Houston Personal Injury Frequently Asked Questions

Not always, and it is worth saying so on a law firm's website. Where liability is admitted, injuries were minor and resolved, and the offer covers the bills and lost time, people handle claims themselves perfectly well. Representation earns its fee where liability is disputed, where injuries are serious or permanent, where several parties or policies are involved, where a governmental defendant brings notice deadlines and caps, or where the offer plainly does not reflect the loss. A free consultation is how you find out which of those describes your situation.

Nobody can answer that before reading your medical records, and a number offered earlier is a sales figure. Value is driven by the medical evidence and whether treatment has concluded, documented lost income and future earning capacity, the permanence of any impairment, the insurance actually available on the other side, and your own share of responsibility under § 33.001. Available insurance is the ceiling people most often overlook — a catastrophic injury caused by a driver carrying the $30,000 minimum is limited by that policy unless another defendant or your own UM/UIM applies.

It is governed by your medical treatment more than by the legal work. A claim should not settle before you reach maximum medical improvement, because settlement is final and cannot be reopened if the injury proves worse than expected. Straightforward claims with completed treatment and clear liability often resolve within months. Disputed liability, serious injury, multiple defendants, a governmental defendant or a parallel criminal case all extend it. What can honestly be said at the start is what the next three steps are and roughly how long each takes.

The fee is a percentage of what is recovered, and there is no fee if there is no recovery. It should be set out in a written agreement you receive before you sign. Case expenses — medical records, filing fees, expert reports, depositions — are a separate category, and the agreement should state how they are treated, including what happens to them if the case does not succeed. Ask for that in writing at any firm you consider, and read the expense provisions as carefully as you read the percentage.

Because several parties may have a right to be reimbursed from the recovery first. A health insurer that paid for treatment may assert subrogation; Medicare and Medicaid have statutory recovery rights; hospitals and providers can assert liens. Those amounts are identified, verified and frequently negotiated down before you are paid, which is part of the work rather than an afterthought. Any firm should explain the distinction between the settlement figure and the disbursement at the outset rather than at the end.

Most do not, and anyone predicting either outcome at the first meeting is guessing. Filing suit is a step in a negotiation as often as it is a route to a courtroom, and cases resolve at many points along the way. What matters is that the firm handling it is genuinely able to try the case if the offer does not reflect the loss, because that capability is what makes the negotiation real. No case is settled without your agreement, and none is filed without it either.

You can still recover, up to a point. Section 33.001 provides that a claimant may not recover damages if their percentage of responsibility is greater than 50 percent, and below that threshold the award is reduced by the percentage assigned. That is why an adjuster has a direct financial incentive to build a share against you, and why the questions about speed, attention, seatbelt use and prior injuries are not small talk. The answer is evidence rather than argument, and most of that evidence is perishable.

Then your own uninsured motorist coverage is usually the claim. Texas requires insurers to provide UM and UIM in at least the Chapter 601 limits unless a named insured rejected it in writing under § 1952.101(b), so if your declarations page does not show it, ask your insurer to produce that signed rejection. Be aware that a UM claim is made against your own insurer, which then stands in the absent party's shoes and is entitled to contest liability and damages exactly as they could have.

Later than people fear for the deadline, and earlier than they realise for the evidence. The filing deadline is two years from accrual under § 16.003(a), or six months for written notice to a governmental unit under § 101.101. But camera footage near a scene routinely overwrites within a week or two, vehicles are repaired or scrapped, and witnesses become harder to find. A claim brought at month twenty-three is legally timely and evidentially hollow, which is the situation worth avoiding.

On things you can verify. Every Texas attorney has a Bar number that resolves to the State Bar record showing licence status and disciplinary history — ask for it and look it up. Ask whether anyone on the file is board certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and in what field. Ask who handles the case day to day. Ask for the fee agreement in writing before signing. And treat any quoted case value or timeline given before a medical record has been read as exactly what it is.