Dallas Oilfield Injury Attorney

Oil and Gas Production Workers Must Fight to Win Damages When They’re Injured on the Job

There’s gold in Texas oil and gas patches again. With high market demands for these petroleum commodities, and shrinking inventories, the oil companies are trying to squeeze every bit of petroleum out of the ground, are pushing their workers to, and past, the limit of their endurance to meet this never ending demand for oil and natural gas. And they’re also using machinery that is being worked 24/7 or older devices well past their prime and ability to perform safely.

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When you consider all of these elements, you probably understand why pipeline and drilling rig jobs can often bee some of the most dangerous work in the world.

With all this pressure on the people who work to bring profits to the drillers in the oil patch or out in the Barnett Shale, a lot of drugs are taken by these workers so they can perform at a high level for days on end. And are you really surprised to learn that drilling contractors and subcontractors are not the most diligent when it comes to drug testing their workers? Countless accidents produce a terribly large number of broken bones, debilitating injuries and even deaths because of the petroleum industry’s obsessive campaign to cut corners (and their costs) and to push workers over the brink of their physical ability to make their rigs profitable while the money (and demand) are sky high.

Serious injuries in oil and gas drilling accidents, or anywhere in the Texas oil production industry, are inevitable for a variety of reasons. Many are caused by worn or defective equipment. Explosions happen with a certain amount of frequency. Negligence or carelessness can lead to falling heavy objects such as pipes or other drilling equipment, as well as a host of other missteps and mishaps. And often, workers must work lots of overtime and seldom see an off day for a week or even longer. Many work double shifts several days straight because the money is good and the employers are willing to pay healthy workers who show-up and stay late.

But if you are visiting this Web site, you may have been injured on an oil or gas drilling platform, or in a pipeline mishap. And you probably wonder if someone other than you must bear the fair financial burden for this accident. You need full compensation for your injuries, lost work time and other damages, not some ten-cents-on-the-dollar offer that falls short. You probably feel alone and want to know who fights for your rights. And if you’re a surviving family member of someone who has been killed in such an accident, you want to know who fights for your rights too.

Texas workers’ compensation insurance pays about half of the job-related injuries in Texas. So you must know whether or not your petroleum employer has this insurance. Now rarely does it cover all of the reimbursement needs for your medical expenses. But there are compensation supplements to workers’ comp which we will discuss in a bit. You also need to know exactly who is responsible for your injuries and the level of neglect that led to them, especially if any third party past your employer had a hand in causing your injury. The success of your quest to obtain compensation depends on the ability of you, and your Dallas oilfield injury attorney to get to the bottom of the accident, its causes, and identify every liable party.

Resolving petroleum production worker injury cases can become very complex. And in their rightful attempts to recover fair payment for their injuries, workers are fighting the most powerful companies in the world. Their employer opponents see these injured workers as a nuisance and an obstacle to the millions of dollars they stand to make.

The oilfield injury legal team at Grossman Law Offices has over 20 years of experience in fairly resolving injury claims and civil cases on behalf of injured drilling rig and pipeline workers. Of you’ve been down this road before, you know that inexperienced lawyers fail to win fair work-injury settlements in oil rig drilling accident cases. And you also know it’s virtually impossible, for drilling workers without legal experience to ever succeed if they represent themselves against these industry giants.

The First Step is Determining if your Petroleum Employer Subscribes to Workers’ Comp

Oil drilling companies, like every other Texas business, are not legally required to purchase workers’ compensation insurance. So, work injury cases are divided into two distinct types that require altogether different methods and strategies to successfully resolve. Employers who carry worker’s comp are “subscribers.” Those who don’t are “non-subscribers.” So the first piece of knowledge to successful injury compensation is to determine whether or not your employer is a subscriber or a non-subscriber.

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Workers’ comp is nothing more than a coverage “pool” that is maintained by participating private insurance carriers who contribute to this “umbrella coverage.” For companies that subscribe to workers’ comp it affords almost universal protection from civil injury lawsuits by employees. But because injured workers are denied the opportunity to receive fair injury compensation against workers comp subscribing employers in court, their chances of seeing reflective reimbursement for their actual damages are severely compromised since workers comp benefits rarely pay actual damage amounts that are found in civil judgments.

There are some employee benefits as workers’ comp does pay for virtually all of the medical bills in any job-related injury. This “no fault” insurance pool covers workers, no matter how the oil or gas drilling accident happened or who was at fault. But when it comes to the peripheral damages that are an outgrowth of work injuries such as lost wages: the disability, the pain and suffering, the wrongful death, workers’ comp never covers the total value of the harm done to you from the job-related injury.

So in addition to the likelihood that a petroleum production worker who has suffered crush injuries, or broken bones, massive head injuries, amputations, horrible burns from blowouts and explosions or dismemberment, if workers’ comp is their only avenue of financial remedy from those injuries, they will never be fully repaid for their full damages. And the surviving family members won’t fare much better either, unless gross negligence can be proven. And we’ll go over that scenario in a minute. But on the other hand, the subscriber-employers to workers comp are doing just fine through the program’s protection from civil lawsuits.

A lot of Texas employers, including a large number of drilling contractors (and sub contractors) will run the risk of not subscribing to workers’ comp. Then, when an injury and they are liable, they try to avoid a lawsuit with the injured worker by claiming to have workers’ comp, when they in-fact, don’t. They try to avoid detection by offering to quickly pay workers’ comp benefits, after they make the worker sign an official-looking “workers’ comp release.” But all this blatant fraud does is allow them to wiggle out of a very expensive non-subscriber civil lawsuit and the money they offer will never fully cover your full damages, So don’t be fooled.

In order to receive full restitution from a non-subscriber to a workers’ comp oilfield injury or pipeline accident, the victim’s only avenue is to file a lawsuit. An experienced Dallas oilfield injury attorney can quickly determine your company’s true workers’ comp status, then share with you every legal option available that will deliver the just compensation for your injury, pain, suffering and lost income.

The Next Step: Who Was Negligent in Causing Your Oil or Gas Rig Injury?

Once your employer’s workers’ comp status is known, you and your attorney now encounter the two possible avenues to receiving drilling injury compensation outside the purview of workers’ comp. Don’t get confused. You do have civil remedy in addition to workers’ comp, if it applies to your case. But only half of Texas employers subscribe to the program. So that leaves a lot of non-subscribers, in addition to that civil litigation exception to workers’ comp we mentioned a moment ago.

The surviving family of a petroleum worker who dies as a result of workplace injury may file a civil suit against a workers’ comp employer if gross negligence is suspected to have led to that worker’s fatal injury. Gross negligence is defined as having willful disregard for the safety of others’, in this case, an employer shows by his behavior that he doesn’t care what happens to his workers or doesn’t create or maintain a safe workplace. All he wants is for the well to produce or the pipeline to deliver the most petro-products possible. Creating a safe workplace is not a priority for these employers.

But if the negligence does not cause a fatal injury, regardless of whether your employer subscribes to workers’ comp or not, the most practical strategy to receive fair compensation involves third-party claims and lawsuits against those other than the employer who have done something negligent and caused injury to the drilling or pipeline worker. If an electrician failed to properly wire a rig and caused a worker to be shocked, or the operator of a crane dropped a large pipe on you, they, and their employers, could be additional “third party contributors” to your accident.

Or if a faulty piece of machinery caused the injury, then the manufacturer may be liable through a defective product lawsuit, The owner of some leased equipment that was not maintained properly could be responsible for its malfunction, and your injuries. If the owner of the rig or pipeline did not provide safe working conditions, there might be another liable party. The same thing can be said for the corporation that hired anyone to oversee the drilling rig or offshore platform. With so many different companies involved in any single drilling project at any given time, the list of liable parties to your accident can be significant.

And if you sue any responsible third parties, you are not prevented from filing an appropriate workers’ comp claim against your employer because it’s basically “no fault insurance” and is going to get paid anyway. This is often how our clients receive just compensation amounts for their oil or gas drilling injury and all the legal damages that arise from it. We combine that workers’ comp claim and at least one third party lawsuit, but sometimes, it can involve more than one third-party defendant.

You probably have a better appreciation of just how tricky it is to get to the bottom of such intricate accident cases. And often, these accidents must be assiduously investigated. Experience, and the ability to properly investigate not only the accident scene but the roles these third parties played in the oil or gas rig accident is absolutely necessary in order to determine all parties responsible and make them pay for the injuries they caused. A skillful Dallas oilfield injury attorney can investigate, and then design the best strategy to win the just compensation that is deserved by those injured victims in a complex Texas oil and gas drilling or pipeline injury case.

Non-Subscriber Lawsuits Can Be a Wild Ride, or a Walk-in-the-Park

You know that generally, half of Texas employers subscribe to workers’ comp. And though we’re not certain, that one-in-two percentage of drilling companies, individual “wildcatters,” or pipeline companies that subscribe, is probably a fair guess. Many “petro production” employers live a hand-to-mouth existence. This makes them cheap and they try to cut corners whenever and wherever they can. Workers’ comp insurance, even if it costs less than traditional oilfield production insurance, is still quite expensive simply because of the inherent dangers involved in petroleum production and pipeline delivery. So many oil and gas drilling employers don’t purchase workers’ comp. And they’ve probably been defendants in a non-subscribing injury claim or civil case. So they know what to expect and how to counter the claims of the workers they hurt. Therefore, if you are to win the compensation you deserve from a non-subscribing employer, the assistance of a skilled Dallas oilfield injury attorney to file a lawsuit and aggressively pursue them to pay you that fair compensation is a necessity.

Usually, the victim, or plaintiff, files a claim against the non-subscribing employer (or third party defendant) that officially notifies him or her of the injury and the amount of restitution the victim expects as fair. Defendants will most often hand the matter over to their insurance company if they have one, or their attorney if they don’t. Often, when that happens the insurer will immediately dispute the plaintiff’s allegations. From this point forward, the value of your oilfield injury lawyer becomes a clear asset to your case. After your experienced attorney investigates all aspects of the case, and builds a solid claim, direct negotiations might deliver a fair settlement to pay all your medical bills, your lost income (past, present and future) pain, suffering and the rest of your legitimate damages. But on the other hand, your oilfield injury case might turn into a full-fledged lawsuit in civil court of you are to win your deserved compensation. As the injured party, you, the plaintiff, holds the burden of proving that the employer’s or third party’s negligence caused the injury which produced the legal damages from which you seek legal relief.

Oil Patch Defendants Always Say it’s Not Their Fault: but Yours

Drilling or pipeline employers who don’t subscribe to workers’ comp insurance rarely pay you without a fight. After all, if they’re so cheap they don’t know what good a deal that workers’ comp is them and ignore the bargain, what makes you think they’ll treat your civil damage suit any different? Nor is any third party against whom you’ve filed an injury claim liable to behave any differently either. They want to get the most for the least. It’s an oil patch habit.

Now some, a lot actually, will have some sort of private insurance coverage. And those insurers don’t want your employer to pay-up either. Nor does it take a rocket scientist to understand why insurance carriers threaten their policyholders with much higher premiums if they’re thinking about settling with you, contrary to the wishes of their insurance company. Our experience in these matters has told us that most non-subscribers, their insurance companies and attorneys most-often use either of two traditional defenses to avoid paying injured employees the damages restitution they deserve. And sometimes they use both before the trial is over.

The primary non-subscriber liability defense after an oil or gas drilling, or pipeline, employee suffers an injury is to turn the tables and charge the plaintiff with sole proximate cause. This means the defendant is claiming that the victim was totally to blame for his or her own injuries. In order to invoke the sole proximate cause defense, these employers, their insurance companies and attorneys can often say and do anything to soil your reputation as a worker (or even as a human being) by claiming you were careless or irresponsible and caused your own injuries. And since insurance companies’ attorneys very good (and very shrewd) when it comes to fighting your claim or civil case, without your own cunning Dallas oilfield injury attorney to turn the tables of liability back on the negligent employer, or third party, and their lawyers, you are in a way, taking a knife to a gunfight. So prepare to lose.

Defendants Question the Employer-Employee Relationship in Order to Avoid Paying You

Many employers think it’s clever to dodge responsibility for employee injuries (and civil claims). They usually “call” you a contractor and use this ruse to make a case that you are not technically an employee to begin with. Now sometimes that might be true. But most of the time, many of them say their employees are contractors (or subcontractors) and essentially try to pass the blame (and liability) down the line. It’s a daisy chain of non-responsibility that has been going on since the day driller John fell down and broke his hip the day after oil was discovered at Spindletop. By claiming this, your employer tries to use that technicality to deny the existence of an employer-employee relationship between you and his company. Their claim: “Why should we be responsible for an injury to a person who was never our employee to begin with?”

But just because these drilling employers hire their employees as contractors or as temp workers through a third-party doesn’t make it so! Many times the employer knows an actual employer-employee relationship exists and the injured worker has the right to obtain compensation against this non-subscriber. So don’t be misled by this subterfuge. A skillful, well-seasoned oilfield accident lawyer knows how to disprove this employer denial of liability and corroborate the employer-employee relationship by meeting at least one the following standards:

• Social security or taxes have been withheld from your paycheck by the employer.
• The essential equipment for the job was supplied to you by the employer.
• Your work has been regularly managed, overseen or inspected by your employer.
• A specific work schedule has been set for the job by the employer. You are not free to come-and-go as you please.
• Your employer requires you to complete a task or sign a document that limits your rights while working for the employer. The most common examples are taking a drug test or signing a document that states you comply with an employee handbook.
• You have been employed for an undetermined period of time and not just for a single job.
• You are paid by a salary or an hourly wage and not on a job-by-job basis.

In cases where a worker is borrowed from another company, or a third-party agency, the rules for determining the working relationship are related, but there can be some crucial differences.

We also must remind you that if you are employed by an employment agency or a different employer/contractor and were “on loan” when you are hurt on a drilling contractor’s well or pipeline, this agency (or employer) might be the primary employer and all of your initial injury claims (be it workers’ comp subscriber or non-subscriber) will be against them. Some of the conditions that are used to determine the difference between contractors and employees under these circumstances may include:

• If the borrowing employer has the power to hire or fire a borrowed worker at any time, the worker is clearly an employee. Otherwise, the worker is a contractor
• Most of the time, if the borrowing employer is allowed to pick a particular worker, then the worker is an employee. If the agency that provides the worker is allowed to send any worker they choose, the worker is a contractor.
• This answer is the same when it comes to tools and equipment. If the worker must provide them, that person is a contractor. If the employer provides them, the worker is an employee.
• If the agency can substitute the borrowed worker for another at-will, the worker is a contractor. If the lending agency cannot, then the worker is an employee.
• If the worker is borrowed indefinitely, then the worker is an employee. If the worker is borrowed for a specific project with a specific date of completion, the worker is a contractor.
• If a worker is being borrowed or “leased” because of a skill that is unique or hard-to-find, then the worker is a contractor. But on the other hand, if an employer borrows a worker to fill a position that just about anyone can fill, then the worker is an employee.
• If the borrowing employer agrees to pay the worker’s social security and income tax, then the worker is an employee. If the borrowing employer does not accept this responsibility, then the worker is a contractor.

The Dallas oilfield injury attorneys with Grossman Law Offices conduct a thorough investigation of your employer to prove the existence of at least one of these standards to prove an employer-employee relationship existed. We will depose co-workers, review contracts and examine pay stubs to establish that you were in fact an employee when you suffered an on-the-job drilling rig or pipeline injury.

Whoever is Holding the Money Doesn’t Want You to Have it

In all non-subscriber and third party oil and gas rig or pipeline injury claims, defendants either have large insurance companies with lots of good attorneys that stand in your way, are “self-insured,” or (worse) uninsured. And all do everything they can, legally or (in some cases) illegally to avoid paying your rightful damages. And it’s also possible that one of the corporate petroleum giants is drawn into your claim in which case, you’ve bitten off way more than you can chew if you are an oilfield worker who decides to seek damages from them by yourself, or with a non-experienced oilfield injury lawyer.

Non-subscribers’ insurance companies, regardless of whether they’re big corporate giants, or the smaller mutual companies (which are owned by their policyholders rather than stockholders) have one thing in common. Both of these opponents have attorneys either on staff or permanent retainer who are excellent defenders of their oil industry clients against injured claimants like you who think they can sue them. They are always offensive and aggressive against you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t win against these well-armed lawyers and the insurance companies or corporate drilling companies. But you must have a rightful cause for claim, airtight evidence, and an experienced Dallas oilfield injury attorney to represent you; one who knows every trick they pull, and the best way to counter each one.

But as bad as the insurance companies can be in an oil patch injury claim or lawsuit, there are some legal guidelines that govern their behavior when they oppose you. But on the other hand, self-insured (or non-insured) contractors and subcontractors who are liable your injuries are not bound by any codes of conduct. And this means they can, and do, use every underhanded trick they can think of to wiggle out of all work injury damage claims and lawsuits. And they are not above bending or breaking legal ethics, or even the law, to avoid paying those damages.

In these cases, you deal directly with an officer if the self-insured drilling or pipeline company is a small one. This person’s salary comes directly out of company profits. Your injury claim will also come out company funds. Do you see the money trail? It comes from the same well. By compensating you, your employer, or that third party, literally takes money out his own pocket. A sneaky, self-insured company officer uses any and all means to oppose your claim in order to protect his company’s, and personal, assets.

Self-insured drilling contractors and subcontractors have been found to deliberately destroy evidence, bribe or intimidate witnesses, and even plaintiffs and their families. Sometimes those threats can be physical. And once in awhile they make good on such physical threats. This is why every time we represent a client against a self-insured company, we quickly file motions in court to prevent anyone within the self-insured company from behaving improperly against our clients. Sometimes these motions include clear demands that they make no attempt to communicate with our clients, or their families, in any way without one of our Dallas oilfield injury attorneys present.

Don’t Count on OSHA to be of Any Use in an Injury Liability Claim or Legal Case

You are likely aware of the federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), which maintains minimum standards of safety for all American employers. But don’t think that OSHA will help you attain compensation. The Administration does not advocate for injured workers. All it does is oversee the worker environment in the U.S. And for the past 25 years, OSHA’s regulations, and the fines it deals out for employer non-compliance to those safety standards, have been seriously eroded since they were first established.

While OSHA sets safety guidelines in the workplace and can fine offenders, it’s been a long time since the amounts posed a real financial motivation for safety violators to comply with these government standards. Many of these fines were established back in the 70’s when OSHA was first established. Today, inflation and other economic factors have reduced OSHA fines to little more than a nuisance. And over the years, additional laws have been passed that today seriously erode OSHA’s already limited power by reducing the agency’s staff and cutting its budget even further.

Even if OSHA does investigate your employer after your accident, it is a mistake to expect them to provide specific evidence that will benefit your case because such information doesn’t make it up the OSHA “food chain” in time to impact your civil trial.

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What You Need to Do (and Not Do) Right Now to Win Oilfield Injury Compensation

Up to now, we’ve avoided offering actual free legal advice. But now it’ time for the most important piece of advice anyone who is thinking about seeking damages in a personal injury lawsuit against a drilling contractor or pipeline owner. Before you speak with an insurance company, or accept even a single dollar of payment or compensation from your employer, or sign anything, or attempt to file a lawsuit on your own, you must contact a competent lawyer.

Your employer or its insurance provider wants you to accept a “low-ball” settlement and go away. Don’t let them take advantage of you. You should never discuss any details of your intentions, or anything else about your injury, with your employer, a third party, anyone with the insurance company, or even your co-workers without a lawyer protecting you.

Then, you must realize the critical importance of acting swiftly. In oilfield accident cases, the evidence begins to quickly fade. Witnesses change their stories, or forget what they saw, or have even been paid to forget. If you wait too long to hire an attorney and put him on the trail of evidence, then you seriously endanger your ability to win the restitution you and your family deserve.

We’ve helped one drilling worker two different times, win two different lawsuits, against two different defendants when he was working in two different oilfields, but suffered falling pipe injuries both times. Another time, we were able to secure a very fair compensation package for an oilfield worker’s family when he suffered a fatal head injury while spinning drill pipe. There isn’t much in the oil patch that our knowledgeable petroleum accident attorneys haven’t seen.

An experienced Dallas oilfield injury attorney with Grossman Law Offices will help injured oilfield workers seek, and win, damage awards anywhere in Texas, including the Barnett Shale. But bear in mind that you only get one chance to file (and win) your case. If you lose, or settle for less than you are capable of winning, that’s your only shot. You don’t get another.

Put our years of experience to work for you. If you want to know what your rights are, how to proceed with your claim and the level of compensatory damages you can win from your oilfield injuries, we can answer your questions. Call Grossman Law Offices now at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free), or fill out the form at the top of this page for a free consultation and find out how we can help you.

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