Before you call.

The practice is built for injuries that change a life. Many calls are about injuries that hurt but did not, or about wrongs the law handles some other way. Here is the honest version of each.

I slipped and fell in a store, and nobody will tell me if they knew about the spill.

The fight in a premises case is almost always notice. A business owes an invited customer reasonable care, but the injured person has to show the store knew, or should have known, about the hazard and had time to fix it or warn.

That proof lives in the store’s incident report, inspection and cleaning logs, and surveillance video, which many stores overwrite within days. Without it, a fall is an accident the law does not pay for.

A case when the injury is serious and the notice evidence can be secured fast. A bruise and a sore hip, healed in a month, is not.

Read Premises Liability and Notice. Ask the store in writing, today, to preserve the video.

A dog bit me, or my child.

Texas is harder on dog-bite victims than most states. The owner is liable when the owner knew the dog was dangerous, or when the owner was negligent in handling it. A first bite by a dog with no history is a fight about what the owner knew.

Serious bites, especially to a child’s face, are catastrophic injury cases and are handled like any other. Minor bites usually turn on whether the owner has homeowner’s or renter’s insurance at all.

A case when the injury is serious and the owner is insured. Otherwise, often not one I can take.

Read Foreseeable. Report the bite to animal control; that record is what proves the next owner knew.

A doctor or hospital hurt me.

Medical negligence is real, and it is a specialty of its own, with rules that do not apply to any other injury case: a pre-suit notice, a sworn expert report on a deadline, and caps on part of the recovery.

Chapter 74 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code governs those cases. The expert-report requirement alone ends many of them.

Not a case I handle. It needs a lawyer who does only this.

The State Bar of Texas Lawyer Referral and Information Service can refer you to a medical negligence lawyer. Request your complete records now; you are entitled to them.

I was hurt badly, but it was my own fault, or nobody was at fault.

An injury without a responsible party is a tragedy, not a case. The law compensates harm caused by someone else’s negligence; it does not insure against bad luck.

Under Section 33.001 a person more than fifty percent at fault recovers nothing. Below that line, a case can still exist, and people are often harder on themselves than a jury would be.

Sometimes a case; it depends on the honest division of fault. If no one else did anything wrong, no.

Read Comparative Fault. If the injury came from a product that failed, that is a different question: read Product Liability and keep the product.

A brother, sister, grandparent, or partner died because of someone’s negligence.

Texas draws the wrongful death line narrowly, and it is painful to explain.

Under Chapter 71 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code the wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children, and parents. Siblings, grandparents, and unmarried partners cannot bring it, though the estate’s survival claim can be brought by the estate’s representative.

A case for the spouse, children, or parents. For others, usually not, unless you are the estate’s representative.

Read Wrongful Death. If the death was a crime, the Texas Crime Victims’ Compensation program covers some costs regardless of who can sue; MADD Texas victim services helps families after a drunk-driving death.