This week, Your News Now in Austin released quite a startling report highlighting the fact that Texas is the only state in the country that does not require employers to carry workers' compensation. Even further, Texas law typically allows general contractors to be off the hook for accidents that occur when the supervisor is not present, Your News Now reported.

The report featured the tragic story of husband and wife roofers who were given a contracting job by Guadalupe Roofing in 2004 to work on a utility shed in Austin, Texas. The wife told Your News Now that only an exchange of keys and a verbal agreement took place before the couple began working on the shed for Guadalupe Roofing

The job quickly turned into a nightmare, though, when the husband roofer fell from the roof and was killed. The husband and wife had been alone at the site, so the wife was the only one there to care for her husband following the traumatic accident. The wife told Your News Now that the couple was never given safety instructions or safety equipment to use on the job.

Following the accident, the wife said she inherited $45,000 of debt in medical bills and funeral costs; money she is still working to pay off. Even though her husband was killed on the job, Guadalupe Roofing didn't carry workers' compensation so the wife was left to pay everything on her own. The woman's son told Your News Now that he often finds his mother crying, and that now the family is merely "trying to survive."

The wife said that she tried to find an attorney to represent her in a wrongful death lawsuit, but was unsuccessful, and now the time to file the lawsuit has expired. Your News Now said that the case might have been a difficult one to argue because under Texas law, if a contractor is not at the work site when an accident involving a worker occurs he is often not held responsible.

It is unfortunate that the wife was unable to find a lawyer to represent her in this case because that is how we incite the current law to change, by challenging it. If you have a family member that was killed in a work-related accident, be sure to contact an experienced personal injury attorney in your state before the window of opportunity passes.

Source: Your News Now, "Gap in state law leaves workers vulnerable," Heidi Zhou-Castro, 5/4/2011.