Texas Boating Accident Lawyer

Usually the operator, and often the owner as well. Section 31.094 prohibits operating in a wilfully or wantonly reckless or negligent manner endangering life, limb or property, and § 31.095(a) requires speed no greater than reasonable and prudent, and no greater than allows stopping within the assured clear distance ahead. Beyond the operator, an owner who allowed an inexperienced or intoxicated person to operate can be liable, a rental or livery operator can be liable for the condition of the vessel and its instructions, and a manufacturer can be liable where equipment failed.

Two distinct things under § 31.104. First, render such assistance as is practicable and necessary to save persons affected from or minimise danger, so far as they can without serious danger to their own vessel, crew and passengers. Second, give their name, address and identification of their vessel — in writing — to any person injured and to the owner of any property damaged. Leaving without doing both is a violation in the same way that leaving a road collision is, and it is evidence in your claim.

Section 31.105 requires one within 30 days where the incident resulted in a death, an injury requiring medical treatment beyond first aid, or property damage above an amount set by the commission at not less than $2,000. Failure to file does not defeat your claim, but it removes a contemporaneous official record that would otherwise document the incident, which makes your own evidence more important — photographs, the identity of everyone aboard both vessels, marina and ramp camera footage, and the Coast Guard or game warden response if there was one.

The additional statutory duties, which create clear failures to point to. Section 31.106(a) requires that everyone riding on or towed behind a personal watercraft wears a Coast Guard–approved Type I, II, III or V flotation device; that where the manufacturer fitted a lanyard-type engine cut-off switch, the lanyard is attached to the operator; and that the craft is not operated between sunset and sunrise. Those are bright-line requirements rather than judgement calls, which makes a breach considerably easier to establish than a general allegation of careless operation.

Galveston Bay, Clear Lake and the Kemah area, Lake Houston and Lake Conroe, and the Intracoastal Waterway, plus the bays and passes along the upper Texas coast. Those waters mix recreational craft with commercial traffic — barges, tugs and shipping moving to and from the Ship Channel — which is a significant part of why collisions there produce serious injuries. Where a commercial vessel is involved, the analysis can shift out of the Water Safety Act and into federal maritime law entirely.

When it arises from work aboard a vessel rather than recreation. A crew member of a vessel in navigation may be a seaman with a Jones Act claim under 46 U.S.C. § 30104, which allows a civil action at law with a jury against the employer. A dock, terminal or shipyard worker who is not a seaman generally falls under the Longshore Act, where employer liability is exclusive under 33 U.S.C. § 905(a). A passenger on a commercial vessel is different again. The classification follows the actual activity, and it changes both the remedy and the deadline.

For an ordinary Texas boating injury, two years from accrual under § 16.003(a), or two years from the date of death under § 16.003(b). But two things can shorten it. If a governmental vessel or employee is involved — a sheriff's patrol boat, a game warden, a municipal craft — § 101.101 requires written notice within six months. And if the incident turns out to be maritime rather than recreational, federal deadlines apply instead, and a commercial passenger ticket can impose shorter contractual ones.

Because it is common on the water and because operating a vessel while intoxicated is an offence in Texas, prosecuted separately from anything to do with your claim. For the civil case, intoxication is evidence of negligent operation under § 31.094 and can support the argument that conduct went beyond ordinary carelessness — though exemplary damages still require clear and convincing evidence of fraud, malice or gross negligence under § 41.003(a). It can also open a claim against whoever provided the alcohol, on the same dram shop analysis that applies on land.

Because the scene does not exist. There are no skid marks, no debris field to photograph and no fixed position to return to — the water closes over everything within seconds. That puts unusual weight on what people recorded at the time: photographs and video from either vessel or from bystanders, marina and ramp camera systems, GPS and chartplotter data, phone location records, and the accounts of everyone aboard. Vessels also get repaired or moved quickly, so an early inspection request matters more here than in a road case.

Nothing to ask. The consultation is free and there is no obligation, and representation is on a contingency fee — a percentage of the recovery, no fee if there is no recovery — set out in a written agreement before you sign. The first question we will want to answer is whether the incident is a Texas recreational matter under the Water Safety Act or a federal maritime one, because that single classification changes the deadline, the forum and what has to be proved.