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Alex Horton Board Certified Personal Injury Trial Lawyer Badge
Alex Horton Board Certified Personal Injury Trial Lawyer Badge
Ector County and the Permian Basin

Odessa Oilfield Injury Lawyer

A Permian pad on a busy day holds the operator, your employer, a pressure pumping crew, a crane outfit, a hauling company, and whoever prepped the location. Only one of them signs your paycheck. Any of them can be responsible for what happened to you.

Alex Horton is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a credential held by a small fraction of Texas attorneys, and has been recognized as a Texas Super Lawyer for more than ten years. He tries cases. If you were hurt on a pad, in a yard, or on a lease road in Ector County, call and tell us what happened.

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Alex Horton

Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Texas Super Lawyer for more than ten years. Former clerk at the Supreme Court of Texas.

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Straight Answers

Six questions come up on almost every call from a Basin pad, in roughly this order. Here are the short answers. The long ones are further down this page.

If yours is not here, call and ask it. Nothing about the conversation costs you anything.

Who can I sue if I was a contractor and not an employee?

The operator who controlled the lease, the other contractors on location, the company that owned or maintained the equipment, and the manufacturer of whatever failed. Being a contractor does not close doors. It usually opens more of them, because you are not tied to one employer's comp policy.

The obstacle you will hear about is Chapter 95, which limits when a property owner answers for a contractor's injury. It turns on control and knowledge, and control is decided by what happened on that location, not by what the master service agreement says. See who answers for it, or read can I sue an oil company as a contractor in West Texas.

What if five companies were working on that site?

Then you may have five places to look, and that is usually good news. Texas lets a jury assign a share of responsibility to each company that contributed. One pad can carry the operator, a drilling contractor, a pumping crew, a crane outfit and a hauler, and every one of them is a potential defendant.

It also means all five have a reason to point at each other, and they start within hours. Their people are photographing the location and taking statements while you are still in the emergency room. The control fight is here, and what has to be preserved is here.

Does my employer having no workers compensation help or hurt me?

It usually helps. Texas is the only state that lets a private employer opt out, and an employer that opts out gives up the protection that comes with staying in. A nonsubscriber cannot argue you were careless, cannot argue you knew the job was dangerous and took it anyway, and cannot use comp to block a suit against itself.

Most hands in the Basin have no idea which one they are under, because the enrollment paperwork looks the same either way, and the benefit plan version often has an arbitration clause buried in it. Read the nonsubscriber section before you sign anything.

How long do I have to file in Texas?

Two years from the date of the injury, and two years from the date of death in a wrongful death case. Miss it and the claim is gone regardless of how strong it was. If a governmental entity is involved, written notice can be due in as little as six months.

The deadline that actually decides these cases is much earlier. A crane gets repaired and dispatched, failed iron gets scrapped, and a pad gets regraded, usually inside a month. More on the filing deadlines, and what has to be locked down first.

What is my Odessa oilfield injury case worth?

Nobody can put an honest number on it before seeing the medical records and the earnings history, and you should be careful with anyone who does it on a first phone call. What we can tell you is what moves the number.

Future earning capacity, which in the Basin is rarely average money. Medical care already had and still to come. Permanent impairment and disfigurement. And exemplary damages where a company knew about a hazard and sent a crew in anyway. Two men with the same injury end up in very different places depending on age, trade and how much function they get back. The full breakdown is here.

Will I have to go to court?

Probably not. Most oilfield injury cases settle before trial. What decides the size of that settlement is the other side believing you will go to trial if they lowball you, and that belief is built long before anyone talks about settling.

So the file gets worked up as if a jury is going to see it. Alex Horton is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and insurers price a case differently when the lawyer on it has been to verdict. Why that matters here, or tell us what happened.

Who Answers For It

Odessa Is Where The Contractors Are

Midland is where the operators keep their offices. Odessa is where the iron is. The yards off Highway 191, the pipe racks along Loop 338, and the service company facilities out toward State Highway 302 are where the crews, the equipment, and the trucks stage before they head to location. The executives are in Midland. The people getting hurt are in Odessa.

That matters legally, not just geographically. When five companies share a pad, the question is not simply what went wrong. It is who had the right to control the work at the moment it went wrong. That is the fight, and it is the reason a case here is rarely just a claim against your own employer.

Expect the borrowed servant argument. The defense will say you were the borrowed servant of the one company on location that carried workers compensation, so comp is your only remedy. It turns on who actually directed the details of your work, not on what a master service agreement said. Do not answer questions about your job duties on the record before you have talked to a lawyer.

We go deeper on this in who is liable for oilfield injuries in Texas and in who is responsible for an oilfield accident in West Texas.

Who We Look At
  • The operator who controls the lease
  • The pressure pumping or service company
  • The crane or rigging contractor
  • The equipment owner or lessor
  • The hauling and transport company
  • Whoever built and maintained the pad
  • Component and equipment manufacturers
  • Your employer, directly, if it is a nonsubscriber
Texas Nonsubscriber Law

Ask One Question Before You Sign Anything

Does your employer carry workers compensation, or does it run an internal injury benefit plan. Most hands in the Basin have no idea which one they are under, because nobody explains it and the paperwork looks the same either way.

Texas is the only state that lets a private employer opt out of the workers compensation system. Employers who do are called nonsubscribers, and they are common among Permian service companies. If yours is one, you can sue it directly for negligence, and it loses contributory negligence, the fellow servant defense, and assumption of risk. You prove the company was negligent and that the negligence hurt you. Nothing more.

Working as a contractor rather than an employee usually strengthens your position for the same reason. Start with can I sue an oil company as a contractor in West Texas, then how to file a lawsuit against your oilfield employer.

The Trap The Arbitration Agreement Is In The Enrollment Packet.

Benefit plan paperwork routinely bundles a mandatory arbitration clause and a release of claims with the enrollment form. Sign it and you have given up a jury without being told that is what happened. If you already signed, bring it in anyway. Those agreements are not always enforceable.

Odessa Case Types

What Comes Out Of The Basin

Drilling, completions, and the yards that supply both. Each case turns on a different set of records, and those records have a short life. For the wider picture, see the common causes of oilfield and oil rig accidents.

01

Crane & Rigging

Outriggers punching through a caliche pad, loads that were never weighed against the chart, sling and shackle failures, dropped loads, and swing radius crush injuries. Load charts and telematics data decide these.

02

Explosions & Fires

Tank battery ignition, hot work near vapor, gas buster failures, and flash fires on completions. Burn cases need scene work in days because the location gets cleaned up and put back to work.

03

Well Blowouts

Loss of well control is catastrophic and never involves one company. BOP maintenance records, mud logs, and the decisions made in the hours before are where it gets decided.

Well Blowout Claims →
04

Frac & Pressure Pumping

Iron failures, whipping lines, wellhead and treating line leaks, and silica exposure from sand handling. Pressure testing records tell you what the crew was told before they were sent in.

05

Yard & Pipe Rack Injuries

Odessa is the staging town. Pipe rolling off a rack, banded loads letting go, forklift and material handling incidents, and men working under suspended loads because there was nowhere else to stand.

Top Safety Violations On Oil Rigs →
06

Caught Between & Struck By

Pinch points between trucks, trailers, and equipment on a crowded pad. These are the injuries employers most often write up as the worker's own fault, and the write up is rarely the whole story.

07

Crew Transport & Lease Roads

Highway 191, Loop 338, and State Highway 302 move crews and iron around the clock. Fatigue wrecks at the end of a hitch, overloaded trailers, and unsecured equipment are oilfield cases even on asphalt.

08

Site Prep & Construction

Pad building, road work, tank setting, and facility construction. Trenching, heavy equipment, and unstable ground, usually with a general contractor and three subs on the same job.

Serious Injuries

The Weight Out Here Does Not Leave Much Middle Ground

Basin cases tend to be catastrophic or they tend to be nothing. When the loads are measured in tons and the pressures in thousands of PSI, there is not much in between.

Crush Injuries
Traumatic Amputation
Severe Burns
Spinal Cord Injuries
Traumatic Brain Injury
Silica & Chemical Exposure
Multiple Fractures
Fatal Injuries

When an accident is fatal, the wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children, and parents, and the survival claim belongs to the estate. They are separate causes of action with separate damages, and neither one is what an employer offers a family in the first week. Read can families sue for wrongful death after an oilfield accident before you agree to anything.

Preservation

The Equipment Is Back In Service By Friday

In the Basin nothing sits idle. A crane gets repaired and dispatched. Failed iron gets swapped and scrapped. A pad gets regraded. A preservation letter has to go out in days.

01

The Paper

The JSA, the toolbox talk, the daily report, permits, pressure test records, and the incident report before anyone revises it.

02

The Iron

The failed component itself, maintenance and inspection history, load charts, and the physical rigging before it goes in the scrap bin.

03

The Contracts

Master service agreements and the indemnity language between the operator and every contractor, which is where control is defined.

04

The Data

Telematics, ELD and dispatch logs, frac van data, site cameras, and third party inspection reports.

What It Is Worth

The Number Is Not The Hospital Bill

Value depends on the facts, the defendants, and the injury. These are the categories that build it, and the ones insurers try hardest to shrink.

01

Future Earning Capacity

Basin money is not average money. A hand pulling six figures with overtime who can no longer do the work has lost decades of that, not a few months of wages. This is usually the largest line in the case and the one most often left out of an early offer.

02

Medical, Past And Future

Emergency care, air transport, surgery, rehabilitation, and the care you will need in twenty years. Hospital liens and health plan subrogation get handled early, because left to the end they quietly take a settlement apart.

03

Impairment And Disfigurement

Permanent loss of function, scarring, and the things you cannot do anymore. Both are real damages under Texas law and both are routinely undervalued by adjusters.

04

Punitive Damages

Where a company knew about a hazard and sent a crew in regardless, gross negligence puts exemplary damages on the table. Proving it takes the internal records, which is another reason preservation cannot wait.

Right Now

What To Do This Week

01

Get Treated Properly

Tell the provider it was a work injury and describe the mechanism accurately. A vague chart note becomes a defense argument two years later.

02

List The Companies

Write down every outfit that was on location, including the ones you did not recognize. Truck logos count. Hard hat stickers count.

03

Sign Nothing

No recorded statement, no release, no arbitration agreement, no benefit plan enrollment. If you already signed, bring it in rather than assuming it is settled.

04

Call Before Friday

The equipment will be back in service and the pad will be reworked. Preservation letters have to reach every company on that location while the evidence still exists.

TX ODESSA
Ector County

Where You Get Treated And Where It Gets Filed

Serious injuries in the Basin go to Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, the Level II trauma center for this region. The worst of them are flown to Lubbock or to Dallas.

Civil cases in Ector County are filed in the 161st, 244th, and 358th District Courts here in Odessa. Depending on where the incident happened and where the defendants do business, we also file in Midland County, Crane County, and Tom Green County.

We take cases from across the Basin, including Ector, Midland, Crane, Ward, Winkler, Andrews, Upton, and Reagan counties. If you were hurt outside Odessa but you live here or your crew is based here, that is still our case.

Also see our Midland oilfield injury lawyer page and our San Angelo oilfield injury lawyer page, where the office is.

Horton Legal West Texas

Why A Board Certified Trial Lawyer Matters Here

01

Find Every Defendant

The master service agreements and the indemnity language decide who answers for what. Reading them properly is most of the work in a Basin case.

02

Move On The Evidence

Preservation letters to every company on location, in days. The crane, the iron, the rigging, and the data do not wait for anyone.

03

Prove The Real Loss

Basin earnings, permanent limitations, and lifetime medical need. Not the first offer, which is built from the hospital bill and nothing else.

04

Take It To A Jury

Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law, held by a small fraction of Texas attorneys. Insurers price a file differently when the lawyer has been to verdict.

Deadlines

Two Years, And Much Less Than That In Practice

Texas generally gives you two years from the date of injury or death to file a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit. Some claims run shorter, and if a governmental entity is involved written notice can be due in as little as six months.

The real deadline is earlier. Everything that proves a Basin case is repaired, scrapped, regraded, or overwritten within weeks. By the time two years is a concern, the case has usually already been decided by what did or did not get preserved.

Frequently Asked Questions

Odessa Oilfield Injury Questions

I already signed the arbitration agreement. Is it over?

Not necessarily. Nonsubscriber arbitration agreements get thrown out with some regularity, on grounds like lack of proper notice, an employer that reserved the right to change the terms, or paperwork signed while someone was medicated in a hospital bed. Bring the documents in and let us look at them before you assume you are stuck.

My employer carries workers compensation. Do I have a case?

Very possibly. Comp blocks a claim against your own employer only. It does nothing to the operator who controlled the lease, the crane company, the pressure pumping crew, the hauler, or the manufacturer of whatever failed. In Odessa most pads carry several companies, which is exactly why these cases are worth investigating.

The company says the accident was my fault. Does that end it?

No. Texas comparative fault lets you recover as long as you are not more than fifty percent responsible, and your award is reduced by your share. If your employer is a nonsubscriber it cannot raise your fault at all. Blaming the injured worker is the standard opening move, not a legal conclusion.

I live somewhere else but got hurt in Ector County. Can you help?

Yes. Basin crews come from all over Texas and well beyond. Where the case gets filed depends on where the incident happened and where the defendants do business, not on where you sleep. We handle the travel.

What if my coworker was killed and I was hurt in the same accident?

Those are separate claims with separate clients and they can create a conflict, so they are usually handled by different lawyers. Tell us up front what happened and we will make sure both families get independent representation.

What does it cost to hire you?

Nothing up front. We take oilfield injury cases on a contingency fee, so we are paid a percentage of what we recover and you owe no fee if there is no recovery. The firm advances case expenses.

Free Consultation

Hurt On A Basin Pad? Find Out Who Answers For It.

Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law. Free consultation, no fee unless we recover, and we come to Odessa if you cannot travel. Bring anything the company has asked you to sign.

Call 325 339 1050 Request A Case Review

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