Odessa Wrongful Death After a Stop Sign Crash — What Your Family Needs to Know Right Now
If you are reading this page, someone in your family was killed in a crash that did not have to happen. A driver blew through a stop sign on a dark Christmas night in Ector County, and a 76-year-old man who was wearing his seatbelt and doing nothing wrong is gone. You are sitting at a kitchen table or standing in a driveway, and the phone is about to start ringing — or it already has. The insurance adjuster on the other end sounds sympathetic. That sympathy is a tool, and it is aimed at you.
We are Attorney911. We are trial lawyers who handle wrongful death cases across Texas, and we wrote this page for one reason: to give you, in plain language, everything the insurance company does not want you to know in the first days after a fatal crash. What the law actually allows your family to recover. How fast the evidence is disappearing right now, while you grieve. What the adjuster’s first three moves are, and the counter to each one. How a case like this is built, step by step, from the first preservation letter to the last deposition. And what it costs to have us do all of it — which is nothing, unless we win.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts. But the framework below is the framework we would walk a family through on the first call, and the first call is free. 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day, and we mean that — not an answering service, a live person.
What Happened on Christmas Night in Ector County
On December 25, 2025, at approximately 11:15 p.m., a 19-year-old driver from Monahans, Texas was traveling westbound on the IH-20 North Service Road in Ector County. He approached the intersection at Moss Avenue — an intersection controlled by a stop sign for service-road traffic. He did not stop. He entered the intersection and collided with a northbound 2025 Ford Maverick driven by a 76-year-old Odessa man who had the right of way and was wearing his seatbelt.
The 76-year-old driver was pronounced dead at the scene. The 19-year-old, also belted, was not injured. The crash remains under investigation.
That is the surface. Beneath it is a set of facts that will decide whether your family is compensated fully or sent home with a fraction of what the law allows — and most of those facts are on a clock right now.
The intersection sits on Odessa’s western fringe, where the Interstate 20 frontage roads cross stop-sign-controlled streets that cut through the Permian Basin’s oilfield corridor. At night, especially on a holiday when traffic is light and visibility is poor, these frontage-road crossings are known hazards. A driver unfamiliar with the corridor — someone coming from Monahans, thirty miles west on US 80 — may not realize how fast the service road moves or how suddenly that stop sign appears in the dark. But the reason a driver failed to stop is a question for investigation and trial. The fact that he failed to stop is the foundation of the case.
Texas Wrongful Death Law — Who Can File and What the Law Allows
Texas treats a wrongful death as two separate legal claims that travel together. The first is the wrongful death claim itself, which belongs to the surviving family — the spouse, the children, and the parents of the person killed. Each beneficiary has an independent claim. The second is the survival claim, which belongs to the decedent’s estate and covers what the person personally experienced between the injury and death — the pain, the fear, the conscious suffering — plus any medical expenses incurred before death and funeral costs.
In this case, the 76-year-old driver was pronounced dead at the scene. That means the survival claim for conscious pain and suffering may be limited unless the evidence shows he survived for a measurable interval after impact. That is a factual question for investigation, and it is one of the reasons the crash reconstruction and the medical records matter so much. But the wrongful death claim — the family’s claim for mental anguish, loss of companionship, loss of society, and lost financial support — is fully intact regardless of how quickly he died.
The wrongful-death beneficiaries — surviving spouse, children, and parents — each have independent claims for mental anguish, loss of companionship, and lost financial support.
That is the Texas framework, and it matters for a reason most families never hear: the insurance company will try to minimize the value of the death by pointing to the decedent’s age. A 76-year-old’s life is worth less, they will argue, because he had fewer working years ahead. Texas law does not agree with that proposition. There is no statutory cap on non-economic damages in motor-vehicle negligence cases in Texas — unlike the state’s medical-malpractice regime, which caps pain-and-suffering damages. In an auto-negligence wrongful death, mental anguish, loss of companionship, and loss of society are uncapped. A jury decides what those losses are worth, not a statute.
The deadline to file is two years from the date of death under Texas’s wrongful death statute of limitations, found in the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing in the first week of grief. It is not. The evidence in this case will be substantially gone within six months, and some of it will be gone within weeks. The statute of limitations is the outer boundary — the real deadline is the evidence clock, and it is already running.
The Stop Sign Violation — Why Liability Is Not the Hard Question
When a driver disregards a stop sign and kills someone who had the right of way, the liability question is not whether the at-fault driver was negligent. It is what kind of negligent he was — and that distinction matters because it determines whether your family can pursue punitive damages on top of compensation.
Texas law recognizes negligence per se — the doctrine that when someone violates a statute or regulation designed to protect the public, and that violation causes the kind of harm the statute was meant to prevent, the violation itself establishes negligence. The Texas Transportation Code requires obedience to traffic-control devices, which includes stop signs. A driver who blows through a stop sign has violated that statute. The stop sign exists precisely to prevent cross-traffic collisions at intersections. The violation caused the exact harm the stop sign was designed to prevent. That is negligence per se, and it removes the question of whether the driver breached his duty of care — he did, as a matter of law.
But negligence per se is the floor, not the ceiling. The Christmas-night timing — 11:15 p.m. on a holiday — raises questions that move the case from ordinary negligence toward gross negligence, which is the threshold for punitive damages in Texas. Was the driver intoxicated? Was he looking at his phone? Was he speeding on top of running the sign? These are discovery targets, not assumptions. But they are the questions that, if answered in the affirmative, transform a case from a liability settlement into something the insurance company takes very seriously — because punitive damages in Texas are subject to a statutory cap tied to economic damages, but gross negligence also opens the door to personal exposure for the driver beyond his policy limits.
The comparative-fault question, which the insurance company will probe, appears minimal here. The 76-year-old victim had the right of way on Moss Avenue, was wearing his seatbelt, and was driving a 2025 model-year vehicle. Texas follows a modified comparative-negligence system with a 51 percent bar — meaning the victim’s recovery is reduced by his share of fault and barred only if he exceeds 50 percent. Given that he had the right of way and the other driver ran a stop sign, the defense has almost nothing to work with on comparative fault. But that will not stop them from trying, which is why the evidence preservation — the EDR data, the scene reconstruction, the crash report — matters so much.
If your family is dealing with a broader range of crash scenarios in the region, our wrongful death practice page covers the full scope of fatal-injury cases we handle across Texas.
Who Is Liable — and Where the Money Actually Comes From
In a wrongful death case, identifying who caused the crash is the first question. Identifying who can pay for it is the second — and in this case, the second question is where the real fight lives.
The at-fault driver. The 19-year-old who ran the stop sign is directly liable for the death. His negligence — statutory and common-law — is the cause. But a 19-year-old’s personal assets are almost certainly insufficient to compensate a family for a wrongful death. The real question is what insurance stands behind him.
The registered owner of the vehicle. The at-fault driver was operating a 2025 Chevrolet Silverado. If that truck is owned by someone other than the driver — a parent, a relative, a family member who lent it to him — Texas law provides theories to reach that owner’s insurance. Negligent entrustment is the primary theory: if the owner knew or should have known that the driver was incompetent, reckless, or had a poor driving record, and still handed over the keys, the owner is separately liable. Texas also recognizes owner-liability principles that may apply depending on how the vehicle was registered and insured. Identifying the registered owner is one of the first things we do, because it opens a second insurance policy — and sometimes a third.
The employer, if there is one. The at-fault driver is 19 years old and was traveling from the Monahans direction on the IH-20 corridor at 11:15 p.m. on Christmas night. In the Permian Basin, that fact pattern raises a question that experience teaches us to ask: was he driving in the course of employment? Oilfield-related travel between Monahans and Odessa is common at all hours, including holidays. If discovery reveals that he was dispatched to or from a work site, the case profile shifts dramatically — employer vicarious liability attaches, and commercial insurance coverage, which is typically far larger than personal auto coverage, becomes available. This is a discovery target, not an assumption. But it is the kind of question that can multiply the value of a case by an order of magnitude.
The victim’s own uninsured/underinsured motorist carrier. This is the coverage source most families do not know about, and it is likely the most important one in this case. A 19-year-old’s personal auto policy may carry Texas minimum limits — $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident — or moderately higher limits. One funeral and one wrongful-death claim can exhaust those limits before the family has begun to account for what the loss is actually worth. The victim’s own auto insurance policy, on his 2025 Ford Maverick, likely carries uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage — and under Texas law, that coverage steps in to compensate the family when the at-fault driver’s liability coverage is insufficient. UM/UIM is not a windfall. It is coverage the decedent paid for, precisely for this situation. Making sure the UM/UIM claim is properly tendered and pursued is often the difference between a recovery that covers the family’s loss and one that falls catastrophically short.
Both vehicles in this crash are 2025 model-year trucks. That matters for a practical reason: new vehicles are typically financed, and lenders require full coverage — which means both the at-fault driver’s Silverado and the victim’s Maverick likely carry more than bare-minimum insurance. But “full coverage” and “high liability limits” are not the same thing. The at-fault driver may have a 50/100 or 100/300 policy, or he may have the state minimum. We do not know until we see the declarations page. What we do know is that the UM/UIM coverage on the victim’s own policy is the family’s safety net, and preserving and pursuing it correctly is non-negotiable.
For a deeper look at how we handle insurance carriers — including the UM/UIM fight — our insurance claim practice page walks through the full landscape.
Evidence Preservation — What Exists Right Now and How Fast It Dies
This is the section that matters most in the first 72 hours, and it is the section the insurance company hopes you never read. Every piece of evidence in this case is on a clock. Some of it is already gone. The rest is dying on a schedule that the law permits — and only a preservation letter from a lawyer stops the clock.
Event Data Recorder (EDR / Black Box) data from both vehicles. Both the 2025 Chevrolet Silverado and the 2025 Ford Maverick carry event data recorders — the “black boxes” that modern vehicles install as standard equipment. These recorders capture pre-crash speed, brake application, throttle position, steering input, seatbelt status, and the severity of the impact itself. The data from the at-fault driver’s Silverado will show whether he braked at all before entering the intersection — the single most important fact for defeating any comparative-fault argument and for establishing gross negligence if he never touched the pedal. The data from the victim’s Maverick will confirm his speed, his seatbelt status, and the violence of the collision. This data is the spine of the liability case. It can be overwritten if the vehicle is driven again, repaired, sold, or scrapped. A preservation demand to the vehicle owners and the storage facility should go out within days — not weeks, not after the funeral, not when the insurance company gets around to it.
Cell-phone records and device forensics. A 19-year-old driver on Christmas night at 11:15 p.m. — the question of whether he was looking at his phone is not speculation. It is a discovery target. Cell-phone records — call logs, text-message timestamps, app-usage data — establish whether distracted driving contributed to the stop-sign violation. Wireless carriers retain this data on their own schedules, and those schedules are not generous. A preservation letter to the carrier must go out immediately, before routine data purging erases the record of what was happening on that phone in the seconds before impact.
Toxicology and blood-alcohol evidence. Christmas night at 11:15 p.m. raises the question of intoxication as a matter of course, not conjecture. If law enforcement drew blood or conducted field sobriety testing at the scene, those results are critical — and the biological sample itself degrades. If no testing was done, that absence is its own kind of evidence, and the window to compel it through independent investigation closes within hours of the crash. The toxicology question is not just about liability — it is about gross negligence and punitive damages, which can materially increase the value of the case.
Crash scene evidence. Skid marks, debris fields, gouge marks in the pavement, and the final resting positions of both vehicles tell the reconstruction story. This evidence is ephemeral. Weather, traffic, and road maintenance erase it within days. The law-enforcement crash report — the Texas Peace Officer’s Crash Report (CR-3) — should be obtained immediately, along with any scene photography the investigating officers took. But officer photographs are not a substitute for an independent reconstruction. If the family has not yet secured the scene evidence, it may already be degraded. That is why the first call to a lawyer is the call that starts the preservation process.
Vehicle registration and insurance records. The registration of the 2025 Chevrolet Silverado identifies the legal owner — the person whose insurance policy may apply, and whose negligent entrustment may be a separate theory of liability. These records are stable, but policy details can change. Confirming coverage and locking in available limits early prevents the insurance company from later claiming the policy lapsed or had different terms.
The victim’s own insurance policy declarations. The UM/UIM, MedPay, and PIP coverage on the 2025 Ford Maverick is the family’s primary avenue for full compensation given the at-fault driver’s probable limited coverage. The declarations page tells us exactly what is available. Policy terms are stable, but beneficiary claims must be filed promptly to avoid coverage disputes or carrier positioning — and the UM/UIM carrier, despite being the family’s own insurer, will treat this claim with the same scrutiny as an adverse party.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — Three Plays and the Counter to Each
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before he joined this firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, and how the valuation software discounts pain it cannot see. He uses that knowledge for our clients now. Here are the first three plays the adjuster will run — and the counter to each.
Play 1: The sympathetic recorded statement. Within days, someone will call the family. The tone will be warm. The ask will be small: “We just want to hear your side of what happened” or “Can you confirm a few details so we can process the claim?” The call is recorded. Every word the family member says is being transcribed for later use against them. A stray “I’m doing okay” becomes “the family is not suffering.” A confused answer about the sequence of events becomes “the family doesn’t even know what happened.” The counter is simple: do not give a recorded statement to any insurance adjuster — the at-fault driver’s carrier or your own UM/UIM carrier — before speaking with a lawyer. You are not required to give a recorded statement. The adjuster knows this. The family usually does not.
Play 2: The fast settlement check. A check may arrive quickly — sometimes before the funeral. It will come with a release form printed alongside it. The amount will look meaningful to a family in shock. It is not meaningful. It is a fraction of what the case is worth, and signing the release extinguishes every claim the family has — wrongful death, survival, UM/UIM, everything — for that amount. The counter is absolute: do not sign anything from any insurance company without a lawyer reading it first. A release signed in grief is legally binding. The insurance company is counting on that.
Play 3: The “we need more time” stall. The adjuster will express sympathy, promise to look into the claim, ask for more documentation, and then go quiet for weeks. The goal is to let the evidence die on its retention schedule while the statute of limitations clock runs. Every month of delay is a month closer to the destruction of EDR data, cell-phone records, and scene evidence. The counter is the preservation letter — a formal demand, sent the day the family calls, that puts every party on notice that evidence must be preserved and that its destruction after notice is spoliation, which can trigger adverse-inference instructions and sanctions.
For more on what not to say to an insurance adjuster, this video by Ralph Manginello walks through the conversation the other side is hoping to have with you.
What a Case Like This Is Worth — An Honest Valuation
No lawyer can tell you exactly what your case is worth without seeing the evidence, the insurance policies, and the full picture of the family’s loss. But the framework below is how we evaluate a wrongful death case like this one — a clear-liability stop-sign crash with a potential collectibility challenge.
The low end: $150,000 to $400,000. This range reflects a scenario where the at-fault driver carries minimum or moderate liability limits, the UM/UIM coverage on the victim’s policy is modest, no aggravating factors (intoxication, distraction, speeding) are proven, and the economic losses are limited given the decedent’s age and likely retirement status. A recovery in this range is a policy-limits settlement plus a modest UM/UIM payment. It is not justice — it is what the available insurance pays when the defendant has thin coverage and no aggravating conduct.
The high end: $1,500,000 to $4,000,000. This range reflects a scenario where the at-fault driver or the vehicle owner carries higher liability limits or an umbrella policy, the victim’s UM/UIM coverage is substantial and can be stacked across multiple vehicles on the policy, a negligent-entrustment claim against the vehicle owner opens a separate insurance tower, and discovery reveals gross-negligence facts (intoxication, extreme distraction) that support punitive damages. The wide band between the low and high ends reflects one variable above all others: collectibility. A 19-year-old’s personal auto policy and personal assets may be thin. The UM/UIM coverage on the decedent’s 2025 Maverick and any vehicle-owner liability are the dominant value drivers in this case.
What drives the number up or down:
-
Liability limits on the at-fault driver’s policy. Unknown until discovery. Texas minimum is $30,000 per person / $60,000 per accident. A 2025 Silverado with lender-required full coverage may carry 50/100, 100/300, or higher — but it may also carry minimum limits with only comprehensive and collision added to satisfy the lender. The declarations page controls.
-
UM/UIM limits on the victim’s policy. This is the family’s primary safety net. If the victim carried 100/300 UM/UIM, and the at-fault driver has 30/60 liability, the UM/UIM carrier may owe the family up to the difference. If the victim had multiple vehicles on the policy, UM/UIM stacking may be available — a critical analysis we perform on every case.
-
Negligent entrustment against the vehicle owner. If the Silverado is owned by a parent or other party, their separate insurance may apply. This can double the available coverage.
-
Gross negligence and punitive damages. If intoxication, extreme speeding, or cell-phone distraction is proven, punitive damages become available under Texas’s gross-negligence standard. Texas caps punitive damages in most cases at a formula tied to economic damages, but the cap does not apply to intentional acts or felony-level conduct. A DUI-related death can implicate the felony threshold.
-
The decedent’s economic profile. At 76, the decedent may have been retired — but in the Permian Basin, retirement-age workers are common in the energy industry, and many 76-year-olds still work or contribute meaningful household services. A forensic economist can quantify lost earning capacity, lost household services, and the impact on retirement benefits. Age tempers the lost-earnings projection but does not eliminate it.
-
Non-economic damages. Mental anguish, loss of companionship, loss of society, and the family’s grief are uncapped in a Texas auto-negligence wrongful death. A jury decides what those are worth. In Ector County — a West Texas forum with a generally conservative but fair jury pool — clear-liability wrongful death presentations tend to resonate strongly when the liability is as clean as a stop-sign violation.
For more on how case value is actually calculated, this video on what a personal injury case is worth breaks down the components a jury and an economist look at.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Proof Story — How a Case Like This Is Built
Here is how a wrongful death case built on a stop-sign violation is actually won, from the first week to the last.
Week one: preservation. The day the family calls, the preservation letters go out — to the at-fault driver, to the registered owner of the Silverado, to the storage facility holding both vehicles, to the wireless carrier, and to every insurance company involved. These letters freeze the evidence. The EDR data, the cell-phone records, the vehicle itself, the crash report, the scene photographs — all of it is now on a litigation hold. Destruction after notice is spoliation.
Weeks two through four: evidence collection. The crash report is obtained. The EDR data from both vehicles is imaged by a trained technician with the right forensic equipment — not by a tow-yard employee with a laptop. The scene is photographed and measured by a reconstructionist before the skid marks and gouge marks are erased by traffic and weather. The vehicle registration is pulled, identifying the legal owner. The at-fault driver’s insurance declarations page is requested. The victim’s own policy is reviewed for UM/UIM, MedPay, and PIP coverage. The UM/UIM claim is tendered.
Months one through three: discovery. If the case is filed — and it will be, if the insurance company does not tender policy limits — the formal discovery process begins. Interrogatories go out. The at-fault driver is deposed under oath. His driving record is obtained. The registered owner is identified and deposed if negligent entrustment is in play. The cell-phone records come in, and a forensic device analysis shows exactly what was on that screen at 11:15 p.m. on Christmas night. The toxicology results — if any testing was done — are obtained and analyzed. If no testing was done, the absence is documented and the question of why is raised.
Months three through six: expert work. A crash reconstruction engineer builds the physics model — vehicle speeds, braking distance, impact angle, closing velocity, and the delta-V that the victim’s body absorbed. A forensic economist builds the damages model — lost earning capacity, lost household services, lost retirement benefits, and the present-value calculation that reduces a lifetime of losses to a single number a jury can understand. If the case supports punitive damages, the gross-negligence expert prepares the analysis.
Months six through twelve: mediation and trial preparation. A policy-limits demand to the at-fault driver’s carrier, with a Stowers-style letter under Texas bad-faith doctrine, creates excess exposure if the carrier refuses to settle within limits and a verdict exceeds those limits. Mediation is deferred until full coverage discovery is complete and UM/UIM limits are confirmed — because settling with the tortfeasor without understanding the UM/UIM credit could destroy or diminish the underinsured claim. If the case does not settle, it is tried in Ector County District Court, where a jury of the family’s neighbors decides what a life was worth.
The First 72 Hours — A Practical Roadmap
If you are in the first 72 hours after the crash, here is what to do and what not to do.
Do not speak to any insurance adjuster. Not the at-fault driver’s carrier, not your own UM/UIM carrier, not the vehicle owner’s insurer. Every call is recorded. Every word is being evaluated for its value against you. Call a lawyer first. The lawyer handles every conversation with every insurance company from this point forward.
Do not sign anything. No release, no authorization, no settlement offer, no “proof of loss” form. Nothing. If paperwork arrives, put it in a folder and bring it to the consultation. A document signed in grief is legally binding.
Do not post on social media. Not about the crash, not about the family, not about the holiday, not about your grief. Insurance investigators monitor social media. A photograph of the family smiling at a memorial service becomes “the family is doing fine.” A post about feeling overwhelmed becomes a mental-health record the defense subpoenas. Silence is the safe position until a lawyer tells you otherwise.
Do secure the vehicle. If the victim’s 2025 Ford Maverick is in a storage yard, do not let it be released, repaired, sold, or scrapped. That vehicle is evidence — its EDR data, its damage pattern, its crash-sensor readings are all part of the proof. The same goes for the at-fault driver’s Silverado, though you do not control that vehicle — the preservation letter does.
Do obtain the crash report. The Texas Peace Officer’s Crash Report (CR-3) is a public record. It contains the investigating officer’s narrative, the diagram of the crash, the road and weather conditions, and the officer’s assessment of contributing factors. A lawyer can obtain it, but the family can request it too.
Do locate the insurance documents. The victim’s auto insurance declarations page — the document that lists every coverage type and limit on the 2025 Maverick — is the key to the UM/UIM claim. Find it. It may be in the vehicle, in the mail, in an email, or in an online insurance portal. Bring it to the first consultation.
Do call a lawyer. Not next week. Not after the funeral. Not when you feel ready. The evidence clock does not pause for grief. The preservation letter that freezes the EDR data, the cell-phone records, and the scene evidence has to go out in days, not weeks. We handle every aspect of that. The family grieves. We work.
The Medicine — What the Crash Did to a Human Body
A collision at a service-road intersection involves a specific physics problem. The at-fault driver’s 2025 Chevrolet Silverado — a full-size pickup weighing roughly 4,500 to 5,500 pounds — entered the intersection at speed after failing to stop. The victim’s 2025 Ford Maverick — a compact pickup weighing roughly 3,500 to 4,000 pounds — was traveling northbound on Moss Avenue with the right of way. The Silverado’s front struck the Maverick at an angle determined by the approach geometry and the closing speeds of both vehicles.
The force transfer in a collision like this is governed by the physics of momentum and energy exchange. The lighter vehicle — the Maverick — absorbs a disproportionate share of the change in velocity, what crash reconstructionists call delta-V. Delta-V is the single best available predictor of occupant injury severity. When a 5,000-pound truck strikes a 3,800-pound truck at an intersection, the lighter vehicle’s occupants experience a more violent velocity change than the heavier vehicle’s occupants. That is why the 19-year-old in the Silverado walked away without injury and the 76-year-old in the Maverick did not — not because of luck, but because of mass and physics.
A 76-year-old body is more vulnerable to the same delta-V than a younger body would be. The thoracic cage is less flexible. The aorta is less elastic. The brain sits in a skull with more atrophy and less cushioning from cerebrospinal fluid. Even with a seatbelt — and the victim was belted — the deceleration forces that a younger occupant might survive can cause fatal injuries in an older one: traumatic aortic rupture, rib fractures that drive into the lungs, subdural hematoma from the brain impacting the inside of the skull, or cervical spine fracture from the head’s whiplash motion. The autopsy report — if one was performed — will name the mechanism. But the physics of the collision, not the victim’s age, is what caused the death, and the defense’s attempt to blame pre-existing frailty is the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine’s answer: the defendant takes the victim as he was.
How Fees Work — What It Costs to Have Us on Your Side
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. The first consultation is free. We advance every cost — the EDR imaging, the reconstruction expert, the economist, the filing fees, the deposition costs — and those costs are repaid from the recovery, not out of the family’s pocket.
This structure exists for a reason. A family that just lost someone should not have to write a check to a lawyer to find out whether they have a case. And a lawyer who only gets paid if the family gets paid has every incentive to maximize the recovery — not to settle cheap and move on.
Who We Are — The People Who Will Answer the Phone
Ralph Manginello is the managing partner of Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he writes and argues in plain language, not in code. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. He leads the firm’s active $10 million hazing wrongful death lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi and the University of Houston. He does not lose well, and he does not take cases he does not intend to win. Read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña is an associate attorney, licensed in Texas since 2012 and admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before joining this firm, Lupe 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. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered. He knows how the IME doctor is selected and how the surveillance works. He now uses all of that knowledge for injured families. Lupe is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch. He conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Read more about Lupe here.
For a broader look at the vehicle-crash cases we handle — from fender-benders to fatal collisions — our car accident practice page covers the full range.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we sue if the at-fault driver was young and probably has no money?
Yes — and the question is not whether the driver has money, but whether insurance exists that covers the crash. A 19-year-old may have thin personal assets, but his auto insurance policy, the vehicle owner’s policy, and the victim’s own UM/UIM coverage are all potential sources of recovery. In many wrongful death cases, the UM/UIM policy on the victim’s own vehicle is the largest single source of compensation. Do not assume there is no money to recover until a lawyer has reviewed every applicable policy.
How long do we have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Texas?
Texas’s wrongful death statute of limitations generally gives the family two years from the date of death to file suit. This is the outer deadline. The practical deadline — the evidence deadline — is much shorter. EDR data can be overwritten in days. Cell-phone records are purged on carrier schedules. Scene evidence erodes within days of the crash. Two years is the law; the evidence clock is the reality, and it starts on the day of the crash, not the day you hire a lawyer.
Does the victim’s age limit what the case is worth?
Age affects the lost-earnings component of the damages — a 76-year-old who was retired has fewer working years to project than a 30-year-old. But age does not limit the non-economic damages: mental anguish, loss of companionship, loss of society, and the family’s grief are uncapped in a Texas auto-negligence wrongful death. A jury decides what those losses are worth, not a formula tied to age. The insurance company will argue that age diminishes value. The law does not agree, and a trial lawyer who has tried these cases knows how to make a jury see the full picture of what was lost.
What if the at-fault driver was drunk or on his phone?
Intoxication or cell-phone distraction at the time of the crash can elevate the case from ordinary negligence to gross negligence, which is the threshold for punitive damages in Texas. Gross negligence also opens the door to personal exposure for the driver beyond his policy limits — meaning the insurance company’s exposure is no longer capped at the policy, which creates powerful settlement leverage. These are discovery targets, not assumptions. The cell-phone records and toxicology results — if they exist — are the proof. If they do not exist because no one tested, the absence of testing is itself a fact the family can use.
Should we talk to the at-fault driver’s insurance company?
No. The at-fault driver’s insurance company is not your friend. It is a business whose goal is to pay the family as little as possible. Every call is recorded. Every question is designed to produce an answer that can be used against the family later. The same is true of your own UM/UIM carrier — despite being your insurer, it will scrutinize the claim and may position itself to minimize the payout. Speak to a lawyer first. The lawyer handles every insurance conversation.
Can we still recover if the at-fault driver only has minimum insurance?
Yes. Texas minimum liability coverage is $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident. One wrongful death claim can exhaust that immediately. But the victim’s own UM/UIM coverage is designed precisely for this scenario — it steps in when the at-fault driver’s liability coverage is insufficient. If the victim had UM/UIM coverage on the 2025 Maverick (and lender-required full coverage typically includes it), the family can pursue the difference between the at-fault driver’s limits and the UM/UIM limits. Stacking UM/UIM across multiple vehicles on the same policy may also be available.
What if the truck belonged to the driver’s parents?
If the 2025 Chevrolet Silverado is registered to someone other than the at-fault driver — a parent, a relative, a family friend — that owner may be separately liable under a negligent entrustment theory. If the owner knew or should have known that the 19-year-old was an unsafe driver and still let him use the truck, the owner’s insurance policy is a separate source of recovery. This is one of the first things we investigate, because it can open a second insurance tower.
What happens if the at-fault driver was working at the time of the crash?
If discovery reveals that the at-fault driver was operating in the course of employment — for example, dispatched to or from an oilfield site in the Monahans-to-Odessa corridor — the case profile shifts dramatically. Employer vicarious liability attaches under the doctrine of respondeat superior, and the employer’s commercial auto insurance, which typically carries far higher limits than a personal policy, becomes available. A 19-year-old driving westbound on the IH-20 service road at 11:15 p.m. on Christmas night in the Permian Basin raises this question as a matter of course. It is a discovery target, not an assumption — but it is the kind of fact that can multiply the value of a case by an order of magnitude.
Will we have to go to trial?
Most wrongful death cases settle before trial. But the ones that settle for full value are the ones prepared for trial from day one. The insurance company knows which lawyers file lawsuits and take depositions and which ones send demand letters and hope. We prepare every case as if it is going to trial, because that preparation is what makes the insurance company pay fair value to avoid one.
How much does it cost to hire Attorney911?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33 percent before trial, 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We advance all costs. We do not get paid unless we win. The first consultation is free. Call 1-888-ATTY-911, any hour of any day.
If Your Family Lost Someone in This Crash — Call Now
The evidence in this case is dying on a schedule. The EDR data in both 2025 trucks. The cell-phone records. The scene evidence on the IH-20 service road at Moss Avenue. The toxicology, if it was ever drawn. Every day that passes is a day closer to the destruction of proof that your family will need.
The insurance adjuster has already opened a file. The reserve — the internal dollar value the carrier assigns to the claim — has already been set, probably within 48 hours of the crash, probably low. The recorded-statement call is coming, or it has already come. The fast settlement check with the release printed alongside it may be in the mail.
None of this is bad luck. It is procedure. And the counter to every move is a phone call to a trial lawyer who has done this before — who knows what the adjuster is doing, why, and how to stop it.
We handle wrongful death cases across Texas. We are based in Houston and we take cases in Ector County and the surrounding Permian Basin. The first call is free. The consultation is confidential. We answer 24 hours a day — a live person, not a machine.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Or contact us here.
Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — because your family deserves to understand every word of what happens next in the language you pray in.
We don’t get paid unless we win your case. Free consultation. 24/7. The evidence clock is already running. The call you make today is the call that starts working to stop it.