Before you call.

Most of the calls I get about car wrecks fall into a handful of patterns. Here is what I would tell you about each one if you reached me, including the ones where the honest answer is that a trial lawyer is not what you need. None of this is advice about your case; it is the law and the pattern, written down so you can read it before you call.

The other driver hit me, the bumper looks fine, and I hurt.

This is the most common call, and it is usually a case. The adjuster will say a small dent cannot cause a real injury. The physics says otherwise: the force that hurts a neck or a back is the change in speed your body absorbed, not the damage to the plastic. What decides it is whether you got checked, kept treating, and can show the injury on the right imaging.

Texas gives you two years from the crash to file suit under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003, and it reduces your recovery by any share of fault a jury puts on you, cutting it off entirely above fifty percent, under Section 33.001. The insurer knows both rules and will use the second one early.

Usually a case. The sooner the medical record starts, the stronger it is.

Read Delta-V and The S-Curve on why the bumper is the wrong thing to look at, then tell me about it.

The other driver had no insurance, and I do not think I have uninsured motorist coverage.

Check before you assume. Texas insurers must offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on every auto policy and can only leave it off if you rejected it in writing, so many people carry it without remembering. Personal injury protection works the same way. Ask your agent for the declarations page and the rejection form, if there is one.

The offer-and-rejection rule is Insurance Code Section 1952.101. If the coverage is there, the claim is against your own carrier, which will treat you like any other claimant, and under Brainard v. Trinity Universal it does not owe underinsured benefits until the other driver’s fault and your damages are established.

A case if the coverage exists and the injury is serious. Without coverage, and with an uninsured driver who has nothing, there is often no one to collect from, and I will tell you that.

Read Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist and the permission-to-settle article. A complaint about how your own carrier is handling the claim goes to the Texas Department of Insurance, consumer complaints.

It was a fender bender, nobody was hurt, and the insurer is lowballing the repair.

A property-damage-only claim is real, and it is frustrating, but it is not a case a trial lawyer can take on a contingency fee; the numbers do not support it, and the fee would eat the recovery.

Texas justice courts hear civil claims up to twenty thousand dollars under Government Code Section 27.031, without a lawyer, and the Department of Insurance takes complaints about claim handling.

Not a case for me. It is a case you can handle yourself.

File with the Texas Department of Insurance, consumer complaints if the carrier is stalling, and consider justice court for the difference. TexasLawHelp.org has plain-language guides for small claims.

The crash was more than two years ago.

I hear this more than you would think, usually from someone who tried to work with the adjuster in good faith and ran out the clock. It is the hardest call to take.

The two-year limitations period in Section 16.003 is close to absolute for an adult’s injury claim. A few situations pause it, a minor’s claim being the main one, and an uninsured motorist claim against your own carrier has its own clock, but the crash date is the date to assume.

Usually not a case, and I would rather tell you now than let you hope.

Read Limitations and, in Spanish, Camarón que se duerme. If a minor was in the car, or the claim is against your own policy, tell me the dates anyway.

I was partly at fault, or the police report blames me.

A police report is an officer’s opinion written at the scene, not a verdict. Reports get the direction of travel wrong, credit the driver who talked first, and record the injury as none because nobody was bleeding.

Under Section 33.001 a jury assigns percentages, and you recover as long as your share is fifty percent or less, reduced by that share. Reports are challenged all the time with photos, video, data from the cars, and witnesses.

Often still a case, depending on how the fault actually divides.

Read Comparative Fault and Failed to Control Speed. You can buy the crash report yourself from TxDOT crash report purchase (CR-3).

The other driver was on a phone, and I want to prove it.

Since September 1, 2017, it has been illegal in Texas to read, write, or send an electronic message while driving unless the vehicle is stopped (Transportation Code Section 545.4251). If the other driver was texting when the crash happened, that can be negligence per se: a broken safety statute the jury does not have to build into a breach from scratch.

The proof is the hard part, and it is a race. The phone and the carrier’s records are what show it. Phones sync and overwrite, and the companies that carry the messages keep their records only as long as their own retention schedules say. A party who knows a claim is coming has a duty to preserve the evidence that matters to it, and a court can instruct the jury against a side that destroyed evidence on purpose (Brookshire Brothers v. Aldridge). That is why the preservation letter goes out on the first day.

Often still a case, and the phone can make it stronger, if the record is preserved in time.

Read The Phone, Spoliation, and Negligence Per Se. If a witness saw the driver looking down, write down their name and number today.

The other driver crossed the center line, and now says something made him swerve.

Texas law says it in one sentence: on a road wide enough, a driver “shall drive on the right half of the roadway” (Transportation Code Section 545.051). The exceptions are narrow: passing, an obstruction (and even then he has to yield to you), a road with three marked lanes, a one-way road. By the time the adjuster calls, the driver who crossed into your lane usually has a reason. The question is whether the law accepts it.

The Texas Supreme Court has described the kind of excuse that counts: a sudden incapacity like a heart attack, an unexpected steering or brake failure, a blowout of a tire reasonably thought to be in good condition, a swerve to avoid a darting child. Ordinary mistakes are not on the list, and an emergency the driver created himself does not excuse him (Impson v. Structural Metals). The proof of where the crash happened fades fast: the marks on the pavement, the debris, and the black box in each vehicle. The letter that preserves them goes out early, before the cars leave the tow yard.

Often a strong case. A reason is not an excuse until the law says it is.

Read Centerline, Negligence Per Se, and Closing Speed. If a witness saw the car drift before the crash, write down their name and number today.

The other side says I was not wearing a seat belt.

Texas requires every rider fifteen and older to wear the seat belt their seat is equipped with, and the driver answers for the children (Transportation Code Section 545.413). For forty years, a jury in a civil case could not hear whether you wore it. Since 2015 it can, but only if the other side shows the missing belt actually caused or added to your injuries, and the judge decides that question before the jury hears it (Nabors Well Services v. Romero).

Even then, it does not end the case by itself. The jury folds it into the percentages under Chapter 33: your recovery is reduced by your share, and only a share above fifty percent bars it. The real fight is causation, which of your injuries a belt would actually have prevented, and that is a medical and engineering question with the burden on them.

Often still a case. The belt question divides a recovery; it does not decide it alone.

Read The Belt, Comparative Fault, and Mitigation.

Someone was thrown from the car, or the roof came in, and everyone is only talking about the other driver.

Who caused the crash is the first question. It is not the only one. When a person goes out through a window or a door that opened, or the roof comes down into the space where a head was, the case also asks whether the car did its job of protecting the people inside. Texas calls that crashworthiness, and the Texas Supreme Court quoted with approval the rule that a person hurt by a vehicle defect is protected “even though the defect was not the cause of the collision” (Turner v. General Motors).

It is a hard case and a separate one. The claimant has to prove a safer alternative design and that the defect was a producing cause of the injury (Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 82.005), and a car that met the mandatory federal standard governing that risk starts with a presumption against liability that has to be overcome (Section 82.008). It also needs the car. A car the insurer totals is usually sold for salvage, and a crushed car cannot be measured.

Sometimes a second case, against the maker, alongside the case against the driver. It depends on the car, so the car has to be saved first.

Read Crashworthiness, Thrown, and Thrown Clear. If the car is still at a tow yard, write down where it is today.

My child was hit near a school, or getting on or off the bus, and the driver’s insurer says the child ran out.

The call comes from a parent, and the adjuster has already said the sentence: the child darted out. Children do move fast, and the law knows it. That is why the school zone, the flashing lights and the red stop arm exist. The question in these cases is rarely whether the child moved. It is whether the driver was where the law told him to be, at the speed and with the attention the law required, when the child did.

Two statutes set the standard before anyone argues about care. Transportation Code Section 545.066 requires a driver approaching a stopped school bus with its visual signals on, from either direction, to stop before reaching it and stay stopped until the bus moves, the bus driver waves him on, or the signal ends; passing a stopped bus is an offense by itself, and one that causes serious bodily injury is a Class A misdemeanor. Section 545.425 bars a driver from using a hand-held phone in a marked school crossing zone. When a driver breaks a safety statute written to protect exactly the person who was hurt, a Texas jury can be told that the statute is the standard of care and asked only whether it was broken; that is negligence per se, explained in Negligence Per Se. Fault still gets divided under Section 33.001, but Texas measures a child’s care by what a child of the same age, experience, intelligence and capacity would do, and a child under five cannot be found negligent at all (Yarborough v. Berner, Tex. 1971).

Usually a case when the driver broke the stop-arm rule, the school-zone rule, or the phone rule, because the statute hands you the standard of care. You still prove that the violation caused the injury, and any share of fault on the child is judged as a child’s, not an adult’s.

Read The Yellow Bus and The Body at 13 on why a child is not a small adult, then tell me about it. If the injury happened on the bus itself, the school district is a governmental unit whose liability is limited to the use of motor vehicles, and the notice clock is six months under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 101.101.

I (or a family member) was hit by a car while walking, and the driver says the light was green or that they never saw us.

The call comes from a walker, or from the family of one. The driver stayed at the scene and told the officer the light was green, or that the person just appeared. The state has a page for this. The Texas Department of Transportation counted 772 people killed on foot in 2024, out of six thousand crashes, and it names four causes; two are the same failure from opposite sides of the crosswalk, a pedestrian who does not yield and a driver who does not.

The law does not settle it on the color of the light. Transportation Code Section 552.008 tells every driver, notwithstanding the rest of the chapter, to exercise due care to avoid colliding with a pedestrian on the roadway, to give warning by sounding the horn when necessary, and to use proper precaution on observing a child or an obviously confused or incapacitated person on the road. A green light in the driver’s lane does not repeal that duty. In a crosswalk without a signal in operation, Section 552.003 gives the pedestrian the right of way. Crossing outside a marked crosswalk (or between two adjacent signalized intersections), Section 552.005 puts the yield on the pedestrian, and CPRC Section 33.001 divides the recovery according to each share until it passes half. Fifty-one percent bars a claim; up to fifty percent lowers it. The mechanism of the injury (the bumper takes the legs, the hood and windshield take the torso and head, the pavement takes what is left) is The Wrap and the Ground, and the driver’s "I never saw them" is Looking, Not Seeing.

Usually a case when you were in a marked crosswalk with the signal in your favor or with no signal in operation, or when the driver’s speed, attention or view had failed the due-care rule, because the statute keeps the duty on the driver even at a green. Where the person crossed outside a crosswalk or against the signal, comparative fault divides recovery rather than ending it, unless the share on the pedestrian passes half.

Read On Foot and the serious personal injury page, then tell me about it. In a fatality, the wrongful-death claim and the survival claim are separate; the notice clocks are short if a governmental unit maintained the roadway, and the letter that preserves the vehicle’s black box and the intersection’s signal-timing data goes out early.