Texas slip and fall in a bar

Whether the bar does or doesn't have insurance may have a big effect on the likelihood and promptness with which you may be compensated. Quite typically a bar that has no insurance is also going to be hard to collect from even if you win a lawsuit and get a judgment against it. You may win your case, only to see the bar close down; you may have to take extraordinary steps to make sure such assets as are being used to run the business aren't spirited away or diverted elsewhere. But having insurance or not doesn't affect whether the bar is or isn't liable for your damages. And if it's still doing business, especially if it's making renovations, then that suggests that the owner is not completely poverty-stricken. (It's also possible that the owner is being less than candid about whether she has insurance, and that she simply doesn't want to report your claim because it would affect her future premiums.)

That question depends on whether the bar was negligent in the way it maintained its premises, and whether you were negligent as well. Without knowing all of the circumstances, it's very difficult for me or any other lawyer to even make a wild guess on those questions from the information you've provided. The best answer I can give on either question is a "definite maybe."

The fact that you'd been drinking isn't necessarily determinative: Bar owners expect their patrons to be drinking, at least within moderation, and they have an obligation not to overserve. But you likewise have an obligation to maintain your faculties and to use due care to avoid hazards; the bar owner will doubtless argue that the dimly lit staircase was an "open and obvious" hazard, or else that the bad lighting was a temporary condition (perhaps due to a burned out bulb?) of which the owner neither knew nor had reason to know. If there have been prior accidents there, that may indeed be very relevant to showing what the bar owner knew or should have known. But to the extent you were also at fault, that may significantly reduce, or even eliminate, the amount that you could recover in court.

If your injuries were serious enough to require surgery, then you almost certainly should consult in person with a qualified local lawyer who has significant experience handling personal injury cases. You may be able to arrange for a free initial consultation, and it's also quite likely that you can negotiate a contingent fee arrangement whereby the lawyer's fees would be paid only as a percentage of what he or she ultimately recovers on your behalf. To assess the bar's ability to pay off, and to give you a better guess as to who a jury might find responsible, you'll need a far more detailed consultation than is possible over an internet website like this one, and you need for your communications to be shielded by attorney-client privilege (which these aren't). You should also act without delay -- not only to avoid problems with the statute of limitations (which is two years for personal injury claims in Texas), but to begin gathering evidence before it gets cold. You may end up deciding NOT to sue. But even for purposes of making that decision, you should probably first consult in person with a qualified lawyer.