Car wreck lawyer in Houston: how your claim runs, from the crash report to the last offer

A Houston car wreck claim is a record built one piece at a time: the crash report, the photos, the medical file, the bills and the insurance policies. This page walks through each piece, in the order it usually comes, and what a car wreck lawyer in Houston does with it.

Harris County had 115,173 reported crashes in 2024, according to TxDOT, including 2,282 crashes with a suspected serious injury. Behind each of those numbers is a person dealing with an insurer while trying to get better. Most of them have never made an injury claim before. The insurer handles claims like yours every day and knows exactly how the process works. That gap is the reason people call a lawyer.

The first piece: the Texas crash report

When an officer investigates a wreck that hurts or kills someone, or causes apparent property damage of $1,000 or more, the officer files a Texas Peace Officer’s Crash Report, form CR-3, with TxDOT within 10 days (Transportation Code 550.062). The report names the drivers, vehicles and insurers, sketches the scene and records what the officer saw and was told.

The people involved, their lawyers and their insurers can buy the full report (section 550.065), usually through TxDOT’s online crash report system for a small fee. We order it in the first days. If something in it is wrong, such as a missing witness or a mistaken lane, the sooner we know, the sooner we can gather the evidence that answers it.

The second piece: proof of who caused the wreck

Texas uses proportionate responsibility. A jury, or an insurer guessing what a jury would do, assigns each person a percentage of fault. Your recovery is reduced by your own share, and if your share is more than 50 percent you recover nothing (Civil Practice and Remedies Code 33.001 and 33.012).

That rule shapes everything the other side does. If the adjuster can move 20 percent of the blame onto you, the claim shrinks by a fifth. If the adjuster can argue you were mostly to blame, it disappears. So we collect the evidence that fixes fault early: photos taken at the scene, video from nearby businesses and traffic cameras before it is recorded over, witness names from the report, and data from the vehicles where it matters.

Where Houston wrecks happen

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s 2025 list puts the West Loop (I-610) between the Katy Freeway and the Southwest Freeway first among the most congested road segments in Texas. The Eastex Freeway, the Southwest Freeway inside the Loop, the North Loop, the Katy Freeway inside the Loop and the Gulf Freeway are all in the top seven. Congestion is not a crash count, but stop-and-go traffic is where rear-end wrecks and lane-change sideswipes pile up, and each of those wrecks raises the same fault questions.

When someone else shares the blame

Sometimes the driver who hit you was not the only cause: a second driver, a company whose truck was parked badly, a road contractor. A defendant can ask the court to name a responsible third party, generally at least 60 days before trial (section 33.004). Any defendant found more than 50 percent responsible can be made to answer for the full damages, jointly and severally (section 33.013). We look at every party early so none of this comes as a surprise.

The third piece: your medical file

The medical file is the heart of an injury claim. It shows what was hurt, how it was treated and what the doctors expect. Adjusters read it line by line, looking for three things: a gap between the wreck and the first visit, a gap in treatment, and any mention of an earlier injury to the same part of the body.

You cannot change what happened, but you can keep the record honest and complete. Tell each doctor every place that hurts, every time. Keep appointments, or write down why you missed one. Save receipts for prescriptions, braces and mileage to appointments. We request the records and bills from each provider and keep them in order, so the file tells your story without holes.

The fourth piece: the insurance that applies

A Texas driver must carry at least $30,000 in liability coverage for one person’s injuries, $60,000 for two or more people and $25,000 for property damage (Transportation Code 601.072). Many carry more; some carry none. Your own policy may add personal injury protection (PIP), which pays without regard to fault, and uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage (UM/UIM), both of which are included in Texas policies unless someone rejected them in writing (Insurance Code chapter 1952).

Coverage	Whose policy	What it does
Liability	The at-fault driver’s	Pays for injuries the driver caused, up to the policy limit
PIP	Yours	Pays under your own policy, regardless of fault
UM/UIM	Yours	Steps in when the other driver has no insurance or too little
Health insurance	Yours	Pays treatment under its own terms while the claim is pending

We find every policy that might apply before any demand goes out. A claim that only looks at the other driver’s minimum policy can leave coverage unused that was there all along.

The fifth piece: the demand and the answer

When your treatment has reached a point where the doctors can describe what the injury needs, we put the pieces together into a demand: the facts of the wreck and who caused it, the medical records and bills, the time you lost from work, and what the injury has changed in your daily life. We send it to the insurer with a deadline to respond.

The insurer answers with an offer, or a denial, or questions. We negotiate. Every offer is yours to accept or refuse, and we tell you plainly what we think of it. If the insurer will not deal fairly, we discuss filing a lawsuit, usually in the Harris County civil district courts at 201 Caroline, before the two-year deadline in Civil Practice and Remedies Code 16.003.

What we will not do

• Promise you a result. No honest lawyer can, and Texas rules forbid it.
• Tell you what your case is worth on the first call. Value depends on records that do not exist yet.
• Push you to settle before your treatment is understood.
• Charge you a fee or case costs if we do not recover money for you.

No Fees or Costs Unless We Win: the firm advances the costs of your case, and you pay no attorney’s fee and no case costs unless we recover money for you.

Why a firm that worked for insurers

Five of the seven LAWBOSS attorneys came from the insurance side. In our Houston office, Ian Nelsen was an adjuster and then an insurance defense attorney, Howard Hill spent over 20 years with two of the nation’s largest auto and commercial carriers, and Jonathan Harris spent more than a decade as a senior trial attorney for a major automobile insurer. They know which pieces of a file move an adjuster, because they used to be on the receiving end. Read more about them on our Houston team page, or see what a car wreck attorney in Houston handles at each stage of your case.

If your wreck was on the roads outside the city, our pages on a car accident lawyer in Pearland and a car wreck lawyer in Katy cover what is different there. If an impaired driver hit you, read about drunk driving accidents in Houston.