Texas Employer Not Liable for Gross Negligence After Heat-Related Death
A Texas appellate court recently affirmed a trial court’s summary judgment in favor of an employer in a gross negligence action filed against it by the family of a worker who died of a heart attack at...
View ArticleTexas Gross Negligence Statute Requires Showing of Both Objective and...
Construing Tex. Lab. Code Ann. § 408.001(b), which provides that the exclusive remedy provision of the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act does not prohibit the recovery of exemplary damages by the...
View ArticleProvision of Vehicle to Employee Not Controlling Factor in Texas Death...
The provision by an employer of a company-owned vehicle was insufficient to establish a work-connection between an employee’s fatal vehicle accident and the employment, held a Texas appellate court...
View ArticleProvision of Company Vehicle to Texas Employee Does Not Necessarily Bring...
The mere gratuitous furnishing of transportation by the employer to the employee as an accommodation, and not as an integral part of the contract of employment, does not, by itself, establish that the...
View ArticleTX Deputy’s Fatal Injuries While Traveling Home in Patrol Car Were Compensable
Reversing a lower appellate court, the Supreme Court of Texas held that because the summary judgment evidence established that a deputy sheriff — who died in a vehicular accident involving his assigned...
View ArticleTexas High Court Collides with 10th Circuit’s Air Ambulance Decision
In a long, winding, yet carefully-worded decision (with both concurring and dissenting opinions), a divided Supreme Court of Texas held the federal Airline Deregulation Act (ADA) does not preempt...
View ArticleTexas Employee’s Suit Against Non-Subscribing Employer Can Be Removed to...
A federal district court in Texas held that a Texas employee’s civil action against his non-subscribing employer did not arise out of the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act (“TWCA”), in spite of the fact...
View ArticleTexas Employee’s Suit Against Co-Worker for Dog Bite is Barred by Exclusivity
A defendant/co-worker’s act of bringing her dog to the employer’s residential facility for pregnant women to serve as a comfort animal was an activity that had to do with and originated in the...
View ArticleCivil Action Related to COVID-19 Death of Texas Employee Barred by Exclusivity
A federal district court, sitting in Texas and construing Texas law, granted a defendant-employer’s motion for summary judgment in a civil action filed against it by the family of a worker who died as...
View ArticleTexas Court Stresses Comp Carrier is Entitled to Full “First Money” in...
Reiterating that aTexas workers’ compensation carrier is entitled to the “first money” an injured worker recovered in a third-party tort action—here, settlement of a medical malpractice claim—and...
View ArticleTexas Employee Recovers in Tort Against Employer Following Parking Lot Fall
A Texas appellate court affirmed a decision by a state trial court awarding damages in a premises liability action filed by an employee against her employer, where the employee sustained injuries in a...
View ArticleCohabitating “Spouse” Allowed Death Benefits Under Texas Common Law Rules
Applying Texas common law marriage rules, a state appellate court recently held that the City of Euless—which had employed David Hofer (Hofer) as a police officer at the time that Hofer was killed in...
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