Wrongful Death · Texas & Nationwide

Houston Wrongful Death Lawyers

Texas Wrongful Death Act, Survival Claims, and Fatal Accident Attorneys. Trial Representation When a Corporate Safety Failure Takes a Life.

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Why VB Attorneys
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Board Certified Specialists. Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization — a distinction held by less than 1% of Texas lawyers.
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Two-Claim Technical Mastery. We systematically build both the wrongful death claim for the family and the survival claim for the estate to ensure full corporate accountability.
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Gross Negligence and Exemplary Damages. We trace the chain of corporate decisions through the defendants’ own internal records to prove they knew of an extreme risk and ignored it.
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No Win, No Fee. We completely advance all accident reconstruction, corporate safety audits, and heavy litigation expenses. You owe us nothing unless we win.
A client using a wheelchair at the counsel table during a courtroom proceeding
A client at the counsel table, in the room where a company answers for what it did.

How We Prepare Your Case

Most cases settle. The number they settle at depends on whether the other side believes your case is ready for a courtroom. Ours always are.

1
Your lawyer leads your case. The lawyer you hire is the lawyer who leads your case — an experienced trial lawyer, supported by a Board Certified partner — and you can talk to your lawyer directly. Not a case manager. Not an associate you’ve never met.
2
We find the evidence. Internal safety audits, near-miss logs, maintenance work orders, corporate emails, deposition testimony. We dig until the other side’s own documents tell the story.
3
We build it for court. Experts retained early. Depositions taken to lock in testimony. Every claim traced to the defendant’s own witnesses and records.
4
You decide. When the offer comes — and it usually does — you’ll know exactly what your case is worth and exactly what going to court means. We give you our best advice; the decision to accept a settlement or go to trial is always, and only, yours.

The Fatal Accident Cases We Handle

Transportation Disasters | Rig & Well Site Fatalities | Heavy Industrial Tragedies

The call divides a family’s life into before and after. It comes from a state trooper, an emergency room, a supervisor who “has some news.” And in the weeks that follow, while a family plans a funeral, somewhere a company is already at work: collecting its records, briefing its witnesses, preparing its story.

Texas law gives families a way to answer. The Texas Wrongful Death Act lets a spouse, children, and parents hold the responsible company accountable for everything it took, and a separate survival claim lets the estate pursue what your loved one endured. These are not forms to fill out. They are cases to be built, against defendants with lawyers, investigators, and every incentive to pay as little as possible.

That is the work this firm does. We take a deliberately limited number of wrongful death cases; the lawyer you hire leads your case and answers your calls, and we prepare every case for a jury, because the companies on the other side can tell the difference between a firm that will walk into a courtroom and one that won’t.

The Anatomy of a Wrongful Death Claim

Wrongful death litigation requires an immediate freeze on physical evidence and deep document-driven discovery to override the standard defense strategy of minimizing your loss.

Each legal claim component in a Texas wrongful death case, the lifetime picture we build, how the defense tries to shrink it, and the expert proof we put in place early.
Legal Claim Component The Lifetime Picture (the math we build) How the Defense Shrinks It Expert Proof, Built In Early
Texas Wrongful Death Act Direct compensation for surviving spouses, children, and parents for lost financial support, lost companionship, and severe mental anguish. Arguing that family relationships were distant or projecting low long-term baseline financial support. Forensic economists, vocational consultants, and family dynamic profiling experts.
The Survival Claim Recovers damages for the deceased person’s own conscious pain and suffering prior to death, along with final medical and funeral costs. Claiming that the death was instantaneous to eliminate the pre-death pain and suffering element completely. Forensic pathologists, first-responding witnesses, and emergency medical technicians.
Gross Negligence Claims Unlocks punitive exemplary damages under Chapter 41 by proving the company actively knew of a deadly hazard and consciously ignored it. Labeling a systemic safety failure or broken rule as an “unforeseeable, isolated human error” or simple accident. Internal corporate safety audits, prior near-miss logs, maintenance work orders, and deposition records.
Maritime Deaths at Sea Applies specialized federal remedies (Jones Act or DOHSA) for fatal offshore incidents occurring beyond state territorial lines. Attempting to apply state statutory caps or restrictive maritime boundaries to drastically limit family recovery. Maritime law specialists, marine safety engineers, and federal jurisdictional experts.

Texas Wrongful Death Law, in Plain English

Two claims, not one

Texas law creates two separate claims when negligence kills. The wrongful death claim (Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, Chapter 71) belongs to the surviving spouse, children, and parents; it compensates the family for lost financial support, lost companionship, and mental anguish. The survival claim belongs to the estate; it carries forward the claim your loved one would have had, including their conscious pain and suffering and their medical and funeral expenses. Building both, correctly, is the difference between partial justice and full accountability.

Gross negligence and exemplary damages

When a company knew about an extreme risk and consciously disregarded it, Chapter 41 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code allows exemplary damages: damages designed to punish and deter, beyond compensation. Proving gross negligence means proving what the company knew. We do that with the company’s own documents and the company’s own witnesses.

Deaths on the job and on the water

A death on the job is not the end of the road: if another company contributed to your family member’s fatal injury — a contractor, an equipment manufacturer, a property owner — that company can be held fully responsible as a third party. A death offshore or on the water moves into federal maritime law: the Jones Act (46 U.S.C. § 30104) for seamen, and the Death on the High Seas Act for deaths beyond three nautical miles. Maritime death and injury litigation is core to this firm’s practice: we led the Maersk Alabama crew litigation, the most complex maritime and Jones Act case in modern history.

Go Deeper

Wrongful death cases arrive through different doors: a highway, a job site, the water. Each path has its own law.

Texas Wrongful Death Act & Survival Claims

Who can file, the two-claim structure, and deadlines.

Survival Claims
Fatal Truck Accidents

When an 18-wheeler crash takes a life.

Fatal Truck Accidents
Maritime Wrongful Death

Jones Act and Death on the High Seas Act claims.

Maritime Wrongful Death
Who Can File a Wrongful Death Claim

Spouse, children, and parents — and why siblings cannot.

Who Can File
Industrial & Plant Wrongful Death

Refinery, plant, and petrochemical explosions.

Industrial & Plant
Oilfield Wrongful Death

Drilling rig, well site, and fracking fatalities.

Oilfield Wrongful Death
Fatal Workplace Accidents

Gross negligence, third-party liability, and equipment failures.

Fatal Workplace Accidents

Serving Texas Families Throughout the Gulf Coast

When corporate recklessness, heavy trucking collisions, or industrial safety failures disrupt your family’s life, an independent legal investigation must begin immediately. Contact VB Attorneys today.

Our specialized wrongful death practice areas cover all major regional production hubs:

  • Houston Wrongful Death Lawyers
  • Pasadena & Deer Park Plant Accident Attorneys
  • Galveston & Gulf Coast Maritime Wrongful Death Lawyers
  • Beaumont & Port Arthur Industrial Trauma Law Firm
  • Corpus Christi Oil & Gas Wrongful Death Attorneys
  • West Texas & Permian Basin Field Fatal Accident Lawyers
What Our Clients Say

In their words.

“I knew when I met Brian that he was more than qualified to handle my father’s wrongful death case. I was very pleased, and if I needed his help again I wouldn’t hesitate to call him.”

Sabrina M. · U.S. Air Force · Wrongful Death Case

“Thank you for assisting me and my family with getting closure.”

Family of Client · Wrongful Death Recovery

Read their story

“There are no words I can say that express how I really feel about him — for what he did for me and my family.”

Keidron Semien · Workplace Wrongful Death Case
Wrongful Death Questions

Wrongful death questions, answered.

Under the Texas Wrongful Death Act, Chapter 71 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, three groups can file: the surviving spouse, the children, and the parents of the person who died. Siblings cannot file a wrongful death claim in Texas. Any one of the eligible family members can file on behalf of all of them.
Texas law creates two separate claims when someone is killed by negligence. The wrongful death claim belongs to the family; it compensates the spouse, children, and parents for their own losses: lost financial support, lost companionship, and mental anguish. The survival claim belongs to the estate; it is the claim the person would have had if they had lived, covering their conscious pain and suffering, medical bills, and funeral expenses. A properly built case usually includes both.
Generally two years from the date of death, under Section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. There are narrow exceptions, but the practical answer is: do not wait. Evidence disappears fast. Vehicles get repaired, equipment gets scrapped, video gets overwritten, and witnesses scatter. The most important work in a wrongful death case often happens in the first weeks.
Lost earning capacity and financial support the person would have provided over a lifetime, loss of companionship and society, mental anguish, lost inheritance, and, through the survival claim, the medical and funeral expenses and the conscious pain the person suffered. When the death resulted from gross negligence, Texas law also allows exemplary damages under Chapter 41 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which exist to punish and deter.
Often, yes. If another company contributed to your family member’s fatal injury — a contractor, an equipment manufacturer, a property owner — that company is fully responsible for its share, no matter who they worked for. The question is never just who employed them. It is every company whose decisions led to the injury. Third-party liability claims establish separate avenues for recovery outside administrative caps.
Maritime deaths are governed by a different body of federal law. The family of a seaman may have claims under the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30104, and the general maritime law. Deaths more than three nautical miles from shore fall under the Death on the High Seas Act, 46 U.S.C. §§ 30301–30308. These statutes have different rules, different damages, and different deadlines than Texas state law; getting the framework right at the start changes the value of the case. This firm led the Maersk Alabama crew litigation — the most complex maritime and Jones Act case in modern history.
Most settle, but the number the defense offers depends entirely on whether it believes the case is genuinely headed to a jury. That is why we prepare every case as if it will be decided in a courtroom. In the case at the ExxonMobil plant, the defense offered $500,000. The jury returned $44 million. The gap between those two numbers is what trial preparation is worth.
Nothing out of pocket, ever. We work on a contingency fee: the firm advances all case expenses, and we are paid only as a percentage of what we recover for your family. If there is no recovery, you owe nothing.
Negligence is a failure to use reasonable care. Gross negligence is worse: conduct involving an extreme degree of risk that the defendant knew about and consciously disregarded. It matters because gross negligence opens the door to exemplary damages under Chapter 41, and because proving what a company knew and ignored is usually done with the company’s own documents and witnesses.
Yes. Texas does not limit the Wrongful Death Act to minor children. Parents can bring a claim for the death of an adult son or daughter, just as adult children can bring a claim for the death of a parent.
Our cases typically take one to two years from intake to resolution. Complex cases with multiple corporate defendants can take longer, but we set the schedule by preparing for trial, not by waiting for the defense to get around to a fair offer.
Three things. First, do not give a recorded statement to any insurance company, including your own, before talking to a lawyer. Second, preserve everything: photographs, the vehicle or equipment involved, names of witnesses, and any communication from the company. Third, call our office directly for a free and confidential case review. You will get a straight answer about whether we can help, and what your family’s options are.
Your Legal Team

Board Certified. Partner-led. From day one.

When you hire VB Attorneys, you work directly with Brian or Vuk. Not a case manager. Not an intake coordinator. Experienced, Board Certified attorneys.

Brian Beckcom — Founding Partner, VB Attorneys

Brian Beckcom

Founding Partner

When Somali pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama, Brian Beckcom represented nine of her crew against Maersk in one of the most complex maritime and Jones Act cases in history — a case that changed the safety and security of mariners — and won confidential recoveries for every one of them. He is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law, a distinction held by less than 1% of Texas lawyers.

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Vuk Vujasinovic — Founding Partner, VB Attorneys

Vuk Vujasinovic

Founding Partner

Vuk Vujasinovic is Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law, a distinction held by less than 1% of Texas lawyers. Vuk’s signature win is a $44 million trial verdict in a wrongful death case.

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Tell us what happened

If your family has lost someone, you deserve straight answers about what happened and what the law allows. You’ll get a straight answer about whether we can help.

Call our office directly for a free and confidential case review.

(877) 724-7800

No fees unless we win your case

No fees unless we win. Confidential evaluation.