Contact a Houston/Sugar Land Personal Injury Lawyer

Someone at the firm rather than an outsourced intake centre. The purpose of a first conversation is to understand what happened, what injuries there are, and whether there is a claim worth pursuing — including telling you when there is not, which is a normal and useful outcome. If the matter is outside what this firm does, we will say so rather than take it on. Nothing is signed on a first call and there is no cost to making one.

A spouse, parent, adult child or anyone acting with the injured person's knowledge can start the conversation, and that happens often where someone is hospitalised or sedated. What a family member cannot do is sign a representation agreement on an adult's behalf without proper authority. Where someone has died, the people who may bring a wrongful death claim are defined by statute — the surviving spouse, children and parents under § 71.004(a) — and the survival claim belongs to the estate under § 71.021, so the first practical question is often who has authority to act.

Whatever you already have, and do not delay the conversation to assemble it. The most useful items are the crash or incident report, photographs of the vehicles and the scene, your own insurance declarations page, the names of every medical provider you have seen, and any letters or cards from adjusters or investigators. Your own declarations page matters more than people expect, because it shows whether you carry uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, which is often the realistic source of recovery when the other driver carries only the Texas minimum.

It is not fatal and it is very common — people give statements in the first days because it feels cooperative and because nobody told them otherwise. What matters is knowing what was said so it can be dealt with rather than discovered later. Bring any correspondence, note when the conversation happened and roughly what was asked, and say if anything was recorded. From that point on, the useful rule is to decline further recorded statements to the other side while continuing to cooperate with your own insurer, whose policy contains a cooperation clause.

Nothing, and there is no obligation attached to it. If the firm takes the case, the representation is on a contingency fee — a percentage of the recovery, with no fee if there is no recovery — and that percentage is set out in a written agreement you receive before you sign anything. Case expenses such as records, filing fees and expert reports are handled separately and are explained in the same agreement. Any firm should be willing to put those terms in writing at the outset.

The office is at 8313 Southwest Fwy Ste 102, Houston, TX 77074, on the Southwest Freeway a few minutes from the 610 Loop, Sharpstown and the Beltway. It is the firm's only office; Baytown, Galveston, Katy, Pasadena, Sugar Land and The Woodlands are served from here rather than through branch addresses. The map on this page shows the location and will give directions from wherever you are. Where someone is hospitalised or unable to travel, arrangements are made to meet elsewhere.

Medical care first, always — the claim can wait a day and an untreated injury cannot. Southwest Houston has several emergency departments near the freeway system, including Memorial Hermann Southwest on Beechnut and the HCA facilities on Westheimer and South Rice. The crash report follows: it is filed with TxDOT and available through its crash records system, and a Houston Police Department investigation can also be requested through HPD Records once processed. An unincorporated-area crash sits with the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

Sooner than feels necessary, because evidence expires long before deadlines do. Camera footage from businesses near a scene is routinely overwritten within days, vehicles are repaired or scrapped, and witnesses become harder to locate. Texas allows two years from accrual under § 16.003(a), but that is the outer boundary rather than the first deadline that applies — a claim involving a City of Houston, Harris County or METRO vehicle requires written notice within six months under § 101.101, and insurance policies impose their own notice conditions that are shorter still.

The same business day wherever possible, and if you call outside office hours you can leave a message or use the form on this page. What happens next is straightforward: a conversation about the incident and the injuries, an honest assessment of whether there is a claim, and — if the firm takes it — a written fee agreement before anything else. If there is a governmental deadline or a preservation issue that needs immediate action, that is dealt with in the first conversation rather than after paperwork.

Because a statement taken in the first days, before your treatment is complete and before you know the full extent of the injury, is the most useful version they will ever obtain. Ordinary polite answers — "I'm fine", "I didn't see them until the last second" — are quoted back later as admissions about injury or about your own attention, which matters because Texas reduces recovery by your share of responsibility and bars it entirely above 50 percent under § 33.001. You are generally under no obligation to give the other side a statement at all.

Because your own policy is frequently the difference between a recovery and a shortfall. Texas requires only $30,000 per person and $60,000 per crash from an at-fault driver under § 601.072, which a serious injury exceeds routinely. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on your own policy fills that gap, and Texas requires insurers to provide it unless a named insured rejected it in writing under § 1952.101(b). If your declarations page does not show it, that written rejection is a document your insurer must be able to produce.

By having the conversation, which costs nothing. The questions are whether someone else's conduct caused the incident, whether you were injured, whether the injury can be connected to the incident by medical evidence, and whether there is insurance or a defendant able to pay. Any of those can be the answer that ends it, and being told so plainly is more useful than being taken on and quietly under-worked. It is also the reason a firm that quotes a case value before reading a medical record is not assessing anything.