Car Accidents.

The adjuster who calls you the day after a wreck is friendly, patient, and paid to close your claim for as little as possible.

A serious car accident does not end when the tow truck leaves. It becomes a contest between an injured person and a professional claims operation that does this every day. The carrier has adjusters, defense lawyers, and a playbook built to make your case smaller. You should have someone whose only job is to make it whole. That is what I do, personally, on every case I take.

Texas is a fault state

Texas does not use no-fault insurance. The driver who caused the crash, and that driver's insurance company, are responsible for the harm. That sounds simple until you realize the entire fight is over one word: fault. Who caused it, and how much.

Texas follows a rule called proportionate responsibility. A jury assigns a percentage of fault to each person involved, your recovery is reduced by your share, and if a jury finds you more than fifty percent at fault, you recover nothing at all. This is why the insurance company works so hard, so early, to pin part of the blame on you. Every point of fault it moves onto you is money out of your pocket.

The two-year clock

In Texas you generally have two years from the date of the crash to file a lawsuit. Miss that deadline and the strongest case in the world is worth nothing, because the court will not hear it.

Two years sounds like a long time. It is not. Skid marks fade, vehicles get repaired or crushed, surveillance video is overwritten in weeks, and witnesses forget or move away. The evidence that proves fault is disappearing while the adjuster is still being friendly. The sooner a case is in the hands of someone who knows what to preserve, the stronger it stays.

What the insurance minimums really mean

Texas requires drivers to carry only thirty thousand dollars of injury coverage per person, sixty thousand per crash, and twenty-five thousand for property damage. Those numbers, written thirty sixty twenty-five, are the floor. One ambulance ride, an emergency room visit, and a single surgery can pass the per-person injury limit before the long-term bills even start.

When the at-fault driver carries only the minimum, or carries nothing at all, the case does not end. It turns toward your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, the part of your policy built for exactly this moment. More on uninsured and underinsured motorist claims →