The term “catastrophic injury” describes injuries that completely upend a person’s life trajectory. These injuries often cause permanent disability, prevent a return to work, and even create a seemingly insurmountable barrier to a prosperous and happy future. Texas law allows victims of catastrophic injury to seek the resources necessary to rebuild their lives if someone else’s negligence is to blame, and a skilled and compassionate personal injury lawyer in Rockdale, TX and Navasota, TX should be your first call.
Differentiating Catastrophic Injury Cases
Unlike more routine personal injury cases, the stakes are far higher in catastrophic injury lawsuits. Victims often require a lifetime of medical care, adaptive equipment, in-home aides, and potentially extensive modifications to their residence. Accurately calculating these future expenses is crucial to your future, but it also requires specialized knowledge that not all attorneys possess. It’s very important to work with a highly skilled and experienced personal injury lawyer.
Many victims never return to their previous line of work, or any work at all, after these sorts of injuries, so your attorney must be able to project what your potential income would have been over your lifetime had the injury not occurred. And since Texas law provides for pain and suffering compensation, and catastrophic injuries usually trigger lasting emotional trauma for both the victim and those closest to them, your attorney must also argue for appropriate compensation that goes beyond simply covering medical bills.
Proving Negligence
Proving that another party’s negligence caused your catastrophic injury is going to be the foundation of your case. Simply put, negligence is defined as acting in a way that a reasonable person would not under similar circumstances. For your claim to succeed, you must establish four key elements:
Duty of Care
The defendant (the person or entity who caused your injury) owed you a legal duty of care. For example, motorists on Texas roads have a duty to operate their vehicles safely, doctors have a duty to adhere to accepted medical standards, manufacturers have a duty to produce safe products: these are just some examples. On the other hand, property owners have no duty towards trespassers, apart from that they may not deliberately hurt them.
Breach of Duty
You must prove the defendant violated their duty of care. This could be a driver getting behind the wheel drunk, a doctor who misread an X-ray because they went too fast, or a company knowingly putting out a dangerous product.
Causation
This critical element shows the link between the defendant’s breach of duty and your injuries. You must demonstrate that their specific wrong act caused your catastrophic harm.
Damages
Finally, you need to show that you incurred actual, quantifiable losses, both economic and non-economic, because of the injury.
Texas’s Modified Comparative Negligence
Unlike some states, Texas allows recovery even if the victim bears some partial responsibility for the accident. Your compensation is reduced by your percentage of fault, but being partially at fault but doesn’t completely bar you from bringing a case unless your responsibility exceeds 50%. However, insurance companies routinely try to place more blame on the injured party than they should, making an attorney’s fight for fair apportionment of fault even more important.
How an Attorney Helps You Prove Liability
Catastrophic injury cases often require an especially thorough and careful investigation and sometimes even accident reconstruction experts to clearly demonstrate the chain of events. Your lawyer may work with medical professionals to document the full scope of your injuries and how they limit your daily life; with private investigators to uncover evidence insurance companies would rather conceal; and with experts in specialized fields to counter defense arguments meant to minimize their own fault and maximize yours.
Damage Caps and Texas Law
While Texas generally allows injured parties to pursue full compensation, there are some notable legal limits. Understanding these restrictions is critical for having realistic expectations, and your personal injury lawyer in Rockdale, TX and Navasota, TX will help you to understand what damages you might be eligible for:
Compensatory Damages
These cover all the tangible expenses, like medical care and lost wages, as well as intangible losses, like pain and suffering. For most catastrophic injury cases, Texas places no arbitrary cap on most compensatory damages, allowing you to present the full scope of your financial and non-financial hardship.
Punitive Damages
Unlike compensatory damages, punitive damages are not meant to compensate you for your losses. They are meant to punish deliberate wrongdoing or gross negligence by the defendant, and Texas law does cap punitive awards. They typically cannot exceed twice the amount of economic damages awarded, and no more than $750,000 for non-economic damages (such as pain and suffering).
Medical Malpractice Exceptions
Cases involving negligence by doctors, hospitals, or other medical providers have additional restrictions. While there’s still no cap on the economic losses (the ones you can prove with bills, pay stubs, etc), non-economic damages like pain and suffering are capped at $250,000 per defendant.
Texas Statutes of Limitation
The clock is ticking in catastrophic injury cases, and Texas law imposes a strict two-year statute of limitations on the majority of cases, starting from the date of the injury, for filing personal injury lawsuits. There’s an even shorter window of only six months for lawsuits against government entities. Missing these deadlines could permanently extinguish your right to seek compensation, no matter how strong your case, so don’t delay in contacting a lawyer.
The Steps Involved
Initial Steps
First, your primary focus after a catastrophic injury will be getting the best medical care available. However, it’s equally important to document everything you can about the incident, like photos of the scene, witness contact information, and medical records. Consult a Texas personal injury lawyer as soon as possible to get started on that.
Then, your lawyer launches a comprehensive investigation. This may involve getting some accident reconstruction experts, medical specialists, and vocational rehabilitation experts to assess your future earning potential, and your lawyer may call on investigators to look into the accident and ensure there’s nothing the other side is trying to hide. Your lawyer will then work with medical and financial professionals to project the likely costs of your care across your lifetime, the loss in income that you’re likely to experience, and a proper calculation for the pain and suffering and other intangible losses you’ve endured.
Demands and Negotiations
With all that done, your attorney will submit a demand to the at-fault party’s insurance company detailing the evidence establishing liability and the full scope of your damages. Negotiations usually ensue at this point, with insurance companies often starting with low settlement offers, hoping the victim will accept out of desperation. Skillful negotiation is important for getting you the maximum compensation.
Filing a Lawsuit
Most cases settle before reaching trial. However, if the insurance company refuses to offer a fair amount, the next step is filing a lawsuit to let a judge or jury decide. It’s important to select an attorney with proven courtroom experience, as insurance companies become more amenable to equitable settlements when they know your legal team is prepared to fight hard on your behalf.
If you or a loved one has suffered a catastrophic injury in Texas, contact Brian Gutierrez, Personal Injury Trial lawyer now for a free consultation.
