You were hurt on the job in Central Texas. What happens next matters.
Construction falls, warehouse crush injuries, data-center electrical accidents, manufacturing amputations. We pursue every party whose decisions put you in that situation — not just the employer’s workers’ comp carrier.
A building boom, with the injury rates to match.
Central Texas has been running a ten-year construction boom — downtown high-rises, Samsung’s Taylor fab, Tesla’s Gigafactory, Apple’s North Austin campus, and warehouse parks along the I-35 corridor. Fast schedules, stacked subcontractors, and a mix of long-tenured trades and day laborers are a known recipe for serious injury. And because Texas is a non-subscriber state, many of these employers opt out of workers’ comp entirely — which dramatically changes what your case looks like.
Eight patterns we see again and again.
Falls from height
Scaffold collapses, unguarded floor openings, and unsecured ladders on Austin high-rise and multifamily sites.
Struck-by & crush
Falling material, crane loads, and equipment strikes on tight downtown job sites with overlapping trades.
Electrocutions
Contact with energized lines during data-center and fab build-outs, especially during MEP rough-in.
Warehouse & forklift
Forklift tip-overs, pedestrian strikes, and rack-collapse injuries at I-35 and SH-130 distribution centers.
Manufacturing amputations
Unguarded machinery and lockout/tagout failures at Central Texas fabs, food processors, and metal shops.
Chemical & thermal burns
Ammonia, acid, and high-temperature exposures in semiconductor, food-processing, and plating facilities.
Trench & excavation
Cave-ins on utility and foundation work — almost always a failure to shore or slope per OSHA.
Work-vehicle collisions
Service techs, delivery drivers, and crew-truck passengers hurt in on-the-clock collisions across the I-35 corridor.
Workers’ comp is not the whole story.
Most injured workers in Texas are told “it’s a workers’ comp case” and sent home with a fraction of what they’ve lost. In Central Texas specifically — where job sites routinely have half a dozen companies operating at once — the path to real compensation usually runs through a third-party claim, or a direct claim against a non-subscriber employer.
Workers’ comp — or non-subscriber.
Texas lets employers opt out of workers’ comp. If yours did (a ‘non-subscriber’), you can sue them directly for negligence — and they lose the standard workplace-injury defenses.
- Subscriber: medical + lost wages via TDI-DWC, capped
- Non-subscriber: direct negligence claim against the employer
- We confirm status before you accept anything
The people who aren’t your employer.
On a Central Texas job site, there can be ten companies in play — GCs, subs, equipment owners, staffing agencies, chemical suppliers. Workers’ comp does not bar claims against any of them.
- General contractor or site-safety coordinator
- Equipment manufacturer or rental company
- Property owner / premises liability
- Subcontractor whose crew caused the hazard
What you do right now shapes what your case is worth.
An ER or urgent-care visit creates the contemporaneous record adjusters will try to deny exists. Tell the provider exactly how it happened — at work, doing what.
Texas requires written notice to your employer within 30 days, but same-day written notice (text or email is fine) forecloses a key defense.
Photos of equipment, the site, warning signs (or lack thereof), your clothing, and any defective PPE. Get names and numbers of every coworker who saw it.
Recorded statements to the employer’s insurer almost always hurt. A free consultation with us costs you nothing and protects everything.
A sampling of what we’ve recovered in workplace-injury cases.
“Every workplace-injury case I’ve tried in this state came down to the same question — who made the decision that put this person in harm’s way. That’s who we pursue.”
Founder · McFarlane Law · Austin, TX
Every city in Central Texas.
Our office is on Bee Cave Rd in Austin. We represent workers injured on job sites across the six-county Austin MSA and the surrounding Central Texas region — filing in the county where the injury happened.
The questions injured Central Texas workers ask us first.
Yes, in most cases. Workers’ comp blocks a claim against your direct employer, but it does not block claims against other companies on the job site — the general contractor, equipment owners, subcontractors, manufacturers, or property owners. On Central Texas job sites these ‘third-party’ claims are frequently where the real recovery is.
Many Texas employers — especially in construction, warehousing, and hospitality — opt out of workers’ comp entirely. When that’s the case, you can sue the employer directly for negligence, and the employer loses the standard defenses (contributory negligence, assumption of risk, fellow-employee rule). We confirm subscriber status on day one.
Texas has a two-year statute of limitations for most personal-injury claims, but don’t wait. Evidence disappears in days, not months: site conditions change, witnesses leave, and surveillance footage is routinely overwritten on 30-day cycles.
A conversation — by phone, video, or in person at our Bee Cave Rd office — with Zach. We review what happened, what’s been said, and what the likely paths to recovery are. There’s no fee and no obligation.
Contingency. We advance case costs and take a percentage of the recovery only if we win. If there’s no recovery, you owe nothing — no fees, no expenses, no billing surprises.
Texas law prohibits retaliation for reporting an on-the-job injury or pursuing a valid claim. If retaliation happens, it becomes its own claim, often stronger than the underlying injury case. We’ll walk through how to protect yourself before we file anything.
Talk to a Central Texas workplace-injury attorney today.
Every consultation is free and confidential. You will speak directly with Zach McFarlane — not a paralegal, not a screening service.