Who Can Be Held Legally Liable for the Texas Flooding Deaths?

WASHINGTON - July 8, 2025 - PRLog -- With so many people dead  as a result of the sudden flooding in Texas, debate is raging as to who is responsible.

But an equally important question is who can be held legally liable for the death and destruction, suggests public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

Unfortunately, with many officials refusing to answer probing questions, those who may ultimately supply the answers could well be lawyers suing on behalf of the victims since they can use the powerful tools of pre-trial civil discovery to discover more than members of the press and governmental officials can.

But they will have to act very quickly because, as soon as disaster strikes, documents and other records have a habit of being lost or "inadvertently destroyed" before they can be subpoenaed,.

The tool to prevent this from happening is an "evidence preservation letter";  a formal demand sent by an attorney preparing to bring a civil lawsuit, and sent to potential defendants and even third parties, and instructing them to retain all evidence relevant to a potential legal claim.

It is sometimes called a "spoliation letter" because any failure to carefully preserve potential evidence, once such a letter is received, can create at new civil action known as "spoliation of evidence," and/or lead to a judge's instruction that the failure to preserve the evidence creates a presumption of legal liability, explains the law professor.

We can probably expect such a letter to be sent very soon, probably to be followed quickly by the filing of a class action lawsuit, says Banzhaf (who has been called "A King of Class Action Lawsuits")/

Although there seems to be plenty of negligence and potential defendants around, it not clear whether any defendant other than the camp owners and operators can be held legally liable because of the legal requirement of "duty."

The camp has a well established legal duty to take reasonable care to protect the campers and camp employees.

But whether or not, under the apparently relevant Texas statutes [e.g., Tex. Gov't Code § 418], there is an affirmative legal duty imposed upon various official bodies or officials to provide timely warnings, does not appear to be clear.

Without such an affirmative legal duty, there can be no liability for negligence, even if negligence was a cause.

Even if there is some affirmative legal duty imposed n governmental bodies and/or officials, liability may require proving not just ordinary negligence, but rather gross negligence; and
even then some potential defendants may be entitled to legal immunity, says Banzhaf.

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com  @profbanzhaf