Texas

August 14, 2023

Texas Personal Injury Settlement Amounts and Statistics

This page explores settlement amounts and jury awards in personal injury cases in Texas. Our attorneys also do a deep dive into Texas personal injury law to help you better understand the lay of the land when bringing a personal injury claim in Texas.

If you’re a personal injury victim filing a compensation claim in Texas, you should want to know the potential range of settlement payouts for your case. Why? Because monetary compensation is ultimately what a personal injury or wrongful death claim is all about. The purpose of the system is to put a dollar amount on your suffering. Because that is all the civil justice system can provide for you.

This page is designed to survey how personal injury cases have been resolved in Texas, offering you the opportunity to align your claim with Texas personal injury settlement statistics and example settlements and jury awards.

July 19, 2023

Fort Worth Car Accident Lawsuits and Settlements

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

On this page, our car accident lawyers will look at Fort Worth auto accident lawsuits. We will review key points of Texas law relevant to auto tort cases and we will discuss how much settlement compensation plaintiffs typically get in Fort Worth car accident cases.

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Texas Personal Injury Settlements

July 8, 2023

Galveston Personal Injury Settlement Amounts

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

This page explores settlement amounts and jury awards in Galveston personal injury lawsuits. If you are a personal injury victim seeking compensation in Texas, your first question is how much money will I get in a settlement? Monetary compensation is at the core of a personal injury or wrongful death claim. You are asking the right question.

Our page offers an overview of how personal injury cases have been resolved in Galveston presenting you with valuable personal injury example settlements, and jury awards.

We urge caution in drawing direct comparisons between seemingly similar cases, as each case is unique, and factors influencing settlement payouts may not be apparent from case summaries alone.

January 11, 2023

Average Verdict in Texas Personal Injury Lawsuit

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

According to a Jury Verdict Research study published this month, the average compensation for a personal injury lawsuit in Texas over the last six years is $826,892. The highest verdict was over $100 million, which obviously, inflated the average verdict. The median judgment is only $12,281.

Indeed, medical malpractice reform in Texas has not helped this number in recent years. A Texas medical malpractice lawyer is hard to find unless it is a birth injury case or other claims with long-term catastrophic injuries and future medical care or future lost wages. So the average Texas medical malpractice settlement or verdict in a wrongful death case without significant economic loss is likely to be less than you would typically see elsewhere.

Keep in mind, too, Texas is less a state than several countries in terms of how they value personal injury cases. So a verdict in East Texas might be very different from a verdict in San Antonio for the exact same case.

January 7, 2013

Lawyer Mucks Up Asbestos Case; Gets Away with It

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

A Texas lawyer who botched a tragic mesothelioma asbestos case will get off scot-free according to the Court of Appeals of Texas for, well, reasons that escape me.

Briefly here are the facts. In July 2004, meso victim hires a lawyer to pursue her asbestos claims. Plaintiff had a rare form of meso called well-differentiated papillary mesothelioma. The lawyer waited until January, 2006, to file her lawsuit against various defendants that included negligence, strict liability, and premises liability. The case was removed to federal court.

Plaintiff found a lawyer for her malpractice action against her original lawyer. This new lawyer in turn hired another lawyer – annoyed yet? – who was set to testify that plaintiff would have recovered settlements from multiple tort defendants and asbestos bankruptcy trusts, totaling at least $2,000,000. Plaintiff’s malpractice expert then took the next leap of faith and concluded that these settlements should have been finalized by no later than the end of 2005. Anyone who follows the asbestos docket has now rolled their eyes in the back of their head.

November 4, 2008

Lawsuit Against Bar for Drunk Driver

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar was named in a lawsuit following a fatal alcohol-related car crash. In the lawsuit, plaintiff claims the bar over-served a man on the night of the accident and was negligent in the death of her daughter.

This is an awful case. The man’s pickup truck collided with a car occupied by three teenagers, killing two people of them and seriously injuring the third. The drunk driver was also killed in the car accident.

As tragic as this case is, I have some concern with dram shop laws that hold bars accountable in these cases just because I think it is so difficult to track who has been served what at a bar.

October 18, 2008

Texas Supreme Court Gives Injured Victims Another Chance

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Texas Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a strange rehearing of a ruling that Texas lawmakers and other groups say deprives injury victims of their rights. The issue of whether contract employees covered by workers’ compensation can seek damages against work site owners for on-the-job injuries. A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers, labor groups and accident victims have protested the decision saying the Texas high court erred in granting extended immunity provisions that were not part of legislative intent.

Interesting case. The Texas Supreme Court decision was unanimous but they get a rehearing because everyone thinks it was an awful call. Probably the best approach would be for Texas lawmakers to rewrite the law.

October 17, 2008

Truck Accident Verdict Near Dallas, Texas: $1.5 Million

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

When a lawyer gets a verdict or settlement in a 7 figure case, the lawyer can join the Million Dollar Advocates (of which I am a member). Last week, after a Texas jury awarded $1.5 million in a truck accident involving two men seriously injured after a semi crashed into their car, an Indiana based trucking company entered a more ignominious group of trucking companies that have had million-dollar truck accident verdicts entered against them based on truck accidents that occurred within a year, both Texas truck accidents. In 2005, Celadon took a $17.5 million jury hit in a truck accident case involving the death of a U.S. Army lieutenant, who was killed after getting rear-ended by a Celadon truck. The venue? Texas.

In this most recent case, two men were driving in their car on a highway in Waxahachie, Texas (near Dallas) when a Celadon Trucking Services tractor-trailer struck their car. The Plaintiffs’ Texas truck accident lawyer alleged in the Plaintiffs’ lawsuit that Celadon negligently hired the truck driver and that its driver caused the truck accident. The jury agreed.

One of the men suffered a fractured vertebra; the other sustained a serious injury to his right knee, which required several reconstructive surgeries. The latter man also suffered a mild traumatic brain injury and damage to his collarbone.

September 19, 2008

Car Accident Claims Without a Lawyer: Handling Auto Accident Cases on Your Own

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

If you have talked to a personal injury lawyer who handles many car accident cases in the last six months, you will hear complaints that these cases are drying up. Yet, unfortunately, there is no indication we have fewer automobile accidents in this country. So why?

I think the main reason is that car insurance companies are getting better at reaching out to clients before they find a lawyer. Insurance companies may absolutely do this. Moreover, I think this works mostly with smaller auto accident cases. The reality—and this is something many car accident lawyers don’t want prospective clients to know—is that you can often handle small auto accident cases without a lawyer.

Our car accident lawyers handling your case will increase the value of your case. In fact, the mere involvement of our law firm, given our reputation, will increase the value of your case. But how much? If you have a big case, it will increase the value a great deal. Our car accident lawyers have been referred cases by other lawyers that already have an offer and we have gotten more than 35 times the offer given to the original lawyer. But our accident lawyers’ ability to add value to your case is directly proportional to the size of the case. If you have a case with an ER visit and a few physical therapy sessions, our car accident lawyers will increase the value of your case. And it will make your life easier because you have someone to process everything for you. But is it enough to make it worth hiring us? The answer to that varies from case to case. Our car accident lawyers used to take these kinds of cases because we thought it was a bad idea to deny anyone the right to a lawyer if they had a valid claim. Now, I’m telling at least a third of the people that call us with legitimate cases that they certainly can hire a lawyer, but they also have the option to proceed without a lawyer, and we tell them what they should do to continue bringing their car accident claim without a lawyer.

March 24, 2008

Allstate v. Texas Personal Injury Lawyers and Chiropractors

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Jeremy Roebuck of The Monitor in South Texas writes an interesting article about, unlike Friday’s blog post, Allstate going on the offensive against abuses in the personal injury system.

In this case, Allstate has brought a fraud lawsuit against a group of Rio Grande Valley chiropractic clinics and their lawyers, claiming that they improperly recruited personal injury victims, suggested patients undergo unnecessary treatments, and then persuaded their patients to file personal injury lawsuits against Allstate.

Allstate alleges the clinics, Chiropractic Strategies, has telemarketers that encourage people to visit their clinics for a free evaluation. Once there, Allstate claims they were are diagnosed with injuries they did not have and overtreated for the injuries they did have. The article does not say but I’m assuming they are calling people who have been in auto accidents based on looking at police reports or some other means to find injury victims.