Recent Recoveries
- $2,000,000Car crash — litigation settlement
- $1,750,000Slip & fall — litigation settlement
- $1,000,00018-wheeler — litigation settlement
- $850,000Tractor-trailer — litigation settlement
- $650,000Commercial collision — litigation settlement
- $650,000Trucking accident — litigation settlement
- $550,000On-the-job injury — litigation settlement
Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Every case is decided on its own facts.
Most people hurt at work in Texas are not hurt on a construction site. They are hurt in a warehouse off the interstate, on a restaurant line, in a plant, on a care home floor, or driving somebody else’s van on somebody else’s schedule.
The response is quick and it is well practised. There is an incident report by the afternoon, a clinic the company has an arrangement with, and a stack of forms with tabs on them. What there is not is anybody whose job is to explain what you just gave up.
The first week decides most of what follows. The machine is repaired, the video is overwritten, the crew turns over, and somebody asks you to sign something before you have read it. None of that has to be handled by you, and almost none of it should be.
Free case review
You talk to the lawyer who would try it, not to an intake screener.
No fee unless we win
Nothing up front. The fee comes out of the recovery, or there is none.
Do not sign it yet
Bring us whatever the office has put in front of you. Reading it is free and it is the cheapest hour of your case.
Where It Starts
The question that decides your whole case
It is not how you were hurt. It is whether the company on your pay stub bought workers’ compensation — because Texas is the only state that lets it choose not to, and the answer changes what you can recover and from whom.
Everywhere else in the country an employer carries workers’ compensation because the law says it must. In Texas it is a choice, and hundreds of thousands of Texans work for a company that made the other one without ever being told so.
Nobody explains this on the day you are hurt. You are sent to a clinic somebody else picked, handed a stack of forms and asked to sign where the tabs are. What you signed and what happens next depend entirely on a fact you were never given, and it takes about a minute to look up.
Here is the part worth reading twice. An employer that opted out does not get the protection that comes with the system. It can be sued directly — and under Labor Code §406.033 it may not argue that you were careless, that you knew the job was dangerous, or that a co-worker did it. Those three arguments are how workplace injury cases are usually defended. A non-subscriber has to face a jury without any of them.
Most injured workers assume the cheque their employer offers is what the law allows them. It is usually the smallest of the things that could be paying, and the form beside it is the reason.
Aaron Genthe · Founder
- 01
Texas lets your employer opt out
It is the only state in the country that does. Whether the company on your pay stub bought workers’ compensation is a fact about them rather than about your accident, and it decides everything that follows.
- 02
Opting out costs them their defences
A non-subscriber cannot argue you were careless, that you knew the job was dangerous, or that a co-worker did it. Labor Code §406.033 removes all three. They have to show they were not negligent at all.
- 03
The paperwork is where the case is won or lost
An occupational injury plan is not workers’ compensation. An arbitration agreement is enforceable. A release is final.
Coverage
How to find out tonight, for nothing
Three independent ways to answer the question the rest of this page turns on. None of them requires you to ask your employer to be straight with you, and two of them are public records.
Ask, and then check anyway
“We have insurance” is not the same sentence as “we subscribe to workers’ compensation”. Employers say the first when the second is not true, sometimes without meaning to mislead anybody — the person in the office often does not know either.
Run the state’s coverage search
The Texas Department of Insurance publishes a coverage verification search that answers it directly, free, with no account and no reason required.
A non-subscriber has to report itself
An employer that elects not to carry coverage is required to notify the Division of Workers’ Compensation in writing under Labor Code §406.004, and failing to do so is an administrative violation.
The Clock
Every deadline you have, on one axis
The two-year filing deadline is the only one most people have heard of, and it is the last of yours to expire.
The injury
Day zero
Video, and the machine’s own data
No rule requires it kept
Telling your employer — §409.001
30 days
Notice to a public employer, where you work for one
Six months
Filing the claim with the Division — §409.003
One year
Suing — the ordinary Texas limitations period
Two years
Where It Happens
The eight places we are called from
Outside construction, which has its own page here. Each of these is proved a different way and points at a different set of defendants.
- 01Warehouses and distributionForklifts, pallet jacks, racking collapse, loading dock falls and the pick rates that produce them. The busiest injury sector in North Texas and the one with the most third parties on site.
- 02Delivery and driving for workA crash on the round is two claims at once: the comp or non-subscriber claim against your employer, and an ordinary injury claim against whoever hit you.
- 03Restaurants, kitchens and hotelsBurns, slips on a wet line, lacerations and the lifting injuries nobody reports until they cannot straighten up. Turnover means the witnesses leave quickly.
- 04Manufacturing and industrial plantUnguarded machinery, a press that cycled, an energy source that was not isolated. Where the machine was defective the manufacturer is a defendant with its own insurer.
- 05Oilfield and energy servicesRig floor, pressure, fire and the long drives between sites. Layers of operator, contractor and service company, and master service agreements that decide who answers.
- 06Healthcare and care homesPatient handling injuries, needlesticks and assaults. Chronically under-reported, and the injury that ends a career is usually cumulative rather than one event.
- 07Retail and groceryStockroom ladders, cages, box cutters and floors that are wet because a customer made them wet. Two possible claims where a third party caused it.
- 08Temporary and staffing agency workTwo employers, and often only one of them subscribes. Which is which decides whether the company you actually worked for can be sued at all.
The Paperwork
What they put in front of you in the first week
This is where these cases are won and lost, and it is the part no injured worker is warned about.
The occupational injury plan
A non-subscriber that offers “benefits” is usually offering a private plan it wrote itself. It is not workers’ compensation, it is not regulated as insurance, and the company that decides your claim under it is the company you would be suing.
The arbitration agreement
Very often it is in the onboarding stack, signed on the first day along with the handbook, and neither you nor your supervisor remembers it. It moves your claim out of court and in front of an arbitrator, with no jury and very little right of appeal.
The release, dressed as something else
It is rarely called a release. It is a “final settlement of benefits”, an “acknowledgement”, or a form attached to a cheque that covers about a fortnight of wages.
The recorded statement
An adjuster — sometimes the employer’s own risk department — will ask for a recorded account while you are medicated and before you know what is wrong with you. It is taken to be used, and the questions about what you were doing and how you were feeling that morning are not idle.
The clinic you were sent to
Being sent to a company clinic is normal and it is not sinister by itself, but the notes taken there become the medical record of your injury, and “patient reports feeling better” after a single visit is a sentence that gets read out for the next two years.
Case Value
What each kind of claim actually pays
Not a comparison of good and bad. They are two different instruments — one pays without fault and pays less, the other requires proof and pays for everything.
What workers’ compensation pays
If your employer subscribes, this is the whole of it. No fault to prove — and no jury, no pain, no impairment.
Medical treatment
For the work injury, through the carrier’s network, with disputes decided administratively rather than by a court.
A portion of lost wages
A fraction of your average weekly wage, subject to a state maximum that is reset every year. It is not your wages.
Impairment income
A fixed number of weeks tied to a rating, arrived at by a formula rather than by anybody looking at your life.
Death and burial benefits
Where a worker is killed, defined benefits payable to eligible beneficiaries under the statute.
Nothing for pain
Nor for mental anguish, disfigurement, impairment beyond the rating or loss of consortium. That is the trade the system makes.
What a negligence claim pays
Against a non-subscriber, or against a third party. Fault has to be proved — and everything is on the table.
All medical costs, past and future
Valued by the people treating you rather than by a fee schedule.
Full lost earnings
What you actually did not earn, including overtime and shift premiums you can show.
Lost earning capacity
What the injury takes out of the rest of your working life. Routinely the largest figure in a serious case.
Physical pain and mental anguish
Past and future. Compensable here and worth nothing at all in the comp system.
Impairment, disfigurement, consortium
What you can no longer do, the scarring that is permanent, and the claim belonging to your spouse.
Third Parties
The claim against somebody who is not your employer
The exclusive remedy protects the company you work for. It protects nobody else, and on a serious injury the claim against everybody else is normally the larger half of the recovery.
Comp does not stop you suing anybody else
The exclusive remedy in Labor Code §408.001 protects your employer. It does not protect a driver who hit your van, the manufacturer of the machine that failed, the contractor whose crew created the hazard, or the owner of the premises you were working on.
Expect the carrier to want its money back
Where you have drawn comp benefits and then recover from a third party, the insurance carrier is subrogated to your claim under Labor Code §417.001 and is reimbursed out of the recovery.
Two employers, one of them liable
Temporary and staffing arrangements are the commonest version of this. The agency may subscribe while the company you actually worked for does not, or the reverse, and which of them counts as your employer for the purposes of the bar is a genuine legal question rather than a formality.
Being called a contractor does not make you one
Whether somebody is an employee or an independent contractor is decided on the facts of the working relationship, not by the label on the paperwork or by being paid on a 1099.
Evidence
Most of the proof belongs to the defendant
A workplace records more about your accident than you do — cameras, maintenance files, training records, the machine’s own counters.
- 01
The incident report
Written the same day, by somebody else, in words you did not choose. Ask for a copy while asking is normal.
- 02
The machine and its guarding
Photograph it before it is repaired, re-guarded or sent back to the leasing company. Repairs happen within days of a serious injury.
- 03
The video
Warehouses, kitchens and plants are covered by cameras. No rule requires the footage to be kept and the loops are short.
- 04
Training and maintenance records
What you were trained on, what was serviced, what was deferred. It is all in a file that belongs to the defendant.
- 05
Your co-workers
The best witnesses were standing next to you, and turnover in these industries is measured in months. Names now.
- 06
Your own medical record
Say what hurts, at every visit. A gap in treatment and a cheerful clinic note are the two things used hardest against injured workers.
Texas Law
The six rules that decide a worker’s claim
Even where the accident was plainly somebody’s fault, Texas law shapes what you recover. These six decide most of it, and the second is the answer to the fear that stops most people ringing.
The exclusive remedy, and the gap in it
Where an employer subscribes, comp benefits are generally the employee’s only remedy against it. There is one significant exception in the statute itself: §408.001(b) preserves a claim for exemplary damages by the surviving spouse or heirs where the death was caused by the employer’s gross negligence or an intentional act.
They cannot punish you for claiming
Labor Code §451.001 makes it unlawful to discharge or discriminate against an employee for filing a compensation claim in good faith, for hiring a lawyer to bring one, for instituting a proceeding, or for testifying in one.
Tell your employer within thirty days
Section 409.001 requires notice to the employer within thirty days of the injury — or, for an occupational disease, thirty days from when you knew or should have known it was work-related.
Proportionate responsibility — and where it does not apply
In an ordinary Texas negligence case your recovery is reduced by your share of the fault and barred entirely above 50%.
Two years to sue, and less to do everything else
The ordinary Texas limitations period is two years from the injury. It is the last of your deadlines, not the first — the thirty days, the one year, and the six months that apply if you work for a public body all run out ahead of it.
OSHA is a separate track, and a useful one
An OSHA inspection produces the one investigation of your accident that nobody can call yours. Citations, the inspection file and the employer’s response are obtainable and they carry weight.
The Process
What happens when you call us
If you have never worked with a lawyer before you may feel overwhelmed, or a little suspicious.
- 01
Free case review
You call or message. We ask what happened, who you work for, what you have been asked to sign and whether anybody has recorded you.
- 02
We find out how you are covered
We run your employer through the state coverage search that day. Whether they subscribe decides which case you have, and you should not have to guess at it.
- 03
We read the paperwork before you sign it
The plan document, the arbitration agreement, the handbook and anything attached to a cheque. This is where these cases are usually decided and it costs you nothing.
- 04
We build it and we negotiate
Future care, lost earning capacity and impairment valued properly, every third party identified, the comp lien negotiated, and suit filed if the numbers will not move.
- 05
You get paid
We go through the settlement line by line, including what the carrier is owed and what we got that reduced. Nobody leaves here wondering what just happened.
Client Reviews
What our clients say about us
Not all of these were left by injured workers — they are people this firm represented after somebody else’s negligence hurt them, published as they wrote it.
Rated five out of five stars
“I was badly injured. Broken knee. Broken ankle. Severe head and neck trauma. I called several attorneys for help. No one returned my calls… From the first phone call, he took charge of my case. He made sure I had the best specialists that covered every medical issue that I required.”
Tracy Fortner
Rated five out of five stars
“The team worked very efficiently and was very flexible with our decisions as clients… Case took a little longer than expected at first, but overall good experience.”
Ancelmo Parada
Rated five out of five stars
“The attorneys and staff is Amazing. They will keep you informed.”
Arlene Mitchell
Your Attorney
The lawyer who works your case
This page has promised you a real attorney rather than a call centre several times over. It is only fair to say who that is.
Founder · Trial Attorney
Aaron Genthe
A Texas A&M graduate who went into personal injury straight out of law school, Aaron spent years as a litigator at one of the larger firms in Dallas — long enough to build a reputation as an aggressive and effective attorney, and long enough to watch how easily a client becomes a file number at a firm that size.
He started Genthe Law Firm so that the person you speak to about your injury is the person who tries it. Work injury cases are where that matters most: they are decided by documents somebody has to actually read, in the week you are least able to read anything.
- Practising since
- 2015
- Cases handled
- Hundreds, in Dallas and across Texas
- Education
- Texas A&M graduate
- Fee
- Contingency — nothing unless you recover
Questions
Workplace injury FAQs
The questions injured workers ask on the first call, answered the way we answer them on the phone.
How do I find out whether my employer has workers’ compensation?
Run the company through the Texas Department of Insurance coverage verification search, which is free and public. Use the formal entity name from your pay stub rather than the name over the door — they are frequently different, and the search will miss it.
My employer has no workers’ comp. Is that legal?
Yes. Texas is the only state that allows a private employer to opt out, and a great many do.
Can I sue if I am already receiving workers’ compensation?
Not usually your own employer — that is the trade the system makes. But you can sue anybody else whose negligence contributed: the driver who hit your van, the manufacturer of the machine, the contractor whose crew created the hazard, the owner of the premises you were working on.
They gave me papers to sign. Should I?
Not before somebody has read them. The stack handed to an injured worker in the first week is commonly an occupational injury plan election, an arbitration agreement, or a release attached to a cheque.
Will I be fired for making a claim?
It is unlawful. Labor Code §451.001 prohibits discharging or discriminating against an employee for filing a compensation claim in good faith, for hiring a lawyer, for instituting a proceeding or for testifying in one, and it is a claim in its own right with its own remedies.
Also Handled Here
If your injury was something else
The neighbouring claims this firm litigates most often, including the ones that reach a workplace from the road.
- 01Construction AccidentsHurt on a site rather than in a building
- 02Truck AccidentsHurt driving for work, or by somebody who was
- 03Car AccidentsA crash on the round or the commute
- 04Slip & FallFalls on premises you do not work for
- 05Traumatic Brain InjuryHead injury from a fall or a struck-by
- 06Wrongful DeathClaims brought by a surviving family
- 07Bus AccidentsTransit, school and charter buses
- 08Uber & RideshareDriving for an app when it happened
Read more on being hurt at work
- Hurt at Work? Workers’ Comp Non-Subscribers in TexasThe rule this whole page turns on
- Workers’ Comp vs. Personal Injury Lawsuit in TexasWhich door you are standing in front of
- Arbitration Agreements in Injury CasesWhat you may have signed on your first day
- Can an Employer Be Liable for Its Employees’ Accidents?Agency work, and who counts as the employer
- Amputation Injury Lawsuits in TexasMachinery, guarding and the manufacturer
- Burn Injury Lawsuits in TexasKitchens, plant and chemical exposure
