Undefeated Texas Industrial Accident Lawyers
If you or a loved one were hurt in an industrial accident or explosion, you’re probably not thinking about evidence. You’re focused on survival. Getting through the treatments, coping with the pain, and figuring out how to pay the bills now that the paychecks have stopped coming.
But the fact is, whether you’re able to hold the responsible parties accountable and recover the maximum compensation possible for all your injuries and losses will largely hinge on your ability to secure and preserve the evidence central to your case. Much of that evidence — surveillance footage, process control data, the physical scene itself — has an incredibly short shelf life. It’s not always readily accessible, and the at-fault parties—and their insurance companies— will never voluntarily turn it over.
Having won billions for thousands of workers and families in connection with some of the worst plant and refinery explosions, oilfield accidents, and pipeline disasters in Texas history, our Undefeated Industrial Accident Lawyers understand what’s at stake. We know what evidence is needed to win your case, we know where to look for it, and we have the experience and resources to ensure it’s not “lost” or destroyed before you have a chance to prove your claims.
What Evidence Makes or Breaks an Industrial Accident Case?
If you’re going to recover enough compensation to rebuild your life after a catastrophic workplace injury, you need to prove that negligence on the part of another party was directly responsible for the harm you’ve endured. Evidence is what tells that story.
- Maintenance and inspection records: Maintenance logs, inspection reports, and work orders can reveal a years-long pattern of neglect, proving not just that something failed, but that the at-fault company was aware—or should have been aware—of the failure, and made a deliberate choice to do nothing.
- Process control system data: The continuous stream of pressure readings, temperature logs, and automated alerts generated by industrial facilities can tell investigators exactly what was happening in the moments before a catastrophe.
- Surveillance and security camera footage: Video documenting the moments before, during, and after a workplace accident or explosion is powerful, compelling evidence. But without a formal preservation demand, there’s a good chance it will be overwritten or destroyed before you have a chance to prove your case.
- Prior OSHA citations and inspection history: A company’s history of violations — particularly involving the same equipment or type of hazard that caused your accident — establishes that they were on notice of a dangerous condition and failed to address it.
- Internal communications: Emails, texts, and internal reports can reveal what supervisors and executives knew before the accident happened and what they decided to do about it. But without appropriate legal action, these communications could be lost forever if someone decides to clean out their inbox.
- Physical evidence from the accident scene: Defective equipment, ruptured components, and damaged safety systems can be quickly removed or destroyed once a company regains control of the industrial accident site. However, under Texas law, defendants can face serious legal consequences for destroying relevant evidence once they know litigation is likely/
- Expert testimony. Much of the evidence critical to an industrial accident case is technically complex. It takes experts — process safety engineers, fire origin and cause specialists, metallurgists, regulatory compliance professionals, and medical and economic experts — to explain to a jury exactly what went wrong, why it was preventable, who was responsible, and what it’s going to cost the injured worker and their family for the rest of their lives.
You Can’t Trust the Company to Preserve Critical Evidence
When a worker is seriously injured on the job, the companies operating refineries, chemical and manufacturing plants, oilfields, and pipelines—not to mention their insurers—are only interested in one thing: avoiding responsibility and limiting your payout to what little workers’ compensation benefits might be available to you. In our experience, they accomplish this by:
- Sending their own investigators to the scene within hours, possibly before you or your family have thought about consulting a lawyer
- Allowing critical evidence to be overwritten or lost before it can be obtained through the legal process
- Pressuring you to give a recorded statement, then taking your words out of context and using them s to undermine your credibility and cast doubt on the extent of your injuries.
- Claiming you failed to follow safety procedures, invoke stop work authority, or complete a required job safety analysis
- Forcing you to undergo an evaluation by company-hired physicians with a financial interest in minimizing the severity of their injuries
Your employer may seem sympathetic to your suffering, and they may have even promised to “take care of you” and “make things right.” But if those reassurances cause you to delay seeking legal counsel, you could be giving the responsible parties time to destroy or lose the evidence critical to your case. At best, you could be forced to settle for far less than you deserve. At worst, you risk walking away with nothing.
How Our Texas Industrial Accident Lawyers Identify, Preserve, and Use Evidence to Build a Strong Case
If you’re going to recover the maximum compensation possible for all your injuries and losses, you need attorneys on your side who understand how big corporations and their insurance companies operate, and who have experience and resources to counter their tactics and secure the evidence critical to proving your case. So what can you expect when you hire our firm?
Send Spoliation Letters to Every Relevant Party
Within hours of being retained, your legal team will send formal written preservation demands — known as spoliation letters — to the company, its insurers, any contractors on site, equipment manufacturers, and every other party that may have relevant evidence.
These letters are comprehensive and specific. They identify the accident by date, time, and location, and they spell out in explicit detail every category of evidence that must be preserved, including:
- Surveillance footage
- Process control system data
- Maintenance and inspection logs
- Permit-to-work records
- Safety meeting minutes
- Training documentation
- Internal communications
- Personnel files
- Physical equipment involved in the accident
Under the standard established by the Texas Supreme Court, once a company receives a spoliation letter, its legal obligation to preserve that evidence is clear. If evidence is later destroyed or goes missing, courts can impose serious consequences — including sanctions and instructions that allow jurors to draw unfavorable conclusions about the company’s conduct.
Download Critical Electronic Data Before It’s Overwritten
Process control systems, distributed control systems, safety instrumented systems, and automated sensors generate a continuous stream of readings — pressure levels, flow rates, temperature logs, equipment alerts — that can tell investigators exactly what was happening on an industrial worksite in the moments before an accident or explosion. But because these systems operate on rolling overwrite cycles, this critical information can disappear as little as 24 to 72 hours.
As soon as we take a case, we move to demand the immediate preservation and, where possible, the download of all electronic data from relevant plant systems before it can be lost. In some cases, we work with our own technical experts to ensure that data is captured in a forensically sound manner that will hold up in court.
Place Legal Holds on Physical Equipment and Components
The failed valve, the ruptured pipe, the safety system that didn’t activate — all are physical evidence that can be quickly repaired, replaced, or discarded once a company regains control of a site. That’s why our attorneys act immediately to place legal holds on any relevant equipment or components, preventing them from being altered, repaired, or destroyed before our experts can independently examine them.
Get Our Own Investigators and Engineers to the Scene
We deploy our own team of experienced investigators and engineers to the accident scene as quickly as possible, before it’s cleaned up, repaired, or altered. Unlike the company’s investigators, who are working to protect their client, ours are working to find out what actually happened. They document everything: blast patterns, fire spread, the final position of components, damage to surrounding structures and the condition of safety systems. Physical evidence that disappears from a scene is rarely recoverable, and we treat every site visit as if it might be our only opportunity to do so.
Identify and Interview Witnesses
Co-workers who saw what happened, who heard management dismiss safety concerns, or who reported a hazard before the accident are critical witnesses in any industrial accident case. In our experience, their memories are sharpest in the days immediately following an incident, before they begin to fade and before company representatives have had the opportunity to influence what they remember. That’s why we move so quickly to identify and interview every relevant witness who could provide insight into exactly what happened and why.
Identify Every Responsible Party
Industrial accidents and explosions are rarely the fault of a single party. Depending on the circumstances, liability may extend to contractors or subcontractors who created a hazardous condition, equipment or component manufacturers whose products failed, engineering or safety consulting firms whose work was deficient, or staffing companies that provided inadequately trained workers. Leveraging all available evidence to identify every at-fault party will be key to maximizing your compensation.
Pursue Every Relevant Record Through Discovery
Once a lawsuit is filed, we use the full power of the discovery process to compel the company to produce every relevant record it hasn’t already turned over — internal accident investigation reports, engineering assessments, management of change documentation, process hazard analyses, prior incident reports, and any other records that shed light on what the company knew and when it knew it. We also take depositions of key witnesses — plant managers, safety officers, supervisors, and contractors — to lock in their sworn testimony.
Access to Top Experts
Our attorneys work with some of the most respected independent specialists in the country — process safety engineers, accident reconstructionists, metallurgists, fire origin and cause experts, OSHA compliance specialists, toxicologists, and medical and economic experts — who come on board early, conduct their own independent investigations, and help build the evidentiary foundation the case will stand on all the way through trial. Credentialed professionals with decades of experience, the experts we work with are qualified to render authoritative opinions, and they know how to translate complex technical findings to a jury in a way that is clear, compelling, and impossible to dismiss.
Determine What Your Case Is Actually Worth
The evidence we gather doesn’t just prove liability. It’s also what allows us to build the most complete picture possible of everything you’ve lost and everything you’ll continue to lose. Our attorneys work with medical experts, vocational specialists, and financial analysts to document and quantify every penny of your economic and non-economic damages, including:
- Medical expenses, past and future
- Lost wages and lost earning capacity
- Out-of-pocket expenses
- Pain and suffering
- Mental anguish
- Disfigurement
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Loss of consortium
- Wrongful death and survival damages in the event of a fatal industrial accident
- Punitive damages, in cases involving gross negligence or intentional misconduct
Connect You With the Best Medical Providers
Doctors approved by a workers’ comp insurer are not always the best for a catastrophically injured worker. They’re working for the company, and they have an incentive to downplay your injuries, get you back to work before you’re ready, or declare you’ve reached Maximum Medical Improvement so your benefits can be terminated.
To ensure you get the treatment you need and that your injuries are fully and accurately documented, our attorneys will connect you with leading burn surgeons, trauma specialists, neurologists, and rehabilitation experts across the country. You can trust that these providers will be focused on achieving the best possible outcome for you, rather than satisfying an insurance company’s definition of “reasonable and necessary” care.
Always Ready for Trial
Every one of our Texas industrial accident attorneys is an experienced trial lawyer, and they’ve never lost a case. We won’t even consider a settlement offer that falls short of the maximum compensation possible, and we’ll start preparing your case for trial from day one, so that if the company refuses to negotiate in good faith, we’ll be ready for court. As our undefeated history proves, our team not only knows what it takes to identify and preserve critical evidence; we also know how to use that evidence to tell a compelling story a jury can’t ignore.
Call Our Undefeated Industrial Accident Lawyers at 1-888-603-3636 or Click Here for a Free Consultation
With billions recovered against the biggest industrial companies in Texas and the United States, our Undefeated Texas Industrial Accident Lawyers have the experience, knowledge, and resources to identify, preserve, and leverage critical evidence to maximize our clients’ compensation. That’s why we don’t just win, we consistently recover record-breaking verdicts and settlements on their behalf:
- The #1 Largest Burn Injury Settlement in History
- $100 Million settlement for workers injured in a refinery explosion
- $165 Million settlement for workers injured in a West Texas oilfield explosion
- $85.7 Million settlement for an injured refinery contractor
- $75 Million settlement for workers injured in a plant explosion
If you or a loved one were hurt in an industrial accident, don’t risk losing access to the evidence needed to secure your future. Call 1-888-603-3636, use the “chat” button on our homepage, or click here to send us a confidential email through our “Contact Us” form.
All consultations are free, and you won’t owe us a penny unless we win your case.