Thirteen Days Old: The SH 158 Crash That Killed a Newborn and a Teenager in Ector County
Thirteen days. That is how long this baby lived. Thirteen days of feedings and sleepless nights and the first time his fingers curled around a parent’s thumb. Then a Thursday afternoon on SH 158 in Ector County, a left turn across oncoming traffic, a heavy-duty pickup slamming into the passenger side of a sedan, and a child who never had a chance to fight for his life because no one strapped him into a car seat to give him one. He was ejected from the vehicle. He died at the scene. The driver of the sedan — a seventeen-year-old from Mississippi — was also unrestrained, also ejected, also gone.
If you are reading this, you are likely sitting with one of two griefs. You may be the family of that thirteen-day-old boy, and the loss is so new and so total that the legal questions feel almost offensive to think about — except that the evidence is already disappearing and the insurance adjuster is already building a file. Or you may be the family of the injured passenger who survived, and you are watching someone you love endure hospital care while trying to understand who pays for it and what happens next. You may even be the family of the teenage driver, grieving a child who also died and now faces blame in a system that feels like it is punishing you for mourning.
We are going to tell you the truth about all of it. What Texas law allows. What the insurance company is already doing. What evidence is dying on a clock right now. What the seat belt defense means for your case — and the honest answer to whether a thirteen-day-old baby who was not in a car seat still has a claim worth fighting. That answer is yes. The fight is different, and harder in some ways, but the law does not blame a newborn for an adult’s failure to buckle a car seat. It never has.
What Happened on SH 158 in Ector County
State Highway 158 runs through the Permian Basin near Odessa — a corridor saturated with oilfield commercial traffic, heavy-duty pickups, and high-speed through traffic that moves at seventy to seventy-five miles per hour on rural stretches. The highway has divided sections with service roads, what locals call frontage roads, and those service roads create a specific and predictable danger: a southbound vehicle wanting to reach the service road must cross the northbound lanes to get there. That crossing maneuver — a left turn across oncoming traffic — is one of the most common failure-to-yield crash patterns in West Texas.
Here is what the Texas Department of Public Safety has reported so far. At approximately 3:50 p.m. on a Thursday, a 2024 Chevrolet Malibu was traveling southbound on SH 158. The driver attempted a left turn onto the service road. A 2022 Dodge Ram 2500 was traveling northbound in the inside lane. The Malibu failed to yield the right of way. The Ram struck the passenger side of the Malibu in an angle collision.
The seventeen-year-old driver of the Malibu and a thirteen-day-old male infant, both from Mississippi, were not wearing seat belts. Both were ejected from the vehicle. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. A passenger in the Malibu suffered serious injuries and was taken to a hospital. Four others were injured. The crash remains under investigation by Texas DPS.
That last sentence — “the crash remains under investigation” — is where your case lives or dies. The DPS investigation is producing a CR-3 crash report right now, and that report will assign contributing factors and create a foundational narrative that every insurance adjuster and every defense lawyer will read first. The vehicles are sitting in a tow yard or an impound lot, and the data inside their event data recorders — speed, braking, steering input, seat belt status — is the single most important evidence in this case. That data can be overwritten if the vehicles are restarted or lost entirely if they are salvaged or scrapped. The scene evidence — skid marks, gouge marks in the pavement, debris fields, fluid trails — is already degrading in the West Texas heat and wind. Every day that passes without a preservation letter is a day the defense gains and your family loses.
Texas Child Restraint Law: The Legal Failure That Cost a Newborn Everything
Texas law does not leave child safety to opinion. The state’s transportation code requires all vehicle occupants to wear safety belts and specifically requires children younger than two years to be secured in rear-facing child safety seats. A thirteen-day-old infant is the most vulnerable occupant a vehicle can carry — too small for a standard seat belt, too fragile to survive ejection, and entirely dependent on an adult to place him in the federally required restraint and buckle it.
Texas law requires all vehicle occupants to wear safety belts and specifically requires children younger than 2 years to be secured in rear-facing child safety seats — violations constitute negligence per se in civil proceedings.
That doctrine — negligence per se — is the legal engine of the infant’s claim. When a person violates a statute designed to protect a class of people, and a member of that class is harmed by the violation, the violation itself is evidence of negligence. In many applications it is treated as negligence as a matter of law. The child restraint statute exists specifically to protect children under two from exactly what happened here — ejection, impact, and death in a crash because no one secured them. The adult who was responsible for placing that baby in a rear-facing car seat failed to do so, and that failure is not a parenting mistake. It is a statutory violation that transformed a serious crash into a fatal one.
The biomechanics are unforgiving. A thirteen-day-old infant’s head is proportionally the largest part of his body, his neck muscles cannot support it under any deceleration force, and his skeleton is largely cartilage. In a crash at highway speed, an unrestrained infant becomes a projectile. The forces involved in a side-impact collision at closing speeds of even fifty to seventy miles per hour will launch an unrestrained body through a window or door opening with a force that no infant skeleton can survive. A properly installed rear-facing infant car seat is engineered to distribute crash forces across the baby’s entire back and head, cradling the neck and spine in a shell designed and federally tested for exactly this purpose. The difference between restrained and unrestrained in a crash like this is not a matter of degree. It is the difference between a survivable injury and a funeral.
The defense will argue that the crash itself was so severe that the baby would have died regardless of restraint. That is the “unavoidability” argument, and it is the defense’s strongest card. The counter is biomechanical engineering testimony: a properly secured rear-facing infant seat, in a side-impact crash of this type, would have retained the child inside the vehicle compartment and distributed the deceleration forces across the shell rather than concentrating them on an unsupported body thrown through open space. We do not concede the crash was unsurvivable. We prove, with a biomechanical expert, that the restraint failure — not the crash — was what killed this child.
The Seat Belt Defense: How It Works and What It Means for Your Family
Texas courts have recognized the seat belt defense. That means evidence of non-use of seat belts is admissible and may be used to inform comparative fault and damages apportionment. This is the defense’s primary weapon in this case, and we will not pretend it does not exist.
Here is how it works. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence system with a 51 percent bar. A plaintiff who is assigned 51 percent or more of the responsibility for their own injury is barred from recovery entirely. A plaintiff assigned 50 percent or less has their recovery reduced by their percentage of fault. The seat belt defense lets the defense argue that an unrestrained occupant’s failure to buckle up contributed to their injuries — specifically to the ejection mechanism that caused death.
For the seventeen-year-old driver, this defense is powerful. The driver failed to yield the right of way (the primary cause of the crash) and also failed to wear a seat belt (which caused the ejection that killed them). The driver’s own comparative fault will proportionally reduce any recovery by their surviving family. The defense will push hard to pin a high percentage on the driver — and they have strong facts to support it.
For the thirteen-day-old infant, the seat belt defense is fundamentally different — and this is the point the generalist misses. A thirteen-day-old baby cannot choose to wear a seat belt. A thirteen-day-old baby cannot be contributorily negligent for failing to buckle up. The failure to restrain the infant is an adult’s failure, not the baby’s. The baby is a passive victim of someone else’s statutory violation. The defense may try to argue that the infant’s “failure to be restrained” should reduce the infant’s claim, but the law does not assign comparative fault to a newborn for an adult’s failure to secure them. The infant’s claim is the strongest claim in this case precisely because the baby had zero agency and zero responsibility for the restraint failure.
The injured passenger’s seat belt status — if they were also unrestrained — will affect their claim. If the passenger was belted, their claim is cleaner. If they were not, the defense will argue their ejection or enhanced injuries were partly their own fault. We need to establish the passenger’s restraint status from the EDR data and the medical records as soon as possible.
The killer takeaway here: the generalist files a single wrongful death complaint that treats all unrestrained occupants the same way. That is malpractice in this case. The infant’s claim, the driver’s claim, and the passenger’s claim must be pleaded and developed separately, with distinct comparative fault analyses for each. The baby’s claim is not reduced by the baby’s “non-use” — because the baby had no duty that the baby could breach. The adult who failed to secure the car seat is the one who breached the duty, and that breach is negligence per se.
Who Can Be Held Responsible When the At-Fault Driver Is Also Gone
The most painful reality of this case is that the primary at-fault party — the driver of the Malibu who failed to yield — is also deceased. A dead teenager with likely limited personal auto insurance is not a deep-pocket defendant. But the liability map does not end with the driver, and the families who think it does are the families who leave money on the table.
Here is the full defendant map as it develops:
The estate of the Malibu’s driver. The driver’s estate is the primary defendant on the failure-to-yield claim. The driver violated the right-of-way duty, and that violation is the proximate cause of the collision. The driver’s auto insurance policy — whatever its limits — is the first source of recovery. In Texas, the minimum legal coverage is $30,000 per person and $60,000 per incident, but a 2024 Chevrolet Malibu may carry more. That policy is the floor, not the ceiling, and multiple claimants — the infant’s family, the driver’s family, and the injured passenger — will all be competing for the same limited pool.
The owner of the Malibu. If the vehicle was owned by someone other than the driver — a parent, a relative, a family member — that owner may face a negligent entrustment claim. Permitting a seventeen-year-old with limited driving experience to operate a vehicle with an unrestrained newborn passenger is a decision an owner made, and if the owner knew or should have known the driver lacked the maturity or skill to safely operate the vehicle with a baby aboard, entrustment liability attaches independently of the driver’s negligence. Under Texas owner-consent principles, the owner may also bear vicarious liability simply for letting the vehicle be driven.
The parents or guardians of the seventeen-year-old driver. Texas has family responsibility statutes that may reach a minor’s torts, subject to statutory caps that must be confirmed against the current rule. Negligent supervision — allowing a minor to drive with an unrestrained infant — is a separate theory. The viability and the dollar cap on parental liability for a minor’s driving in Texas is a specific legal question that must be verified at the time of filing.
The driver of the Ram 2500. This is the comparative fault target, and it is where the case can transform from a limited-policy claim into a meaningful recovery. The Ram had the right of way — that favors the Ram driver. But right of way is not a license to ignore everything else. If the Ram was speeding, if the driver was distracted by a phone, if the driver failed to brake or take evasive action when a turning vehicle was visible, the Ram driver carries a share of fault. Even a 10 to 20 percent allocation against the Ram driver unlocks proportionally higher recovery from the Ram’s insurance policy, which may be substantially larger than the Malibu’s. The EDR data from the Ram — pre-impact speed, brake application, steering input — is what builds this claim, and that data is perishable.
The owner of the Ram 2500. A 2022 Dodge Ram 2500 is a heavy-duty pickup. In the Permian Basin, that vehicle is as likely to be an oilfield work truck as a personal vehicle. If the Ram was owned by an employer and the driver was operating within the scope of employment, the employer is vicariously liable for the driver’s share of fault. An oilfield company’s commercial liability coverage is typically far deeper than a personal auto policy. Discovering whether that Ram was a personal truck or a work truck is one of the first and most important investigative steps. If you want to understand how we approach commercial truck and oilfield vehicle cases in the Permian Basin, that experience transfers directly to this investigation — the question of whether a heavy-duty pickup on a Permian Basin highway was personal or commercial is the question that can multiply the available coverage.
The vehicle manufacturer. The 2024 Chevrolet Malibu is a General Motors product. In an ejection case, a crashworthiness theory is available if the vehicle’s safety systems — door locks, door retention, side-impact airbags, seat belt pretensioners — failed to perform as designed independent of the occupants’ non-use of belts. This theory is secondary and depends on what the vehicle inspection reveals. If the doors opened during the crash due to a latch failure, or if an airbag system did not deploy as designed, the manufacturer may bear a share of the enhanced injury. We do not assert this claim until the vehicle has been inspected by a qualified crashworthiness expert. But we preserve the vehicle so that the option survives.
Wrongful Death Claims for an Infant Under Texas Law
Texas law treats the wrongful death of a child as a claim belonging to the surviving parents. The Texas Wrongful Death Act provides a two-year statute of limitations from the date of death. Surviving spouses, children, and parents are the statutory beneficiaries — for a thirteen-day-old infant, the parents are the claimants.
What the claim captures is not just a number. It captures mental anguish — the loss of the parent-child relationship that existed for thirteen days and was supposed to last a lifetime. It captures loss of companionship — the first words that will never be spoken, the first steps that will never be taken, the life that was just beginning and is now over. It captures lost earning capacity — a figure that requires forensic economist testimony to project, even for an infant whose future occupation is unknown. The economist uses education, family background, and statistical worklife expectancy tables to build a number that represents the financial value of the life that was taken.
Texas imposes no cap on non-economic damages in motor vehicle negligence or wrongful death cases. This is a critical distinction from medical malpractice cases, where Texas caps non-economic damages. In a wrongful death case arising from a highway crash, the jury may award the full measure of mental anguish, loss of companionship, and emotional harm without a statutory ceiling. The only practical ceiling is the collectible insurance coverage — which is why the comparative fault fight against the Ram driver and the commercial-vehicle investigation are so central to the case’s value.
There is also a survival action — a separate claim that belongs to the decedent’s estate and captures the pain, suffering, and terror the decedent experienced between the impact and death. For an ejection fatality at highway speed, death may have been near-instantaneous, which limits survival damages. But pre-impact terror — the seconds between seeing the Ram approaching and the moment of collision — is potentially recoverable. The biomechanical timeline of the crash, reconstructed from EDR data and vehicle damage, is what establishes whether there was conscious suffering and for how long.
How Texas Comparative Negligence Affects Unrestrained Occupant Claims
Texas applies a modified comparative negligence system with a 51 percent bar. If a plaintiff is 51 percent or more at fault, they recover nothing. If they are 50 percent or less at fault, their recovery is reduced by their percentage. The seat belt defense — recognized in Texas courts — lets the defense argue that an unrestrained occupant’s failure to buckle contributed to the severity of their injuries, specifically the ejection.
Here is how this plays out for each occupant:
The infant. The infant cannot be comparatively negligent. A thirteen-day-old baby has no capacity for care, no duty to buckle a seat belt, and no responsibility for an adult’s failure to install a car seat. The infant’s claim is not reduced by the infant’s own non-use. The failure to restrain the infant is someone else’s negligence — negligence per se under the child restraint statute — and that failure may be allocated to the responsible adult, not to the baby. This is the single most important legal distinction in the case, and it is the one the defense will try to blur.
The seventeen-year-old driver. The driver’s comparative fault is substantial. The driver failed to yield (primary cause), failed to wear a seat belt (contributing to ejection and death), and failed to secure the infant passenger (negligence per se). The driver’s surviving family has a wrongful death claim, but that claim will be reduced by the driver’s share of fault — potentially a high percentage. The defense will push to assign the driver the majority of fault. If the driver is assigned 51 percent or more, the driver’s own family’s recovery is barred. This is a real risk that must be assessed honestly.
The injured passenger. The passenger’s claim depends on their own restraint status. If belted, the seat belt defense does not apply to them. If unbelted, the defense will argue their enhanced injuries were partly self-caused. The passenger’s claim runs against both the Malibu driver’s estate (failure to yield) and potentially the Ram driver (comparative fault). The passenger is not responsible for the infant’s restraint — unless the passenger was the adult who had custody of the baby and failed to secure the car seat. That factual question — who was responsible for buckling the baby — is central to the liability map.
The killer takeaway: the generalist treats all unrestrained occupants the same. The specialist pleads each occupant’s claim separately, with a distinct comparative fault analysis, because the baby’s claim and the driver’s claim live in entirely different legal worlds despite arising from the same crash.
Gross Negligence and Punitive Damages for the Child Restraint Failure
Texas allows punitive damages — called exemplary damages — when a plaintiff proves by clear and convincing evidence that the harm was caused by fraud, malice, or gross negligence. Gross negligence means an act or omission involving an extreme degree of risk, considering the probability and magnitude of the potential harm, of which the actor was actually aware or in reckless disregard of the consequences.
Transporting a thirteen-day-old infant without any child safety restraint — not a rear-facing car seat, not a booster, not even a lap belt — is arguably gross negligence. The danger of carrying an unrestrained newborn in a moving vehicle is not obscure or debatable. It is universally known, federally mandated, and taught in every hospital nursery and prenatal class in the country. The magnitude of the potential harm is death. The probability of harm in a crash is overwhelming. An adult who places a newborn in a vehicle with no restraint has made a conscious choice to expose that child to an extreme degree of risk.
If gross negligence is proven, punitive damages are available on top of compensatory damages. Punitive damages are not capped in Texas in the way non-economic damages are capped in medical malpractice cases. The Texas punitive damages cap — which limits exemplary damages to the greater of $200,000 or two times the economic damages plus an equal amount of non-economic damages — does not apply in cases involving gross negligence where the defendant was not acting in a professional capacity. The availability and amount of punitive damages in this specific fact pattern is a legal question that must be confirmed against the current Texas standard at filing.
The strategic value of a punitive damages claim is not just the potential award. It is the leverage. Punitive damages are often excluded from standard auto insurance policies, which means the threat of a punitive award can bring the defendant’s personal assets into play — and can pressure an insurer to settle the compensatory claim at full policy limits to avoid exposing the insured to a punitives verdict. This is where the Stowers doctrine — the Texas rule that an insurer must accept a reasonable settlement demand within policy limits or face liability for an excess judgment — becomes a tool. A properly timed Stowers demand, after the full comparative fault picture has been developed, can force the at-fault driver’s insurer to pay its full policy limits or risk a verdict that exceeds them.
Evidence Preservation: The Clock Is Already Running
This is the section that matters most if you are reading this in the first week after the crash. Every piece of evidence in this case is on a clock, and some of the clocks are already close to running out.
Event Data Recorder (EDR) data from both vehicles. The 2022 Ram 2500 and the 2024 Malibu both carry black-box systems that record pre-crash speed, brake application, steering input, throttle position, and seat belt status. This data is the spine of the comparative fault case against the Ram driver and the seat belt status confirmation for every occupant. EDR data can be overwritten if the vehicle is restarted — and it can be lost entirely if the vehicle is salvaged, scrapped, or released to an insurance carrier and repaired. A preservation letter and, if necessary, an impoundment order need to go out within days. The vehicles must not be released, modified, or destroyed until the EDR data has been imaged by a qualified technician using the proper crash data retrieval tool.
DPS CR-3 crash report. The official Texas crash report is typically available 10 to 21 days after the crash. It will contain the investigating officer’s contributing factor determinations, a scene diagram, witness statements, and the basic crash dynamics. This report is the foundational document for every claim. But the officer’s field notes and any supplemental reports may take longer. We request the report immediately and follow up persistently. The CR-3 is not the final word — it is a starting point that can be challenged and supplemented with our own reconstruction — but it is the first document every adjuster reads.
Scene evidence. Skid marks, gouge marks in the pavement, debris fields, fluid trails, and vehicle glass on the roadway are the physical evidence that an accident reconstructionist uses to determine point of impact, vehicle trajectories, sight lines, and closing speeds. The scene is cleared within hours of the crash. Road surface evidence degrades within days — West Texas wind, heat, and traffic erase skid marks and scatter debris. If DPS did not photograph and measure everything, or if their measurements are incomplete, this evidence may already be gone. A scene investigation by our reconstruction expert should occur as soon as possible.
Cell phone records for both drivers. Distraction — texting, calling, or app use — is a primary avenue for establishing the Ram driver’s comparative fault and for corroborating the Malibu driver’s inattention. Cell phone carriers retain records for varying windows — commonly 90 to 180 days — before purging. A preservation letter to the carriers must go out within weeks, before the data is gone. For the Ram driver, phone records showing activity at the time of impact can shift 10 to 20 percent of fault. For the Malibu driver, phone records may explain why the turn was made without checking for oncoming traffic.
Vehicle inspection and crashworthiness analysis. Both vehicles must be physically inspected before they are released to insurance carriers and salvaged. Insurance carriers may release and salvage vehicles within 30 to 60 days of the crash. A protective order for inspection is needed promptly. The inspection documents seat belt functionality, airbag deployment timing, child restraint presence or absence, structural intrusion into the passenger compartment, and any failure of safety systems that could support a crashworthiness claim against the manufacturer.
Medical records. The seriously injured passenger’s trauma records should be obtained immediately to capture acute findings — the injuries as they presented at the scene and in the emergency department, before treatment and healing obscure the initial severity. These records accumulate over time, but the first encounter is the most important.
Witness statements and dashcam or surveillance footage. Independent witnesses to the crash may have seen the Malibu’s turn signal use, the Ram’s speed, or the occupants’ behavior before the crash. Nearby businesses or traffic cameras may have captured the collision sequence. Witness memories fade within weeks. Commercial surveillance systems typically overwrite on 7 to 30 day cycles. Every day without a preservation demand is a day this evidence may be erased.
The Insurance Reality: Where the Money Is — and Isn’t
We are going to be honest with you about the money, because the dishonesty of other sources is what hurts families most. A catastrophic case is only worth what can be collected, and collectibility is the controlling constraint in this case.
The low end of the realistic range — $100,000 to $350,000 — reflects the painful reality that the primary at-fault driver is deceased with likely limited personal auto coverage, multiple claimants are competing for the same limited policy limits, the seat belt defense will be aggressively deployed to reduce recovery, and Ector County is a conservative venue where juries may be skeptical of large awards to families of unrestrained occupants. At this level, the available insurance is the available recovery.
The high end — $1,500,000 to $4,000,000 or more — requires transforming the liability and collectibility picture through discovery. Three things can move the case into this range:
First, establishing meaningful comparative fault against the Ram driver. Even a 15 to 20 percent fault allocation against the Ram unlocks proportionally higher recovery from the Ram’s insurance policy, which may be substantially larger than the Malibu’s — especially if the Ram is a newer vehicle with higher coverage limits or an umbrella policy.
Second, proving gross negligence on the child restraint failure to access punitive damages. If the adult responsible for failing to secure the infant acted with conscious indifference to the baby’s safety, punitive damages may be available, and the threat of a punitives verdict can pressure the insurer to settle at full policy limits.
Third, discovering the Ram 2500 is a commercial or oilfield work vehicle. In the Permian Basin, a 2022 Ram 2500 is as likely to be an employer-owned work truck as a personal vehicle. If the Ram was being driven within the scope of employment at the time of the crash, the employer’s commercial liability coverage applies — and commercial coverage in the oilfield industry is typically far deeper than personal auto policies. This is the single largest potential value driver in the case, and it is a factual question that can only be answered through investigation.
The catastrophic nature of a newborn’s death carries enormous settlement leverage. No insurance adjuster wants to explain to a jury why a thirteen-day-old baby was not in a car seat. But leverage without collectibility is a threat without a target. The investigative work — the EDR data, the Ram driver’s phone records, the commercial-vehicle discovery, the vehicle inspection — is what transforms leverage into dollars.
If the at-fault driver’s insurance is insufficient, underinsured motorist coverage on the Malibu’s policy — if carried — may provide additional recovery. UM/UIM coverage in Texas allows the injured party to recover from their own policy when the at-fault driver’s coverage is inadequate. The infant’s family and the injured passenger should both explore whether UM/UIM coverage exists on the vehicle’s policy or on any household policy that extends to the occupants.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook: What They Are Already Doing
The insurance adjuster started building a file the day of the crash. Here is what they are doing right now, and here is what each play is designed to accomplish.
Play 1: The recorded statement request. Within days, someone friendly will call the surviving family members and ask them to “just tell us what happened” on a recording. That recording is engineered to capture statements that can be quoted later — “I’m doing okay,” “we’re holding up,” “the baby was fussy so we took him out of the seat for a minute” — anything that minimizes the claim or admits fault. The counter is simple: do not give a recorded statement without counsel. You have no obligation to provide one. Anything you say will be transcribed and used against you. The adjuster is not your friend. The adjuster is a professional trained to reduce the value of your claim.
Play 2: The fast settlement check. A check may arrive quickly, with a release attached, before the medical records are complete and before the full scope of the injured passenger’s treatment is known. The purpose is to close the file cheaply before the family understands what the case is worth. The counter: never sign a release without counsel review. A release is final. Once you sign, you cannot go back for more — even if the injuries turn out to be far worse than anyone expected. The fast check is designed to be smaller than what you deserve. It is always smaller.
Play 3: The seat belt weaponization. The defense will lean hard on the non-use of seat belts and the absence of a child safety seat. They will argue that the occupants caused their own deaths by failing to buckle up, and they will try to pin the majority of fault on the deceased driver and the unrestrained passengers. For the infant, the counter is that a thirteen-day-old baby cannot be at fault for an adult’s failure to secure a car seat. For the adult occupants, the counter is that the seat belt defense reduces recovery but does not erase it — and that the primary cause of the crash was the failure to yield, not the failure to buckle. Every percentage point of fault is money, and the fight over percentages is the fight over dollars.
Play 4: The coverage competition. When multiple claimants are injured or killed in a single crash, they all compete for the same limited insurance pool. The adjuster knows this and will try to play claimants against each other — settling with one family quickly to deplete the available coverage before other families retain counsel. The counter: early legal intervention ensures that all claimants’ interests are protected and that the available coverage is allocated fairly, not on a first-come-first-served basis. If you are the family of the infant or the injured passenger, you need representation before the at-fault driver’s insurer starts dividing the pie.
Play 5: The “we need more time” delay. The adjuster may string the claim along with requests for more documentation, more medical records, more time to investigate — all while the statute of limitations clock runs. The counter: we control the timeline, not the insurer. A properly timed Stowers demand — a written settlement offer within policy limits that the insurer must accept or face liability for an excess verdict — puts the pressure back on the insurer.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If you are reading this in the first hours or days after the crash, here is what matters most — in order.
Medical care first. If you are injured — even if you think your injuries are minor — get examined. Adrenaline masks pain. Symptoms lie. A person who feels “fine” the day after a crash may have internal injuries, a traumatic brain injury, or spinal damage that declares itself days later. The medical record is also evidence — it documents your injuries as they existed at the time, before the defense can argue they were caused by something else. For the seriously injured passenger, ensuring that the hospital’s trauma records are complete and that all diagnostic imaging has been performed is the first priority.
Do not speak with insurance adjusters. Not from the at-fault driver’s carrier, not from your own carrier, not from anyone. You are not required to give a recorded statement. Anything you say will be used to reduce the value of your claim. If an adjuster calls, say: “I am not prepared to give a statement at this time. Please contact my attorney.” Then call us.
Do not sign anything. No releases, no authorizations, no settlement offers. A document that looks routine may permanently waive your right to recover. Every form the insurance company sends you is designed to close their file, not to protect your family.
Do not post on social media. Do not post about the crash, the injuries, the funeral, or your daily activities. Insurance investigators monitor social media. A photograph of you at a family event can be used to argue your injuries are not as severe as you claim. A post about the crash can be taken out of context and used against you. Silence is protection.
Preserve everything. Do not let anyone touch the vehicles. Do not allow the tow yard to release them. Do not discard any personal items from the crash. Save every text message, every photograph, every piece of correspondence. If there are witnesses you know of, write down their names and contact information now, before memories fade and people become hard to reach.
Call a lawyer. Not next week. Not after the funeral. Now. The preservation letter that freezes the evidence — the EDR data, the vehicle itself, the cell phone records, the surveillance footage — is the first thing we send, and it only works if it goes out before the evidence is gone. We offer a free consultation, and we do not charge a fee unless we win your case. The call costs nothing. The delay can cost everything.
If you want more guidance on immediate steps, what to do after a car accident is a resource we have produced for exactly this moment — but the specific evidence-preservation steps in a fatal crash case require immediate legal action, not general advice.
The Medicine: What Ejection at Highway Speed Does to a Body
We need to talk about the medicine because the medicine is the proof, and the defense will try to minimize what happened to your family’s bodies. The defense will argue the crash was unsurvivable. The medicine says otherwise.
When a vehicle is struck on the passenger side in an angle collision at highway speed, the occupant compartment undergoes rapid lateral deceleration. An unrestrained occupant continues moving at the vehicle’s pre-impact speed until something stops them — the door, the window, the dashboard, or the open air beyond the vehicle. Ejection occurs when the force of the collision breaches the passenger compartment — a door opens, a window shatters, a roof structure deforms — and the unrestrained body follows the path of least resistance outward.
For an adult, ejection at highway speed typically produces fatal injuries within seconds: massive blunt force trauma to the head, neck, and torso. The body strikes the ground, a guardrail, or another vehicle at a speed comparable to a fall from a multi-story building. Cervical spine fractures, traumatic brain injuries, and internal organ rupture are the signature fatal patterns. The defense will call these “unsurvivable injuries” regardless of restraint status. The biomechanical expert counters with the physics of restraint: a properly belted occupant who remains inside the vehicle compartment experiences the crash forces through the vehicle’s engineered crash zones — the crumple zones, the side-impact beams, the airbag systems — rather than through direct body-to-ground impact at full closing speed.
For a thirteen-day-old infant, the biomechanics are even more devastating and even more clear-cut. An infant’s head is approximately 25 percent of total body mass (versus 8 percent in an adult). The neck musculature cannot stabilize the head under any meaningful deceleration. The rib cage is cartilaginous, not ossified. The skull is soft and unfused. An unrested infant ejected from a vehicle at speed does not survive — the forces exceed the structural tolerance of every organ system simultaneously. A rear-facing infant car seat is specifically engineered to cradle the head and neck, distribute crash forces across the entire back, and keep the child inside the vehicle compartment. The absence of that seat is not a contributing factor to the death. It is the proximate cause.
The injured passenger’s medical record will tell its own story. The trauma team’s initial assessment — the Glasgow Coma Scale score, the imaging findings, the surgical interventions — documents the injury at its maximum severity, before healing and treatment begin to obscure the original presentation. The medical records are the foundation of the passenger’s damages claim: hospital expenses that may already be running into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, future medical care that may include rehabilitation, surgery, or long-term treatment, physical pain, mental anguish, disfigurement, and physical impairment. A car accident claim that involves ejection injuries is not a soft-tissue case. It is a catastrophic injury case, and it must be valued and handled as one.
For families dealing with the psychological aftermath — and every family in this crash is dealing with it — the trauma of losing a newborn or a teenager in a highway crash produces grief, post-traumatic stress, and in some cases diagnosable psychiatric injury. These are real, compensable harms. Texas law recognizes mental anguish as a recoverable element of damages in wrongful death cases, and the proof is built through the family’s own testimony, treating mental health providers’ records, and the observable changes in the family’s life since the loss.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a case arising from this crash is built, from the day you call to the day a number is put on the table.
Week one: the preservation letter goes out. The day you call, we send written preservation demands to every party that holds evidence — the Malibu’s insurance carrier, the Ram’s insurance carrier, the tow yard or impound lot holding both vehicles, the cell phone carriers for both drivers, and any business near the crash scene with surveillance cameras. These letters order the recipients to freeze every piece of evidence and notify them that destruction will be treated as spoliation. The EDR data is the priority. If the vehicles are at risk of salvage, we seek an impoundment order.
Weeks two to four: the DPS report arrives and the vehicles are inspected. The CR-3 crash report is requested and obtained. We read it for the officer’s contributing factor determinations, the scene diagram, and the witness statements. We send our own accident reconstructionist to the scene to photograph, measure, and document any remaining physical evidence. We arrange for both vehicles to be inspected — the EDR data is imaged, the seat belt systems are examined for functionality, the airbag modules are checked for deployment timing, the child restraint presence or absence is documented, and the structural damage is mapped. If the Malibu’s doors opened during the crash, we investigate whether a door latch failure contributed to the ejections — a potential crashworthiness claim.
Weeks four to eight: the records come in. Cell phone records for both drivers are subpoenaed. The Ram driver’s phone records may show distraction at the time of impact — a text, a call, an app notification — that supports a comparative fault allocation. The Malibu driver’s phone records may explain the inattention that led to the failure to yield. Medical records for the injured passenger are obtained. Insurance policies are discovered — the Malibu’s coverage limits, the Ram’s coverage limits, any umbrella or excess policies, any UM/UIM coverage, and any commercial policies if the Ram is a work vehicle.
Months two to four: the experts build the case. The accident reconstructionist produces a report mapping the crash dynamics — closing speed, point of impact, vehicle trajectories, available sight distance, reaction time. The biomechanical engineer analyzes the ejection kinematics and opines on whether proper restraint would have prevented or mitigated the fatal injuries. A pediatric trauma specialist addresses the specific injury mechanisms for the infant. A forensic economist projects the infant’s lost earning capacity. If the Ram is a commercial vehicle, the employer’s safety records, driver qualification files, and corporate structure are investigated.
Months four to six: depositions and discovery. The Ram driver is deposed about speed, attention, evasive action, and phone use. The investigating DPS trooper is deposed about the crash scene and contributing factors. Any witnesses are deposed. If the Ram is a commercial vehicle, the employer’s safety director is deposed about hiring, training, and supervision. The defense experts are deposed — their crash reconstruction, their biomechanics opinions, their seat belt defense analysis.
Months six to twelve: the demand and the negotiation. After the full comparative fault picture has emerged — the EDR data, the phone records, the reconstruction, the commercial-vehicle discovery — we calibrate a settlement demand. If the demand is within the at-fault party’s policy limits and the insurer refuses, a Stowers demand is timed to put the insurer at risk of an excess judgment. Mediation is scheduled. The case settles, or it does not, and we proceed to trial.
We do not mediate until the evidence is fully developed. The insurance company will push for early mediation because an early mediation happens before they have to produce the damaging records. We push for late mediation because a late mediation happens after they have produced them. Timing is leverage.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still pursue a claim if my baby was not in a car seat?
Yes. A thirteen-day-old infant cannot be at fault for an adult’s failure to secure a car seat. The child restraint statute exists to protect children under two, and the violation of that statute is negligence per se — meaning the adult who failed to secure the baby is legally negligent for that failure. The baby’s claim is not reduced by the baby’s own “non-use” because the baby had no capacity to use or not use a restraint. The adult’s failure is the breach, and the baby is the protected party. This is the strongest claim in the case.
How much is a wrongful death case worth for a baby?
No honest lawyer can give you a specific dollar figure without investigating the insurance coverage, the comparative fault picture, and the collectible assets. What we can tell you is the range: the low end, with limited insurance and a deceased at-fault driver, may be $100,000 to $350,000. The high end, with comparative fault against the Ram driver, gross negligence on the child restraint failure, or commercial vehicle coverage, can reach $1,500,000 to $4,000,000 or more. The value is driven by collectibility — what insurance and assets exist to pay a judgment — not by the severity of the loss alone. The severity of losing a newborn is incalculable. The legal system can only monetize what it can prove and what can be collected.
Who is at fault when the driver who caused the crash also died?
The driver’s estate remains liable even though the driver is deceased. A claim against a deceased at-fault driver is pursued against the driver’s estate and the estate’s insurance coverage. The driver’s auto insurance policy is the primary source of recovery. The driver’s own family may also have a wrongful death claim, but that claim will be reduced by the driver’s comparative fault — and if the driver is assigned 51 percent or more, the driver’s family’s recovery is barred. The fault does not disappear because the at-fault party died. It shifts to the estate and the insurance.
Does the seat belt defense apply to a newborn?
No — not to the newborn. The seat belt defense applies to occupants who had the capacity to buckle up and chose not to. A thirteen-day-old baby has no such capacity. The failure to restrain the infant is an adult’s negligence, not the baby’s. The defense may try to argue that the infant’s “non-use” should reduce the claim, but the law does not assign comparative fault to a person who cannot act. The baby’s claim proceeds without reduction for the baby’s own conduct. The adult responsible for the restraint failure bears that fault.
How long do I have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
The Texas Wrongful Death Act provides a two-year statute of limitations from the date of death. That means the lawsuit must be filed within two years of the crash, or the claim is forever barred. Two years sounds like a long time, but the evidence does not last two years. The EDR data can be overwritten in days. The cell phone records are purged in months. The vehicles can be salvaged within weeks. The statute of limitations is the outer boundary. The evidence clock is the real deadline, and it is measured in days, not years.
What if the other driver — the Ram driver — was also at fault?
The Ram driver had the right of way, which favors them. But right of way does not mean immunity. If the Ram driver was speeding, distracted by a phone, or failed to take reasonable evasive action when a turning vehicle was visible and avoidable, the Ram driver carries a share of fault. Even a small percentage — 10 to 20 percent — unlocks proportionally higher recovery from the Ram’s insurance policy, which may be substantially larger than the Malibu’s. The EDR data from the Ram — pre-impact speed, brake application, steering input — is what builds this claim, and it is the first evidence we preserve.
Will the insurance company try to blame my family?
Yes. The insurance adjuster’s job is to reduce the value of the claim, and the most effective way to do that is to assign fault to the injured parties. The seat belt defense, the failure to use a car seat, the failure to yield — all of these will be used to pin fault on the Malibu’s driver and occupants. The adjuster is not your friend, and the recorded statement they request is designed to capture admissions that support their fault allocation. This is why you do not speak with the adjuster without counsel, and why you do not sign anything without a lawyer reviewing it first.
What if the Ram 2500 was an oilfield work truck?
If the Ram was owned by an employer and the driver was operating within the scope of employment, the employer is vicariously liable for the driver’s share of fault. Commercial liability coverage in the oilfield industry is typically far deeper than personal auto policies — often $1,000,000 or more in primary coverage, with excess layers above that. Discovering whether the Ram was a personal truck or a work truck is one of the first and most important investigative steps. In the Permian Basin, where oilfield traffic saturates SH 158 and heavy-duty pickups are standard work vehicles, this is not a remote possibility. It is a primary investigative target. If you or your family has been affected by an oilfield vehicle crash, our wrongful death representation extends to exactly this kind of commercial-vehicle discovery.
Can we pursue punitive damages for failing to use a car seat?
Potentially, yes. Texas allows punitive damages when a plaintiff proves gross negligence by clear and convincing evidence. Transporting a thirteen-day-old infant with no child safety restraint is arguably gross negligence — an extreme degree of risk, of which the actor was or should have been aware, with potentially fatal consequences. If gross negligence is proven, punitive damages are available on top of compensatory damages. The threat of a punitive award is also leverage — it can pressure the insurer to settle the compensatory claim at full policy limits to avoid exposing the insured to a punitives verdict that may not be covered by insurance.
What happens if multiple families are claiming against the same insurance?
When multiple people are injured or killed in a single crash, they all compete for the same limited insurance pool. The at-fault driver’s policy limits are split among all claimants — and the insurer may try to settle with one family quickly to deplete the available coverage before other families retain counsel. Early legal intervention ensures that all claimants’ interests are protected and that the available coverage is allocated fairly. If you are the family of the infant or the injured passenger, you need representation before the insurer starts dividing the pie without you.
Why This Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is a journalist before he was a lawyer — he learned to find the story the facts tell, not the story the other side wants told. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and has been practicing law in Texas since 1998. He handles wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases with the perspective of someone who has sat across from the insurance industry’s lawyers for nearly three decades and knows exactly what they are going to do before they do it.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded statement is engineered, how the IME doctor is selected, and how the claim is fed into valuation software that discounts the pain it cannot see. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. He now uses that inside knowledge for injured clients. If you want to understand how Lupe’s insurance-defense background works for your family, it is simple: he knows every play because he used to run them.
The firm operates on contingency. We charge 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free, and it is confidential. We have live staff available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — not an answering service. When you call, you reach a person who can help.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The firm has recovered more than $50 million in aggregate, including a $5 million-plus brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement, and a $2.5 million-plus truck-crash recovery. Millions have been recovered in trucking wrongful-death cases. But those results were earned on different facts, in different courts, against different defendants. Your case will stand or fall on its own evidence — and that evidence is what we go find, the day you call.
Call Us Now
If your family has been affected by this crash on SH 158 — whether you are the parents of the thirteen-day-old baby, the family of the injured passenger, or the family of the teenage driver who also died — the evidence is disappearing and the insurance adjuster is already building a file. The preservation letter that freezes the EDR data, the vehicles, the phone records, and the surveillance footage is the first thing we send, and it only works if it goes out before the evidence is gone.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. There is no fee unless we win your case. We have live staff available right now, at any hour.
Hablamos Español. We serve your family fully in Spanish.
The loss of a child who lived thirteen days is a grief no legal system can undo. What the legal system can do is make the people responsible for that loss answer for it — in dollars, in evidence, and in a courtroom if necessary. That fight starts with a phone call. We are ready when you are.