Fatal Gas and Oil Worker Accidents

Attorney Michael Grossman Can Help Your Family If You’ve Lost a Loved One in an Gas or Oilfield Drilling Accident

Even if you haven’t spent any time in Texas at all, you’ve heard that this is oil and gas country. Most people have a romantic view of Texas that involves cows grazing quietly in front of a noisy oil derrick, pumping methodically away in the heat of the Lone Star State. Arkansas doesn’t have the reputation as oil country, but the Natural State has its share of oil and natural gas mining and refinement.

No matter where it occurs, oil mining is big business, and it comes with a time limit. Oil reserves are limited, and there are often multiple companies competed for those limited resources. Thus, companies keep machinery working day and night, with more emphasis on productivity than safety.

When you combine that round-the-clock drilling and pumping with the enormous danger inherent with volatile substances like oil and gas, perhaps you can see why fatal gas and oil pipeline accidents are more common than anyone would like. If the oil companies are not doing their part to ensure worksite safety or if they’re not adequately drug testing their workers to make sure they’re performing their jobs while sober, then he likelihood of accidents and deaths only increases.

Moreover, in an oilfield or gas pipeline worksite, there are seemingly countless dangers that could potentially lead to fatal consequences. Equipment can be defective or simply wear down due to the harsh realities of time and elements. Volatile substances like gas and oil can explode or catch fire. Recklessness by workers can cause fatal crushing when enormous drilling equipment falls or drilling structures collapse. With a great deal of money to be made, workers often push the limits of exhaustion by taking back-to-back shifts, and bad things tend to happen when over-tired people labor with heavy machinery.

When someone you love is killed in an oilfield or gas pipeline accident due to someone else’s negligence, then you have the right to pursue compensation. Yes, we know that it may seem crass and uncaring to be thinking about money right after you’ve lost your family member. However, we also understand that your only means of bringing the party who caused your loved one’s death to justice is through a wrongful death lawsuit. Plus, we also know that your family will not be able to bounce back emotionally unless it can also recover economically from this tragedy. That can be impossible if the deceased oil or gas worker was the primary breadwinner in the family. In order to succeed with a complex workers’ compensation claim, you’re going to need the help of a skilled and seasoned wrongful death lawyer.

In Texas, the means by which your wrongful death claim will be settled is based entirely on whether or not your loved one worked for an employer who bought workers’ compensation insurance or didn’t. Not all employers in Texas are required to buy workers’ comp insurance, but the ones who do are immune from almost all litigation. In Arkansas, all employers but those who have less than three employees or agricultural companies must buy workers’ compensation insurance.

While a subscribing employer can usually not be sued after an on-the-job accident, there may be other negligent parties who either caused or helped caused the fatal accident. Thus, you need an experienced attorney to conduct a thorough investigation into the accident’s cause, identify the negligent parties, and find the evidence that will prove the case against them. Moreover, you will be taking on a multimillion-dollar oil, gas, or insurance company (and their lawyers), so you will need your own expert protecting your interests and defending your loved one’s memory.

At Grossman Law Offices, our oilfield law firm has been helping grieving families after fatal accidents for 20 years. It takes experience to win, and we offer you a time and trial-tested team of oilfield and gas pipeline lawyers. If you attempt to handle your own claim, you will not likely end up with the compensation you deserve.

Subscriber or Nonsubscriber

In Texas, the first thing that needs to be done before legal action can be taken in response to a fatal oilfield or gas pipeline accident is determining whether or not the employer had workers’ compensation insurance. Employers that purchase workers’ comp are known as subscribers, and those that are not are nonsubscribers.

When companies subscribe to workers’ compensation, they receive nearly complete protection from lawsuits and can only be sued by the families of victims when the employer’s own gross negligence caused the workers’ death. The only recourse for the families of people killed while working for subscribers is to file a workers’ compensation claim, but the minimum allowable insurance coverage is usually far less the payoff from such a claim will be far less than the actual amount of suffering incurred by the loved one’s death. The family of a wrongfully killed employee will be able to recover compensation from workers’ comp insurance regardless of who was at fault for the accident, but not to the extent of the actual harm caused by a wrongful death.

For fairly obvious reasons, some employers will attempt to fake that they have workers’ compensation insurance, even going so far as to offer payments to the family of a worker who has been killed on the job. However, they will want the family to sign a waiver of liability that will block them from suing in the future. The employers will cut corners by not buying the insurance then try to avoid the greater expenditure of paying your family the true value of the harm caused by the death of your family member.

You need to secure the counsel of a oilfield injury lawyer who has spent years dealing with these types of cases and knows how to handle the underhanded tactics of crafty employers and prove their true worker’ compensation status.

Assigning Negligence for the Fatal Oilfield or Gas Pipeline Accident

After figuring out the workers’ comp status of your loved one’s employer, your lawyer can then focus on figuring out who actually caused the fatal accident, and how. Subscribing employers are protected against law suits over on-the-job-accidents, but they’re not immune from them.

When the gross negligence of the employer caused the employee to be killed in an oilfield accident or gas pipeline mishap, then the surviving family may still file a wrongful death lawsuit. Negligence occurs when someone makes a solitary error in judgment, behavior, or execution. Gross negligence differs from that in that it entails a party doing something careless or reckless that it knew was likely to cause an accident. When an oil company uses substandard parts in a well in order to save money, and those parts then cause a fatal accident, the company is grossly negligent. By the same token, if an employee of the company commits gross negligence, then a legal concept called respondeat superior holds the employer liable for the employee’s actions or inaction.

On the other hand, the employer doesn’t necessarily have to be the party who caused your loved one’s death. When it comes to fatal oilfield accidents, there can be a number of parties who are responsible – the manufacturer of defective machinery, a company that leased improperly maintained machinery to the employer, or the owner of a rig or pipeline. When the employer is a subscriber, the family of a wrongfully killed employee can file a workers’ compensation claim to recover the paltry insurance settlement, but it can also sue a liable third party. When insurance limits fair recovery, then this is the only way for the family to pursue the compensation they deserve.

If you believe that your loved one’s employer has workers’ compensation insurance, hopefully you now understand why you still need the help of a knowledgeable and experienced oilfield accident lawyer. Without a good lawyer, you have very little chance of identifying all of the responsible parties and finding the evidence you will need to prove your case against them. At Grossman Law Offices, our attorneys know how to investigate accident scenes whether in an oilfield or a gas pipeline, and we know how to take the evidence we find and develop an effective strategy for securing maximum compensation.

Taking on Non-Subscribers

In Arkansas, all large employers must by workers’ compensation insurance, but in Texas, only about half of employers subscribe. Among small oil producers, that percentage is likely higher since many of them live month-to-month off the flow of the market and the oilfield. The danger in oilfield work makes workers’ compensation insurance in this field extremely expensive. Thus, oil and gas companies have plenty of incentive for avoiding workers’ comp coverage. Additionally, it’s highly likely in this dangerous field that your loved one’s company has fought wrongful death or personal injury lawsuits before, so they know what to expect. Meanwhile, you are new to this process, naïve and vulnerable. You need to protect yourself with an oilfield accident attorney who is even more experienced and has the knowledge to match wits with your loved one’s employer.

To begin, your attorney will file a claim with the nonsubscriber or a negligent third party informing them of the family’s intention to sue for wrongful death damages. Defendants will then either contact their insurance company or hire a lawyer, who will usually contest your claim’s value or validity. This is why you need an excellent lawyer, with the capability of performing a thorough investigation to prove the cause of the fatal accident. The stronger case you have, the more likely you are to receive a settlement that compensates you fairly for the death of your loved ones. However, the defense could choose to fight, and then your case turns into a lawsuit in court. If this happens, then the burden of proof is on the shoulders of the victim’s family, also known as the plaintiffs, to prove the case. You need to be able to prove that the defendant owed a duty to your loved one and neglected that duty, causing the death of your loved one.

What Damages Can be Sought in a Wrongful Death Lawsuit?

When suing a grossly negligent subscriber, a nonsubscriber, or a negligent third party for the wrongful death of a loved one in an oilfield or gas pipeline accident, the family members can seek both wrongful death damages and survival damages. Wrongful damages give the spouse, children, and parents of the deceased the opportunity to seek monetary compensation for the economic and emotional losses they experienced when their loved one died. Examples of wrongful death damages include:

• Funeral bills.
• Mental and emotional anguish.
• Loss of familial love and companionship.
• Loss of monetary support the victim supplied.

Survival damages, on the converse, can only be sought by one member of the family – the victim’s closest living relative, starting with the spouse, then a child, then a parent, and then a sibling. Survival damages, which give the closest living relative the right to seek the compensation the victim should be due for his or her own death, may include:

• Medical bills charged to the deceased before he or she died.
• The victim’s mental trauma.
• The victim’s pain and suffering.

Anyone can figure out how to prove damages for funeral bills – just print out an itemized list provided by the funeral home. Other damages, like pain and suffering for someone who has burned in a fire, are much harder to assess and demand the skilled touch of an oilfield injury attorney familiar with these cases.

Common Challenges to Recovery

Most employers or negligent third parties will not be in a hurry to pay the victim’s family the compensation they deserve. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that most negligent parties will do whatever they can to avoid liability. Fortunately for your family, the laws in this state have been created to encourage employers to buy workers’ compensation insurance, so they have very few excuses for avoiding paying damages.

First, they can claim the sole proximate cause defense – that the deceased victim actually caused his or her own death entirely with his or her own negligence. Thus, they will attempt to besmirch your loved one’s reputation in order to make him or her look like a negligent employee. You need a skilled oilfield injury attorney who can defend your loved one’s good name, and your right to be fairly compensated.

Other employers begin preparing to contest wrongful death lawsuits by the families of their employers before they even hire them. They advertise for and hire workers as contractors because they know that contractors are not due the duty of safe working conditions from the companies that hire them, nor can they pursue workers’ compensation claims when injured on the job. The catch with this scheme is that the law may actually consider the alleged contractor to be an employee if the terms of his or her employment met some conditions, including whether or not taxes or social security was taken out of paychecks, whether or not equipment was provided by the employer, whether or not any rights were surrendered by the worker in order to take the job like if a drug test was required, whether or not the worker was paid a salary or hourly wage, among others.

Grossman Law Offices Can Help You

If you have lost a loved one in a wrongful death in an oilfield or on a gas pipeline, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration can do nothing at all to help you. All OSHA will do is compile a general report about the incident and possibly issue a fine. If you want to obtain the compensation you deserve after your loved one has died, then you need to hire an oilfield accident attorney you can trust.

For two decades, the attorneys at Grossman Law Offices have been helping grieving families find justice and fair restitution after the deaths of their loved ones. Hundreds of Texans and Arkansans have walked away from their wrongful death cases with many millions of dollars thanks to our work both in the courtroom fighting for verdicts and at the negotiating table working out settlements. Our long history of success often allows for aggressive negotiations with oil companies, leading to pretrial settlement offers that allow our clients to get on with rebuilding their lives with as little additional stress as possible. To find out how we can help your family, call us now for a free consultation at 1-855-589-5645 (toll free). You will have the opportunity of discussing your case with one of our lawyers and asking any questions you may have. Call now and learn what we can do for you and what legal options you have available.