Hit by a careless driver?Make it their problem, not yours.

Insurance companies resolve thousands of claims a month, and their playbook is consistent: contact you fast, get a recorded statement, question your injuries, and offer a quick check before you know what your case is worth. It works on unrepresented people. It does not work on prepared ones.

Our job starts with evidence: the crash report, scene photos, vehicle damage, witness statements, and where it matters, camera footage and vehicle data. Then we document your damages completely — every bill, every missed paycheck, your future treatment, and the human cost that doesn't show up on a receipt.

Then we negotiate from strength. Most cases settle when the insurer sees an airtight file and a lawyer ready to try the case. If they won't pay what's fair, we file suit — in Harris County, El Paso County, or wherever your crash happened. You approve every decision along the way.

Rear-endings, intersection collisions, hit-and-runs, uninsured drivers, rideshare crashes — if a careless driver put you here, we take it from here. In English or Spanish.

Injured without papers? Your right to compensation in Texas doesn't depend on immigration status, and we don't ask about it to help you. What you should know.

Two deadlines, and one of them is far shorter than people think

You have two years from the date of the crash to file suit in Texas. That is the rule almost everyone has heard, and for an ordinary collision between two private drivers it is the one that applies.

The deadline that quietly destroys cases is the other one. A claim involving a city, a county, a transit authority or a school district runs on a notice deadline instead, and those are measured in weeks. The City of Houston's is 90 days. If a city truck, a bus, a police car or a badly maintained public road was part of what happened to you, the clock you are on is not two years, and nobody at an insurance company is going to warn you about it.

Fault is a percentage, not a verdict

Texas does not throw you out because you were partly to blame. Under the proportionate responsibility rules, you recover as long as your share of the fault is 50 percent or less — your award is simply reduced by your percentage. At 51 percent you recover nothing, which is why that single number is fought over harder than almost anything else in a claim.

Here is what people miss: that percentage is not handed down by a judge early on. It starts as a number an adjuster asserts, often in the first phone call, and it is negotiated. An adjuster telling you that you were 30 percent responsible is proposing a 30 percent discount on everything you are owed. The crash report is not binding on that question either — an officer's opinion about cause is one reconstruction, written after the fact by someone who did not see it happen.

What the claim is actually worth

Texas splits damages into two families, and both are recoverable for what has already happened and for what is reasonably probable going forward.

Economic damages are the ones with a receipt: medical bills, future medical care, lost wages, and lost earning capacity — which is a separate and often larger claim than lost wages, because it covers the diminished ability to earn even if you are back at work. Past medical expenses are limited by statute to what was actually paid or incurred, not the sticker price on a hospital statement, which is one reason running treatment through insurance usually helps you.

Non-economic damages are named in the statute and the list is broader than most people expect: physical pain, mental anguish, disfigurement, physical impairment, loss of consortium, inconvenience, and loss of enjoyment of life. Texas places no cap on these in an ordinary injury case. The $250,000 figure people have heard about comes from the medical malpractice statute and has nothing to do with a car wreck.

The ceiling nobody mentions until the end

However badly you were hurt, a claim runs into whatever insurance exists behind it. Texas minimum liability coverage is $30,000 per person and $60,000 per crash. A serious injury can pass $30,000 in the emergency department alone.

That is why finding coverage matters more than arguing about pain and suffering. Your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage exists unless you rejected it in writing, and it is what stands between a minimum-limits driver and a full recovery. So does PIP, which pays medical bills and lost income regardless of who caused the crash and is not reduced because your health insurance also paid. Other policies turn up too: a second at-fault driver, an employer if the driver was working, a commercial policy behind a company vehicle, an umbrella.

Why the medical record decides it

Insurers do not pay for injuries; they pay for documented injuries. The two things that consistently reduce a claim are a delay before the first visit and a gap in the middle of treatment. Both get characterized as proof you were not really hurt, when the real reason is almost always money, transportation or a job that could not be left.

See someone the same day if you can, tell the provider it was a motor vehicle collision, and keep going. If cost is the obstacle, say so early — PIP, health insurance and treatment on a letter of protection are all routes we help people find.