Austin Workplace Injury Lawyer

By Andrew Traub

Austin Workplace Injury Lawyer

Texas is the only state in the country where private employers can legally opt out of workers’ compensation insurance entirely. If you’ve been hurt on the job here, the single most important question isn’t just how you got hurt — it’s whether your employer carries workers’ comp at all, because the two answers lead down completely different legal paths.

If Your Employer Carries Workers’ Comp (“Subscriber”)

You generally file a workers’ compensation claim through the Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers’ Compensation. In exchange for guaranteed medical care and partial wage-replacement benefits regardless of fault, you generally can’t sue your employer directly — workers’ comp is your exclusive remedy against them, with narrow exceptions (most notably intentional acts, or gross negligence in a death case). What you can’t recover through comp: full lost wages, pain and suffering, or emotional distress damages.

If Your Employer Doesn’t (“Non-Subscriber”)

Roughly 6 in 10 Texas construction workers have no workers’ comp coverage at all, according to a 2025 Workers Defense Project report — and construction workers made up 42% of severe heat-related injuries statewide in 2023 despite being less than 9% of the workforce. If your employer is a non-subscriber, there’s no comp claim to file at all. Instead, you can bring a direct personal injury lawsuit against your employer for negligence — and Texas law tilts meaningfully in your favor when you do.

Under Texas Labor Code § 406.033, a non-subscribing employer cannot defend the case by arguing:

• You were contributorily negligent
• You assumed the risk by doing the job
• A coworker, not the employer, was actually at fault (the “fellow-servant rule”)

The employer’s only real defenses are that you intentionally caused your own injury, or that you were intoxicated at the time — and you still have to prove the employer (or an employee acting within their job duties) was negligent. But once you do, you can recover full damages: complete lost wages and future earning capacity, full medical costs, and pain and suffering — none of which workers’ comp pays.

Non-subscribers are legally required to post notice of their status in the workplace, notify new hires in writing, and file their non-coverage status annually with the Division of Workers’ Compensation (Labor Code § 406.005). If your employer never told you they didn’t carry coverage, that failure itself can be relevant to your case — and it’s also, frankly, common: many injured workers don’t find out their employer is a non-subscriber until after they’re already hurt.

Third-Party Claims Remain Available Either Way

Regardless of your employer’s subscriber status, you may also have a claim against someone other than your employer if they contributed to your injury:

• A defective tool or piece of equipment from an outside manufacturer
• A subcontractor or third-party vendor who created unsafe conditions at your worksite
• A vehicle accident caused by another driver while you were on the job

A third-party claim isn’t affected by whether your employer subscribes to workers’ comp, and it can often be pursued alongside a comp claim or a non-subscriber lawsuit.

Repetitive Stress Injuries

Not all workplace injuries happen suddenly. Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSIs) develop gradually and can be just as debilitating as a sudden accident:

• Office workers developing carpal tunnel syndrome from prolonged typing
• Construction workers experiencing nerve damage from daily use of vibrating equipment like jackhammers
• Retail employees suffering chronic pain from repetitive lifting, scanning, or assembly-line tasks

Because RSIs develop slowly, symptoms like pain, tingling, or stiffness often get ignored until they seriously affect your ability to work. Whether an RSI is a viable comp claim or a non-subscriber negligence claim depends heavily on your employer’s status — and RSIs are notoriously contested in the comp system specifically because causation (proving the job caused it, not something else) is harder to establish than with a sudden injury. Prompt reporting and documentation matter enormously either way.

Psychological Harms in the Workplace

Workplace injuries aren’t always physical. Stress, anxiety, PTSD, or depression can develop from toxic or traumatic work environments — high-pressure expectations, bullying, a traumatic incident witnessed on the job, or inadequate mental health support. These claims are genuinely harder to establish than physical injury claims in either system, but they’re not automatically excluded, and a qualified attorney can evaluate whether your specific situation supports one.

Workplace Hazards Recognized by OSHA

OSHA recognizes five major categories of workplace hazards, and identifying which one caused your injury matters for building a negligence case against a non-subscriber employer:

• Chemical hazards — cleaning agents, solvents, and industrial chemicals causing burns, respiratory damage, or neurological harm from substances like lead or mercury
• Biological hazards — bacteria, viruses, mold, or bloodborne pathogens, common in healthcare, construction, and sanitation work
• Physical hazards — loud machinery, extreme temperatures, radiation, or vibration exposure
• Repetitive stress hazards — the RSI category above
• Psychological hazards — the mental-health category above

For a non-subscriber claim, showing your employer failed to control a known OSHA-recognized hazard — inadequate training, missing protective equipment, no engineering controls — is often central to proving negligence.

The Two-Year Deadline

A non-subscriber negligence claim is a personal injury lawsuit, governed by Texas’s standard two-year statute of limitations (Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003) — not the separate, different deadlines that apply to an actual workers’ comp claim. Missing it bars your claim permanently, and evidence like incident reports, surveillance footage, and witness accounts degrade fast, so getting an attorney involved early matters.

Why Choose the Traub Law Office

Whether your employer subscribes to workers’ comp or not, our first concern is that you receive appropriate medical treatment. From there, we investigate what actually happened and determine every available path to compensation — a comp claim, a direct non-subscriber negligence lawsuit, a third-party claim, or some combination.

• Did bad lighting cause your accident? Poor lighting can cause a fall on stairs, or keep someone from seeing a hole or indentation in a walking surface.
• Were you harmed because of poor security? If a building owner knew of previous assaults on the property and failed to improve lighting or otherwise protect visitors, you may have a premises liability claim for damages.
• Was the equipment properly maintained? Faulty machinery, deferred repairs, and missing safety guards are hazards a simple inspection would catch.
• Were warnings adequate? If a hazard existed, was there a genuine warning, or could better warnings have prevented the injury?

Contact an Austin Workplace Injury Lawyer

Speak with an Austin workplace injury lawyer at the Traub Law Office, P.C. today for a free consultation at (512) 246-9191 or by filling in the contact form. We work on contingency — you pay nothing unless we recover money for you.