McAllen Construction Accident Lawyer

Construction Accident Attorney in McAllen, TX

A fall from a roof, a trench that caved in, a load dropped from above: construction injuries are often severe, and the finger-pointing starts right away. The general contractor blames your employer, your employer blames another crew, and your bills keep coming. You want to know who is responsible and what being on the clock means for your claim.

Texas law lets you bring a claim against every company whose negligence caused your injury, not only your employer. If your employer has no workers’ compensation coverage, you can sue it directly, and it cannot blame you for your own injury. Property owners are harder to reach, and in most cases you have two years to file.

Born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, Attorney Abraham Peña limits his practice to injury cases, in English and in Spanish. Tell us what happened on the site and which companies were there, and we will explain who may owe you.

Construction Accidents in McAllen

Road and bridge work on Interstate 2 (Expressway 83), Interstate 69C (US-281) and Interstate 69E (US-77) puts crews beside live traffic and backing equipment. Commercial projects along 10th Street, Nolana Avenue and Ware Road involve scaffolding and crane lifts, and new subdivisions across the Valley depend on framing and roofing crews working at height. Many of the framing, roofing and concrete subcontractors on those jobs do not carry workers’ compensation.

An employer that has chosen not to carry workers’ compensation, which Texas allows for most private employers, is called a non-subscriber.

What to Do After a Construction Accident

Job sites change fast, so act quickly if you can:

• Get medical care immediately. A fall or trench collapse is a trauma case, and DHR Health in Edinburg is the Valley’s Level I trauma center.
• Put your injury report in writing. Send it to your employer and, if you can, to the general contractor’s superintendent.
• Photograph the site before it is cleaned up. Capture the edge without a guardrail, the trench without a box, the equipment and your injuries.
• Write down every company on the site. Truck doors and site signs identify them; add supervisors and witnesses.
• Do not give recorded statements or sign releases. Let us review them first.

Who Can Be Held Responsible for a Construction Accident?

Every company on a job site is a possible defendant. We look at:

• Your employer, if it is a non-subscriber (our McAllen work injury lawyer page explains the rules).
• The general contractor, if it controlled how the work was done or knew of a hazard and did nothing.
• Another subcontractor whose crew dropped a load or left a trench open.
• The maker of a scaffold, lift, harness or trench box that failed because of a defect in its design, manufacture or warnings.
• A trucking company whose delivery truck struck a worker.
• The property owner, but only in the limited cases below.

We send preservation demands to every company on the site and request the contracts, safety plan and daily logs, which show who controlled what.

When Is the Property Owner Responsible?

Chapter 95 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code shields owners of commercial property from most claims by contractors and their workers hurt while building, repairing or renovating an improvement on the property. The owner is liable only if both of these are true: it exercised or kept some control over how the work was done, beyond the right to start or stop it, inspect progress or receive reports, and it actually knew of the danger and failed to adequately warn.

The Texas Supreme Court applies this protection to every negligence claim arising from the condition or use of the improvement, including unsafe activity on the site, but it protects the owner itself, not the owner’s individual employees. Proving control and knowledge takes the contracts, daily reports and testimony from the owner’s site representatives.

What You Can Recover After a Construction Accident

Against the companies responsible, you can seek compensation for:

• Medical bills, including surgery and rehabilitation
• Future medical care
• Lost wages
• Lost earning capacity, often the largest loss for a tradesman who cannot go back to the tools
• Pain and mental anguish, past and future
• Permanent impairment and disfigurement
• Wrongful death and survival damages if a worker died (see our McAllen wrongful death lawyer page)

Exemplary damages are possible on clear and convincing proof of gross negligence, subject to Texas’s cap. Falls from height often cause spinal injuries, which our McAllen spinal cord injury lawyer page covers.

How Long Do You Have to File, and Does Fault Matter?

In most cases you have two years from the date of the injury to file suit, or two years from the date of death if a worker was killed. If a city, county or state agency owned the project, written notice is due within six months, and some city charters set an even shorter period.

A non-subscriber employer cannot reduce your claim by blaming you. Against the other companies on the site, a jury assigns a percentage of fault to everyone involved under Texas’s modified comparative fault rule: your award shrinks by your share, and if your share is more than half, you recover nothing. If a jury awarded $400,000 and found you 35 percent at fault, you would receive $260,000.

FAQs

The general contractor says I can only sue my own employer. Is that right?

No. A general contractor is responsible for its own negligence, for example when it controlled the work or knew of a hazard and did not correct it. Even a property owner loses its special protection when it had control over the work and actual knowledge of the danger.

I was paid as a 1099 contractor. Can I still bring a claim?

Yes. Whether you were an employee depends on who controlled the details of the work, not on the tax form. Even as an independent contractor, you can bring a claim against any company whose negligence hurt you, and the property owner rule applies the same control-and-knowledge test either way.

Nobody from OSHA came to the site. Can I still prove the contractor was negligent?

Yes. An OSHA inspection or citation is not required. Federal construction safety standards, such as the rules on fall protection at six feet and cave-in protection in trenches, are evidence of what a reasonable contractor should have done, though a violation does not automatically win the case.

My employer has workers’ comp. Who else can I bring a claim against?

Your employer is usually off limits, since comp benefits are the only remedy against it. The general contractor, other subcontractors and equipment makers can still be held responsible, and the comp carrier is repaid out of that recovery up to what it paid.

Does immigration status affect a construction injury claim?

Talk to a lawyer privately about this before you talk to anyone else. Your claim is about medical bills, lost wages and pain caused by someone’s negligence, and defense lawyers look for anything that distracts from that. We can discuss how status is handled in a Texas case in a confidential consultation.

How much does it cost to hire a construction accident lawyer?

You owe nothing upfront. We handle construction injury cases on a contingency fee, paid from the money we recover, and if we recover nothing, there is no fee.

contact Attorney Abraham Peña

Call Us (737) 999-3335

Talk to a McAllen Construction Accident Lawyer Today

A construction injury can end a career built on physical work, and you should not have to sort out a site full of companies alone. Call The Law Office of Abraham Peña, PLLC at (737) 999-3335 or send us a message through our contact page for a free, confidential consultation. We charge no fee unless we win, and we meet by appointment at 813 N Main St., Suite 404, McAllen. ¡Hablamos español! Esta página también está disponible en español: abogado de accidentes de construcción en McAllen.