Wrongful Death.
When someone died and someone else caused it, Texas law gives the family and the estate two claims. Together, they answer for what was lost and for what was endured.
If you are here because someone in your family died and someone else caused it, the case is real. The law does not ask you to prove the size of your loss. It asks you to prove what happened, who is responsible, and what it will cost the people left behind.
This page is written for two readers at once. The first fold is for the family, and answers the questions I hear inside the first phone call: what the case is, who can bring it, what the money is for, and how long you have. Further down, the page turns to the statutory frame in Chapter 71 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, the beneficiary rules, the damage categories, the two-year clock, and the specific case types this practice handles. Both readers get the whole page. Pick the section you need first.
The first sixty seconds
Two claims running together. A wrongful death claim, for the family, covers your own losses now that they are gone: financial support, guidance, companionship. A survival claim, for the estate, covers what the person themselves endured between the injury and the death.
The surviving spouse, the children, and the parents. Adopted children are included. Siblings and grandchildren are not statutory beneficiaries. If none of the eligible family members files within three months, the estate's representative may.
For the family, the loss of financial support, household services, companionship, guidance, and mental anguish. For the estate through the survival claim, the person's own conscious pain, medical costs, and funeral expenses. Where gross negligence is proven, exemplary damages are available.
Generally two years from the date of death. Against a governmental entity, written notice is usually required within six months of the incident, and some cities require even shorter notice. Work from the earliest possible date, not the latest.
What I take, and what I don’t
The cases I handle are wrongful deaths arising from serious injury: truck and car wrecks, industrial and workplace incidents, medical events with clear negligence and evidence within the statutory timelines, product defects, premises with inadequate security, and civil rights deaths in police or jail custody. Some of these are Texas state law cases; some are federal. All of them are cases built from the earliest possible day.
The cases I do not take, honestly, are the ones where the deadline has already run, where the connection to fault is too speculative to build, or where another lawyer or another kind of help would serve the family better. If I cannot take your case, I will tell you, and I will tell you where to go. That is a promise the hero of this site makes, and it applies here.
The fact patterns I hear most, answered plainly: which are usually cases, which usually are not, and where to go either way. Read it first → Or see where else to go.
The statutory frame
Texas wrongful death and survival law lives in Chapter 71 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. It is a specific statutory grant, not a common-law right, and its shape is worth reading closely because the case is built on it.
The wrongful death act (Subchapter A, sections 71.001 through 71.012) allows a claim when the death of an adult or child is caused by a person's or entity's wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or default. The claim compensates the surviving spouse, children, and parents for their own losses. It does not compensate the estate, and it does not compensate the deceased.
The survival act (Subchapter B, sections 71.021 and 71.022) allows the deceased's personal injury cause of action, including the pain and mental anguish between injury and death, to survive to the estate and be brought by the personal representative. The recovery becomes part of the estate and is distributed by will or by the laws of intestacy.
Both statutes reach beyond negligence. A wrongful death or survival claim may be built on ordinary negligence, gross negligence, product liability, premises liability, medical negligence with the Chapter 74 procedural rules, or intentional acts. What the underlying wrong is shapes how the case is proved, but the wrongful death and survival vehicles remain the same.
Who can bring a wrongful death claim
Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 71.004 sets the beneficiaries. They are the surviving spouse, the children, and the parents of the deceased. Adopted children have the same status as biological children. Adopted-out children and stepchildren generally do not qualify. Siblings and grandchildren are not statutory beneficiaries, and their losses are not compensable through the wrongful death act, however real those losses are.
Each eligible family member holds an independent claim. In practice the claims are usually filed together in one lawsuit for efficiency, but each is separately valued according to that person's own losses. Recovery is not divided equally by default. A surviving spouse who was materially dependent and a child who was not living in the home may end up with very different apportionments of the same verdict.
If none of the eligible family members files within three months of the death, the personal representative of the estate may bring the wrongful death claim on their behalf, unless the family expressly requests otherwise. This provision is a safety net for families who are grieving too hard to act, not an invitation for the estate to displace the family.
What the damages cover
The wrongful death damages recoverable by the family are measured by what the family lost when the person died. They include the pecuniary loss of the deceased's financial support and household services, the loss of care, maintenance, companionship, society, and guidance, mental anguish, and loss of inheritance. Loss of inheritance is the amount the deceased would likely have added to the estate over the natural life expectancy and left to the beneficiaries, reduced to present value, and it is a category of damage jurors will rarely think of on their own.
The survival damages recoverable by the estate are measured by what the deceased themselves suffered. They include the conscious pain and mental anguish endured between the injury and the death, reasonable and necessary medical and hospital expenses, and reasonable funeral and burial costs. Where the injury and death were nearly instantaneous, survival damages may be modest. Where the person survived hours or days in obvious pain and awareness, they are not.
Exemplary damages are available in both the wrongful death and survival tracks where clear and convincing evidence establishes gross negligence, malice, or fraud. Texas caps exemplary damages under Section 41.008 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, but the cap has significant carve-outs and does not apply in every category of case. A well-pleaded gross negligence theory is not a decoration on the case, it is a strategic decision the defense answers to for months.
The two-year clock, and the shorter ones
Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003(b) sets the limitations period for wrongful death at two years from the date of death. The underlying survival claim runs on the same two-year clock from the injury under Section 16.003(a), and when injury and death are close in time the two clocks converge. Two years sounds like plenty of time until the case is on top of you and the evidence has started to slip.
Against a governmental entity, the practical deadline is shorter, often much shorter. The Texas Tort Claims Act requires written notice of a claim to the responsible unit of government within six months of the incident under Section 101.101, and many home-rule cities impose still shorter charter deadlines, sometimes ninety days, sometimes forty-five. The written notice is not the lawsuit, and giving it does not commit the family to file. But missing it can end a case before it starts.
A civil rights wrongful death claim under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 in federal court is governed by the state's personal injury limitations period, which in Texas is two years, but it has no state notice requirement and no state damages cap.
Comparative fault
Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 33.001 reduces recovery by the deceased's own share of responsibility and bars it entirely if that share is greater than fifty percent. The defense will work hard, from the first insurance-company statement, to move the percentage onto the person who cannot speak for themselves. A wrongful death case has to be built from the start with that pressure in mind: preserve the scene, preserve the vehicle, preserve the ELD, preserve the video, get the witnesses on the record, and answer the comparative-fault narrative with evidence rather than argument.
When the defendant is the government
A wrongful death case against a city, a county, the state, or a state agency is a different case than one against a private defendant. The Texas Tort Claims Act, Chapter 101 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, waives sovereign immunity in narrow categories, mostly involving motor vehicles operated by governmental employees and premises defects on governmental property. It also caps damages by defendant type, and the caps are much lower than the recoveries a serious wrongful death case would otherwise support.
A federal civil rights wrongful death claim under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 is a separate track when a police officer or jailer caused the death through excessive force, deliberate indifference to a serious medical need, or a policy or custom of a municipality. The federal claim has no state damages cap and no state notice requirement, and its clearly-established test turns on Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment doctrine developed in cases like Graham v. Connor and its Fifth Circuit progeny. See the Docket entries below for how that doctrine is moving.
The kinds of wrongful death cases handled here
Commercial vehicle wrecks are the highest-value single lane of wrongful death work in Texas because a tractor-trailer at highway speed is a physics problem the driver's own body cannot solve. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, ELD data, and company hiring records are all in play.
Truck & 18-Wheeler Wrecks →A car wreck that kills is not a bigger version of a car wreck that hurts. The evidence has to be preserved differently, the insurance-policy picture has to be mapped early, and the case moves through the wrongful death statute rather than through the ordinary injury track.
Car Accidents →Workers' compensation is not the ceiling when a death is on the job. Non-subscriber employers can be sued directly under Labor Code Section 406.033; third parties on site, equipment manufacturers, and property owners remain reachable even when comp applies.
Industrial Accidents →Deaths caused by excessive force or deliberate indifference to serious medical needs in police or jail custody go forward under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 in federal court. No damages cap, no state notice, and a doctrine that is moving quickly in the Fifth Circuit.
Civil Rights →Product defect and premises liability wrongful deaths run through Chapter 82 and premises-liability doctrine respectively. Inadequate-security cases against apartment complexes, hotels, and commercial owners are their own subcategory.
Serious Personal Injury →A medical wrongful death case runs through Chapter 74, with its expert-report requirement inside 120 days of filing, its non-economic damages caps, and its emergency-care carve-outs. Clear negligence and preserved records are the case screen.
Tell me what happened →The doctrine and the mechanism behind these cases, from my writing desk:
Tell me what happened.
Free consultation. No fees unless we win. Speak with me directly, not a screener.
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