Workers' Compensation or a Claim Against Another Company: Comparing the Two Tracks After an Oilfield Accident

Two Tracks, One Accident: What Each Path Covers

An oilfield injury can open two separate legal tracks. One runs against the employer through workers' compensation. The other runs against a different company on the location through a civil claim. They are not mutually exclusive, and in some situations a worker or family pursues both at the same time.

Workers' compensation is a state-run system that provides benefits to workers hurt on the job, regardless of fault. A third-party claim is a civil claim against a company other than the employer, such as the operator of the oilfield, another contractor working on the location, or the maker or renter of equipment, whose conduct or product may have contributed to the injury.

For you, the stakes are that each track asks for different things and may allow different kinds of recovery, so treating a comp claim as the whole picture could leave a second track unexamined. Which track is open, and whether both are, depends on the facts of the accident and the law of the state where it happened. Workers' compensation rules differ from state to state, and no single state's system is the rule everywhere. A useful first question is simply where the accident happened and which companies were there.

Federal safety law sits apart from both tracks. The Occupational Safety and Health Act says, in 29 U.S.C. § 653(b)(4), that nothing in it "shall be construed to supersede or in any manner affect any workmen's compensation law or to enlarge or diminish or affect in any other manner the common law or statutory rights, duties, or liabilities of employers and employees under any law with respect to injuries, diseases, or death of employees arising out of, or in the course of, employment." In plain terms, OSHA's rules do not rewrite a state's comp system or a worker's injury claims. Those questions stay with state law.

For a broader view, see the overview of an oilfield accident lawyer's work.

How Oilfield Worksites Create Shared Responsibilities Among Companies

An oilfield location is rarely one company's operation. An operator may hold the lease, a drilling contractor may run the rig, service companies may handle specific jobs, and equipment may be made by one company and rented from another. A worker employed by one of them may be hurt by the work, the equipment or the decisions of another.

That mix is what makes a third-party claim possible. If only the employer were involved, workers' compensation would generally be the only track. When another company's crew, equipment or site control played a part, a second track may come into view. If you were employed by a contractor on someone else's site, the page on contractor injury claims looks at this from your side.

Federal safety law recognizes that duties can be spread across companies. Each employer must furnish a workplace "free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees," under 29 U.S.C. § 654(a). At a process covered by process safety management, the rule for highly hazardous chemicals, 29 C.F.R. § 1910.119(h)(2) lists what the host employer owes contract employers. Put from a contract worker's point of view, the host employer must:

• obtain and evaluate information about the contractor's safety performance and programs;
• tell contract employers about known fire, explosion or toxic release hazards related to the contractor's work and the process;
• explain the applicable parts of the emergency action plan;
• develop and implement safe work practices controlling contract employees' entrance, presence and exit in covered process areas;
• periodically evaluate contract employers' performance; and
• maintain a contract employee injury and illness log.

That regulation does not by itself decide whether any company is liable in a civil claim. What it means for you is that duties on a site may run beyond your own employer, and whether a particular company owed you a duty and breached it depends on the facts and the state's law. Questions worth asking include which company held the site, which company ran the job, and whether a covered process was involved.

If Comp Is the Claim You Have Been Told About: What It Involves

Workers' compensation benefits generally cover medical care and a portion of lost wages. The worker typically does not have to prove the employer was careless. The system trades fault for speed and certainty: benefits are generally available whether or not anyone did anything wrong.

The trade has another side. In most systems, workers' compensation is the exclusive remedy against the employer, which means the worker generally cannot also sue that employer in civil court for the same injury. This is often called the exclusivity rule. Its practical effect is that a fault-based claim, if one exists, usually has to run against someone other than the employer.

If you are in this position, the comp claim may be what keeps medical bills and some income moving while everything else is uncertain. It usually does not reach categories of loss beyond those benefits, which is why the question of other companies on the site comes up at all.

If you are looking into a comp claim, the details that govern it, including benefit levels, filing procedures, deadlines and any exceptions to exclusivity, come from the state where the accident happened; this page does not describe any one state's rules. Some states also handle comp differently in ways that touch other law: Texas's proportionate responsibility chapter, for instance, says in section 33.002 that it does not apply to "an action to collect workers' compensation benefits" under that state's workers' compensation laws, as the Texas Legislature's text of chapter 33 states.

The OSHA page on worker rights and protections notes that workers have the right to report an injury or illness and get copies of their medical records. Those records often matter on both tracks.

If Another Company May Be Responsible: What That Claim Has to Show

A civil claim against another company asks the question workers' compensation sets aside: was someone at fault? In a negligence claim, the injured worker generally has to show four things, and each one maps to a question about your accident:

• Duty: did the other company owe you an obligation, such as one connected to controlling the site, running a job or supplying equipment?
• Breach: did it fail to meet that obligation?
• Causation: did that failure actually cause your injury?
• Damages: what harm did you suffer?

A claim based on a defective tool or piece of equipment raises related questions about whether the product was defective and whether that defect caused the harm.

An injury alone does not prove any of these. Whether the elements are met depends on what happened on that location, who controlled what, and the evidence that shows it. That fault requirement makes this track harder to establish, and if the evidence is lost, the claim may be too.

What you may gain is access to categories of damages that workers' compensation generally does not reach. Depending on the state's law, these may include medical expenses, lost earnings and pain and suffering, and what any claim may include depends on the facts and the state. Where a worker died, state wrongful-death rules decide who may bring a claim and what it may cover; the page on fatal oilfield accident claims addresses that situation.

How Your Share of Fault Can Affect a Third-Party Claim

A company defending a civil claim often argues that the injured worker was partly to blame. States answer that argument with different rules, and the difference can be large.

Comparative fault reduces an injured person's recovery by their own percentage of fault. Contributory negligence may bar a person who bears a share of fault from recovering at all. Here are three examples, each only that state's own rule.

Washington follows pure comparative fault. Section 4.22.005 of the Revised Code of Washington provides that in an action based on fault, "any contributory fault chargeable to the claimant diminishes proportionately the amount awarded as compensatory damages," but "does not bar recovery."

Texas follows a modified comparative fault rule. Under section 33.001 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, in an action to which that chapter applies, "a claimant may not recover damages if his percentage of responsibility is greater than 50 percent." If the claimant is not barred, section 33.012 reduces the damages by a percentage equal to the claimant's share of responsibility, and further by the sum of any settlements.

Virginia follows contributory negligence. In AlBritton v. Commonwealth of Virginia, a February 4, 2021 decision, the Supreme Court of Virginia described contributory negligence, when proven, as "an absolute bar" to recovery. The same opinion said summary judgment on that issue is proper "only when reasonable minds could not differ."

None of these is the rule everywhere, and none works the same way in workers' compensation, where benefits are generally available regardless of fault. If you are worried that something you did on the job will be held against you, this is where it can matter, and how much depends on the state. Knowing which state's rule applies is often the first thing to sort out when weighing whether a third-party claim is worth pursuing.

Side-by-Side: The Two Tracks at a Glance

The table below is a general summary. Benefit levels, fault rules and damages categories differ by state and turn on the facts.

For you, the table frames the tradeoff: comp is generally easier to establish but narrower, while a claim against another company is harder to prove but may reach more kinds of loss. If both tracks are open, one practical question is how they interact once money comes in, including whether a comp insurer may look to a third-party recovery and how a settlement on one track affects the other. That turns on state law this page does not address, and it is a question to raise early in a conversation with an attorney.

What Shapes the Decision Between Tracks — and What a Conversation With an Attorney Can Cover

The first question is whether a company other than the employer was involved. Was another contractor's crew working the job? Did the operator control the site or the work? Did equipment made or rented by another company play a part? Truck and crew-vehicle crashes raise their own set of companies, discussed on the page about oilfield truck accidents. The state where the accident happened then decides the fault rule, the damages rules and the deadlines that apply.

The records that usually matter in a claim against another company include incident reports, equipment and maintenance records, the contracts between the companies on the location, photographs and video, and medical records. Injured workers and families often gather witnesses' names and the names of every company that had people or equipment on site that day. Who may bring a claim at all is covered in the guide to who can bring a claim.

Deciding between the tracks, or whether to pursue both, is consequential and depends on facts specific to this accident and this state's law. A conversation with our attorney can cover which companies were on the location, which state's fault rule may apply, which damages categories that state's law recognizes, and how a comp claim and a third-party claim may affect each other. If that would help, you can request a case evaluation to talk through what happened.