Common Questions / Work Injuries
Can I sue if I was injured on the job in Texas?
Often yes, because Texas is the only state where workers' comp is optional. If your employer is a non-subscriber, you can sue it directly and it loses its best defenses; if it carries comp, you may still have full claims against third parties like contractors and equipment makers.
First question: does your employer subscribe?
Texas alone lets private employers opt out of the workers' compensation system, and a meaningful share do. Everything flows from that answer. A subscribing employer gets the exclusive remedy bar: you receive comp benefits, wage replacement and medical care without proving fault, but generally cannot sue the employer for negligence, with a narrow exception allowing exemplary damages to families in gross-negligence death cases. A non-subscriber enjoys no such shield, and the legislature made its choice expensive.
The non-subscriber case: an employer stripped of its armor
Under Texas law, a non-subscribing employer sued by an injured employee cannot assert the classic defenses: not contributory negligence, not assumption of the risk, not the fault of a fellow employee. In practical terms, if the employer's negligence played any part, inadequate training, missing safety equipment, understaffed shifts, unguarded machines, the comparative-fault discount that shrinks ordinary injury cases largely disappears. These cases still must be proven, and non-subscribers often push arbitration agreements and in-house benefit plans designed to look like comp, which deserve a lawyer's reading before you sign or accept anything.
Third-party claims: the case comp cannot touch
Whether or not comp applies, it never bars claims against parties other than your employer. On a construction site, a plant turnaround, or a refinery unit, the negligent actor is frequently another contractor's crew, a delivery driver, a crane operator, or the manufacturer of a defective valve, scaffold, or machine. Those are full personal injury claims, pain, impairment, complete lost earnings, that run alongside any comp benefits, though the comp carrier will assert a subrogation interest that has to be managed. In the serious industrial cases Silver Key Law handles, the third-party investigation is where the real recovery usually lives.
Move before the site changes
Industrial scenes get cleaned, repaired, and returned to service in days, and incident reports get written by the people with the most to lose. Photograph everything you safely can, get coworker names before crews scatter, report the injury in writing, and get independent medical care, not just the company clinic. Then have the subscriber question answered and the third-party map drawn while the evidence still exists.
Injured in Arizona? Some rules on this page are Texas-specific. Arizona differs on points that change outcomes, including pure comparative fault and government-claim deadlines. See our Arizona answers or call (888) 508-6967.
Related: Industrial & Plant Injuries · Catastrophic Injuries · Submit Your Case · All Common Questions
This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes depend on facts; talk to a lawyer about yours.
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