out here involve something other than an open flame, and they are treated differently, documented differently and defended differently.
Flash Fire
A vapour cloud ignites and burns out in seconds. The exposure is brief and intense, and it is the reason flame resistant clothing exists. A flash fire injury frequently comes down to what the worker was wearing and who decided that was adequate.
Sustained Fire and Explosion
Tank fires, well fires and plant incidents where the burn continues rather than flashing over. Longer exposure, deeper tissue damage and far more often an inhalation injury alongside it.
Chemical Burns
Acids, caustics, solvents and treatment chemicals. These keep damaging tissue after contact until they are properly neutralised, which means what happened in the first ten minutes on site matters enormously and is often poorly recorded.
Electrical and Arc Flash
An arc flash produces extreme heat in a fraction of a second. Electrical injury also causes internal damage along the current path that is not visible on the skin, and the surface burn understates it badly.
Steam, Hot Fluid and Contact
Scalding from steam lines, hot water, heated crude and produced fluids, plus contact burns from hot surfaces and equipment. Common, routinely minimised, and capable of being just as disabling.
Inhalation Injury
Heat and smoke damage to the airway. It frequently arrives with a serious burn and it is often the more dangerous of the two. It is also the one most likely to be missed in the first hours.
Flame resistant clothing is where a great many of these cases turn. Who was required to provide it, what specification it met, how old it was, how it had been laundered, and if the worker had been trained on it. Those answers sit in purchasing records, safety policies and training files rather than in anybody's memory, and they are the records that get requested first.
Why Burned Workers From the Basin End Up in Lubbock
There is no verified burn centre in the Permian Basin. The nearest one is the Timothy J. Harnar Regional Burn Center at University Medical Center in Lubbock, and it is where a serious burn from Odessa, Midland or San Angelo is usually sent once the patient is stable enough to move.
The first stop depends on where it happened. A burn on a lease west of Odessa usually goes to Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, the only Level II trauma centre in the Permian Basin. Around Midland it is Midland Memorial Hospital, a Level III trauma centre. In the Concho Valley it is Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo, the region's Level III lead trauma facility, which also runs the AirMed air ambulance.
Those hospitals stabilise. The specialist burn care, the grafting and the long rehabilitation happen in Lubbock. The Harnar Burn Center is one of only four American Burn Association verified burn centres in Texas, and it takes patients from across West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. For a lot of families that means a two hour drive each way for weeks, often longer.
That has three practical consequences for a case. First, the medical record is split across at least two hospitals and often an air ambulance provider, and every one of them has to be collected. The first facility's notes on what the injury looked like on arrival are some of the most important in the file. Second, the family is living out of a motel in Lubbock while the company that caused the injury is back on the location, which is exactly when evidence gets cleaned up. Third, the costs of that separation are real. Keep the receipts for travel, lodging and meals from the start, because nobody reconstructs them accurately a year later.
We come to Lubbock. If you or your family are at the burn centre, that is where the first meeting happens.
- Timothy J. Harnar Regional Burn Center, University Medical Center, Lubbock
- Medical Center Hospital, Odessa, Level II trauma
- Midland Memorial Hospital, Midland, Level III trauma
- Shannon Medical Center, San Angelo, Level III lead trauma and AirMed
- Air ambulance providers between them
- Outpatient therapy and scar management closer to home
Being treated in Lubbock does not move the case to Lubbock. It is generally filed where the injury happened or where the defendant companies do business.
Why the Early Offer Is Always Too Low
A burn injury is not a fixed thing that heals on a schedule. It is a condition that keeps producing medical costs for years, and the number an adjuster puts on the table at month three is calculated against a picture that is nowhere near complete.
The acute phase is the part people understand. Stabilisation, fluid management, removal of dead tissue, grafting. That is where the bills arrive fastest and it is what the early offer is priced against.
What follows is longer and costs more. Grafted skin does not behave like the skin it replaced. It contracts. As it tightens across a joint it pulls the joint out of position, and releasing that requires further surgery, sometimes repeatedly over years. Pressure garments, therapy, scar management and revision procedures continue well past the point at which the file looks closed.
Then there is what does not show up in a medical chart at all. A hand that will not open fully. Skin that cannot regulate temperature, which matters a great deal for somebody who works outdoors in West Texas. Sun exposure limits. Being unable to return to the work that paid what the patch pays. None of that is knowable at month three and all of it is compensable.
A serious burn is also one of the most psychologically difficult injuries there is, and that is not a soft point. It is a documented part of the damages and it needs a treating professional on the record rather than an assertion in a demand letter.
- How many more surgeries are expected
- What contracture release will be needed and when
- What the lifetime care projection looks like
- What work the injury permanently rules out
- What the heat, sun and temperature restrictions are
- What psychological treatment is ongoing
If nobody has answered these, the case is not ready to value. An adjuster who wants a signature before they are answered is telling you something.
What Texas Law Lets You Recover
Texas recognises disfigurement as its own category of damages, separate from physical pain and separate from impairment. In a burn case that is not a technicality. It is often the largest single component and it is the one insurers most consistently understate.
Disfigurement
Scarring and permanent change to appearance, recoverable in its own right. Past and future are both claimed, and in a burn case the future component is usually the larger one.
Physical Impairment
Loss of function and the things a person can no longer do, at work and outside it. Contractures across joints make this central to most serious burn claims.
Medical Care
Everything already spent and everything reasonably expected. On a major burn the future figure regularly exceeds the past one by a wide margin.
Lost Earning Capacity
Not last year's wages. What this person can no longer earn. Basin pay is not average pay, and somebody who cannot return to the patch loses decades of the difference.
Pain and Mental Anguish
Physical pain and mental anguish, past and future. Workers compensation pays nothing at all for either of these. A lawsuit against a responsible third party does.
Exemplary Damages
Where a company knew of the hazard and put the crew on it anyway, additional damages for gross negligence can be sought on top of everything above.
Workers compensation is not the ceiling. If your employer carries it, that bars a claim against your employer and does nothing at all to the operator who controlled the lease, the service company whose equipment failed, the contractor who set up the job, or the manufacturer of the part that let go. On most West Texas locations there are several companies present and only one of them signs your cheque. That analysis is set out in full in who is liable for oilfield injuries in Texas.
The Evidence in a Burn Case
The damages take two years to understand and the evidence lasts about two weeks. That is the whole problem with burn cases, and it is the reason the call has to happen while somebody is still in hospital rather than after they are out.
The single most important item is usually the clothing. What the worker was wearing when it happened, in the condition it came off in. It shows what ignited, how it behaved and how it performed, and it is routinely thrown away by a hospital or by a family in the first days because nobody told them otherwise. If it still exists, it needs to be bagged and kept, not cleaned.
Everything else sits in company records. Hot work permits, gas detection readings, job safety analyses, equipment maintenance files, the flame resistant clothing policy and the purchasing records behind it, training documentation, and the incident investigation the company ran internally. All of it exists. None of it is handed over voluntarily.
The site itself changes fast. Equipment is repaired or replaced, the location gets cleaned up and put back to work, and the physical evidence that would show what happened disappears into ordinary operations. A preservation letter, sent early to every company that was on that lease, is what converts losing it from a misfortune into something a jury can be told about.
For families, one thing above all. Do not sign anything in the first weeks, including anything presented as help with expenses or as an advance. Ask what it is, and have somebody read it who is not employed by the company offering it.
- The clothing worn, uncleaned and bagged
- Flame resistant garment specification and purchase records
- Hot work permits and gas detection logs
- Job safety analysis and pre job paperwork
- Equipment maintenance and inspection files
- The company's internal incident investigation
- Training records for the crew
- Photographs of the location before it is cleaned up
Odessa, Midland, San Angelo and the Basin
Odessa and Ector County
The largest share of this firm's oilfield work comes out of Ector County and the leases around it. Serious burns here usually go first to Medical Center Hospital on West 4th Street, then on to Lubbock. Cases arising here are generally filed at the Ector County Courthouse in downtown Odessa.
Midland and Midland County
Drilling and completion work around Midland produces a steady share of flash fire and equipment burns, often to contractor crews working for somebody other than the operator. First treatment is usually Midland Memorial Hospital. Cases here are filed at the Midland County Courthouse.
San Angelo and the Concho Valley
The office is here, in Tom Green County. Burns across the Concho Valley are usually taken to Shannon Medical Center downtown, often by AirMed, before transfer to Lubbock. Local cases are filed at the Tom Green County Courthouse.
Lubbock and the Rest of the Basin
If you or your family are at the Harnar Burn Center at UMC in Lubbock, we come to you there. We also take cases from Crane, Ward, Winkler, Andrews, Reagan, Upton, Howard, Martin, Pecos and Reeves counties.
If the burn came out of a specific event, the city pages carry that ground: Odessa, Midland and San Angelo. Well control incidents are covered on the well blowout page, and the full practice list is on our services.
Burn Injury Questions
The company offered a settlement while I am still in hospital. Should I take it?
Almost certainly not, and the timing tells you why it was offered then. A burn injury cannot be valued until somebody knows how many more surgeries are coming, what function will be permanently lost and what work is permanently ruled out. On a serious burn that picture takes eighteen months to two years to form. An offer made before then is priced against the acute care bills and nothing else. Once you sign, the contracture releases and revision surgeries that follow are yours to pay for.
My employer has workers compensation. Do I still have a case?
Very possibly. Workers compensation only bars a claim against your own employer. It does nothing to the operator that controlled the lease, the service company whose equipment failed, the contractor who set up the job, the crane or hauling company, or the manufacturer of the part that failed. Most West Texas locations have several companies on them. It also pays nothing for physical pain, mental anguish or disfigurement, which in a burn case is where a great deal of the value sits.
They said my FR clothing failed, so nobody is responsible. Is that right?
No, and it is usually the opposite. If flame resistant clothing did not perform, that raises questions about which specification was bought, how old the garment was, how it had been laundered, and who decided it was adequate for that job. It can also raise a claim against the manufacturer. A garment that failed is evidence, not a defence, which is exactly why it should be bagged and kept rather than thrown away.
How is a chemical burn different from a fire burn?
Legally the claim is built the same way. Practically the difference is that a chemical keeps damaging tissue until it is properly removed and neutralised, so what happened in the first minutes on site matters enormously. Was there a working eyewash or safety shower, was it close enough, did anybody know the right procedure for that specific chemical, and was the safety data sheet available. Those questions decide a lot of chemical burn cases and the answers sit in company records.
What should the family do in the first few days?
Keep the clothing, uncleaned and bagged. Write down every company that was on that location, including the ones nobody recognised, because truck markings and helmet stickers identify defendants nobody will name for you later. Photograph the site if anyone can get there before it is cleaned up. Sign nothing the company or its insurer offers, including anything described as help with expenses. And get a preservation letter out while the equipment and the records still exist.
Where do serious burns from Odessa, Midland and San Angelo get treated?
Usually in two places. The first is the nearest trauma centre: Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, Midland Memorial Hospital in Midland, or Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo. Once the patient is stable, serious burns are typically transferred to the Timothy J. Harnar Regional Burn Center at University Medical Center in Lubbock, which is the only verified burn centre serving the region. Collect records from every facility, including the air ambulance, because the notes made on arrival at the first hospital are some of the most important in the case.
I was flown to the burn centre in Lubbock. Does my case get filed there?
Not because of where you were treated. A Texas injury case is generally filed in the county where the injury happened or where the defendant companies do business, so a burn on a lease in Ector County is normally an Ector County case even if every surgery happens in Lubbock. We meet clients and families at the burn centre, so being in Lubbock is not a reason to wait.
How long do I have to bring a claim in Texas?
Two years from the date of the injury, and two years from the date of death in a wrongful death claim, under Section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. If a government entity is involved, written notice can be due in as little as six months. If your employer runs an internal benefit plan instead of workers compensation, that plan often requires the injury to be reported within twenty four hours, which is the shortest deadline of all and the one most often missed.
What does it cost to hire a burn injury lawyer?
Nothing up front. These cases are taken on contingency, which means the fee is a percentage of what is recovered and there is no fee if there is no recovery. The firm advances case expenses, which on a burn claim can include the life care planning and vocational work that establishes what the future actually costs.
Burned on a Lease or at a Plant? Call Before You Sign Anything.
Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. The consultation is free, there is no fee unless there is a recovery, and we come to the hospital if that is where you are. Bring anything the company has asked anybody to sign.