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Most injured Texans assume a workplace injury means a workers compensation claim, a scheduled benefit and no lawyer. That is only true if the employer subscribes. Texas does not require it, and many do not.
When an employer is a non-subscriber, the injured worker is not confined to the comp system at all. There is an ordinary negligence suit against the employer, with a jury, and with the full range of damages a comp claim never pays: past and future pain, mental anguish, physical impairment, disfigurement, and loss of earning capacity measured by what the worker can actually still earn.
Call 713-521-0059. The first conversation is free and it does not commit you to anything.
Section 406.033 of the Texas Labor Code bars a non-subscribing employer from asserting three defenses that would otherwise carry most workplace cases. Under subsection (a), the employer may not argue that the employee was guilty of contributory negligence, that the employee assumed the risk of injury or death, or that the injury or death was caused by the negligence of a fellow employee.
Those three defenses are how workplace injury cases are ordinarily defeated. Removing them is a significant advantage, and it exists only because the employer chose not to carry coverage.
What the statute does not do is make the employer automatically liable. Subsection (d) still requires the plaintiff to prove negligence of the employer, or of an agent or servant of the employer acting within the general scope of that employment. So the case is still a negligence case. It is a negligence case with the defense playbook taken away.
Whether the employer actually subscribes is a question of fact, not of what the company says in an onboarding packet. Employers sometimes describe an in-house occupational benefit plan in language that sounds like workers compensation and is not. Those plans frequently contain an arbitration clause and a deadline to report, and both are worth reading before anything is signed.
Evidence moves quickly in a plant or a warehouse. Equipment gets repaired, a damaged machine guard gets replaced, incident reports get finalized and video is overwritten on a fixed cycle. A preservation letter sent early is often the difference between proving how the injury happened and arguing about it later.
A Texas personal injury claim generally must be filed within two years of the injury under Section 16.003 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. An employer benefit plan can impose its own, much shorter, internal reporting deadline, which is one reason not to wait.
Call 713-521-0059.
