Fatal Motorcycle Crash on SH 349 in Midland: Your Family’s Rights After a DWI Wrongful Death
If you are reading this because someone you love was killed on State Highway 349 in the hours before dawn on December 28, 2025, you are in the worst hours a family can live through. The phone call has already come. The Texas Department of Public Safety has already been to the scene. And somewhere in Midland County, a prosecutor is building a criminal case against the man whose intoxication investigators believe caused the crash that took your rider’s life.
Here is what no one has told you yet: the criminal case and your family’s case are two separate things. The criminal charges — felony vehicular homicide, felony DWI — are the state’s case, built for punishment, and they will not pay your family a dollar. Your family’s case is a civil wrongful death action, and it runs on its own timeline, its own evidence, and its own set of rules that most families never learn about until the evidence they needed has already disappeared.
We are writing this for you — the spouse, the parent, the child, the sibling who is sitting at a kitchen table in Midland at two in the morning, staring at a folder of funeral expenses and a phone that an insurance adjuster has already called. We are Attorney911, The Manginello Law Firm. We handle wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases in Texas, and what follows is everything we would tell you if you were sitting across from us right now. None of it is a sales pitch. All of it is protection — the law, the deadlines, the evidence clocks, the insurance playbook, and the honest truth about what a case like this is worth and what it costs to bring.
If you want to talk to someone right now, at this hour, we answer. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free, it is confidential, and we do not get paid unless we win your case. Hablamos Español.
What Happened on State Highway 349
The Texas Department of Public Safety has released preliminary information about the crash. It happened at approximately 2:42 in the morning on Sunday, December 28, 2025, on SH 349 near Midland. A 41-year-old man was riding a 2013 Harley-Davidson southbound when the motorcycle left its lane of travel. The front tire contacted a gravel strip on the shoulder. The bike veered off the roadway and struck a pole. The rider was pronounced dead at the scene.
That is the preliminary account. But it is not the whole story — and the fact that a 48-year-old man has been charged with felony criminal vehicular homicide and felony first-degree DWI in connection with this crash tells you that investigators believe intoxication played a causal role in what happened.
“Texas DPS said the crash happened around 2:42 A.M.”
That timestamp — 2:42 in the morning on a Sunday — is one of the most important facts in this entire case, and we want you to understand why before we go further. In Texas, the legal closing time for bars and licensed alcohol establishments is 2:00 AM. A crash at 2:42 AM means the alleged intoxicated driver was on the road 42 minutes after last call. That is not a coincidence. That is a dram shop clock, and we will explain exactly what that means below.
The preliminary DPS report describes the motorcycle’s loss of control. It does not yet explain the other driver’s role. That gap — the precise mechanism by which an intoxicated driver’s actions caused a motorcyclist to lose control and leave the roadway — is the single most important factual question the civil investigation must answer. Did the other driver’s vehicle make contact with the motorcycle? Did his erratic driving force the rider into an evasive maneuver? Did he drift into the motorcycle’s lane, leaving the rider nowhere to go but the shoulder? The DPS investigation is ongoing, and the crash reconstruction data that will answer these questions has not yet been completed.
What we know for certain is this: a man is dead, another man has been charged with felony DWI and vehicular homicide, and the clock on your family’s rights is already running.
The Criminal Charges and What They Mean for Your Family’s Civil Case
The alleged intoxicated driver faces felony criminal vehicular homicide and felony first-degree DWI charges. These are serious criminal charges, and if the prosecution obtains a conviction, it will mean prison time. But your family needs to understand three things about the relationship between the criminal case and your civil wrongful death case:
First, the criminal case does not compensate your family. The prosecutor represents the State of Texas, not you. A conviction sends the defendant to prison. It does not write your family a check. It does not replace the income your loved one would have earned. It does not pay for the funeral, the medical bills, or the lifetime of support that vanished the moment that motorcycle hit the pole.
Second, a criminal conviction is powerful leverage for your civil case — but you cannot wait for it. In Texas, a criminal conviction for a violation that caused the death can establish what the law calls negligence per se — meaning the civil court can treat the criminal violation as proof of negligence, without your family having to re-prove it from scratch. A DWI conviction in particular supports a finding of gross negligence, which unlocks exemplary (punitive) damages under Texas law. But criminal cases take months, sometimes more than a year, to resolve. The evidence your civil case needs — bar surveillance video, the other driver’s toxicology results, the crash reconstruction data, the motorcycle’s event data — will be gone long before the criminal case concludes if no one acts to preserve it.
Third, the civil and criminal cases run on parallel tracks. Your family does not have to wait for the criminal case to finish before filing a civil wrongful death lawsuit. In fact, waiting is one of the most dangerous things you can do, because the statute of limitations on your civil claim is ticking independently of the criminal prosecution. A skilled civil attorney monitors the criminal prosecution, coordinates with the district attorney’s office, and uses the criminal discovery products — toxicology, reconstruction, witness statements — to strengthen the civil case. But the civil case must be built on its own evidence, gathered on its own timeline, with its own preservation demands sent before the proof dies.
If your family is being told to “wait and see what happens with the criminal case,” that advice is coming from someone who does not understand how fast civil evidence disappears. We explain the evidence clocks below, and they are the reason the day you call a lawyer is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Texas Wrongful Death Law: Who Can File and What You Can Recover
Texas law gives surviving family members the right to bring a wrongful death action when a death is caused by the “wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or default” of another person. The people who may bring this claim are defined by statute: the surviving spouse, the surviving children, and the surviving parents. These beneficiaries can file individually or jointly. If none of them files within a certain period, the executor or administrator of the deceased person’s estate may file on behalf of the estate.
Texas also recognizes a separate but parallel claim called a survival action. While the wrongful death claim compensates the family for what they lost — the financial support, the companionship, the guidance, the love — the survival action belongs to the estate and compensates for what the deceased person personally endured between the injury and death. If your loved one survived for any period after the crash — even minutes — and experienced conscious pain and suffering, the survival action captures that harm, along with any medical expenses incurred before death and funeral costs.
The distinction matters because the two claims pass to different beneficiaries and compensate different losses. A complete wrongful death and survival analysis is something we build carefully for each family, because the damages architecture determines what every line of the recovery looks like.
The statute of limitations. In Texas, both the wrongful death action and the survival action carry a two-year statute of limitations from the date of death. That means your family has two years to file the lawsuit. Miss that deadline and the claim is extinguished — no matter how strong the evidence, no matter how clear the fault. Two years sounds like a long time when you are in the first weeks of grief. It is not. Evidence disappears in days and weeks, not years. The bar investigation alone — which is often the difference between a $30,000 recovery and a multi-million-dollar recovery — has to begin within days of the crash, because the video that shows who served the driver and how much they served him overwrites itself in a matter of weeks.
Texas applies a modified comparative negligence standard with a 51% bar. This means your family can recover damages as long as the deceased person was not 51% or more at fault for the crash. If the rider was found to be 50% at fault, the family still recovers — but the recovery is reduced by that 50%. If the rider is found to be 51% at fault, the family recovers nothing. This rule is exactly why the defense will work so hard to pin fault on the motorcyclist — every percentage point they assign to the rider is money subtracted from your recovery. We address this defense and how we counter it in detail below.
Texas does not cap non-economic damages in wrongful death cases arising from motor vehicle negligence. The statutory damage caps that exist in Texas apply to medical malpractice claims, not to motor vehicle wrongful death. This means a jury in Midland County can award the full measure of mental anguish, loss of companionship, loss of society, and loss of counsel that your family actually suffered — without a statutory ceiling reducing that number.
Exemplary damages — what many people call punitive damages — are available in Texas when the plaintiff proves by clear and convincing evidence that the harm resulted from fraud, malice, or gross negligence. Operating a vehicle while intoxicated at a level supporting felony charges is textbook gross negligence. It is the conscious indifference to an extreme degree of risk — getting behind the wheel when you cannot safely operate it, on a highway where motorcyclists are driving, at 2:42 in the morning. A DWI wrongful death is precisely the kind of case where exemplary damages are available, and they can significantly increase the total recovery. Texas does impose certain limitations on exemplary damages, and we analyze those carefully in the context of each case’s economic damage profile.
Dram Shop Liability: The Bar That May Have Overserved
This is the section that most families never read, because most attorneys never write it. And it is the section that can change a case from a $30,000 minimum-limits recovery into a multi-million-dollar accountability case.
Texas dram shop law — established under the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code — holds licensed alcohol providers (bars, restaurants, clubs, and other establishments with a TABC license) civilly liable when they serve an obviously intoxicated person who then causes a fatal crash. The legal standard requires proof that the provider served the patron to a level of obvious intoxication such that the patron presented a clear danger to self and others, and that the intoxication was a proximate cause of the damages.
The 2:42 AM crash time is the engine of this claim. In Texas, bars must stop serving alcohol at 2:00 AM. A crash 42 minutes after last call creates a strong inference that the alleged intoxicated driver was recently at a licensed establishment. That inference is the starting point, not the ending point. The dram shop investigation must identify which establishment served him, how much he was served, over what duration, and what visible signs of intoxication the staff observed or should have observed.
Here is what that investigation looks like in practice: a private investigator canvasses bars along the SH 349 corridor and throughout Midland, identifying establishments that were open and serving in the hours before 2:00 AM on the night of the crash. The investigator seeks surveillance video from those establishments — video that shows the driver at the bar, what he was drinking, how many drinks he was served, whether he was stumbling, slurring, or showing other visible signs of intoxication. The investigator also seeks point-of-sale records — the electronic transaction history that shows exactly how many drinks were purchased, when, and on what tab.
This evidence is dying right now. Bar surveillance video typically overwrites itself on a rolling cycle of 7 to 30 days. Some systems cycle even faster. Point-of-sale records may be retained longer, but they must be requested before they are purged. Bartenders and servers — the witnesses who can testify about the driver’s visible intoxication — are high-turnover employees who may quit, move, or forget what they saw within weeks. Every day that passes before the preservation letters go out and the investigation begins is a day the dram shop claim weakens.
Texas dram shop law also includes what is known as a “safe harbor” defense. If the alcohol provider can prove that it trained its employees in responsible alcohol service and that the employee who served the patron did not knowingly serve an obviously intoxicated person, the provider may escape liability. This defense is fact-specific and depends on the provider’s training records and the specific service conduct — which is another reason the investigation must begin immediately.
The value difference is dramatic. If the only defendant is the alleged intoxicated driver, and he carries only Texas minimum auto liability limits of $30,000 per person, the recovery may be limited to that amount — a number that does not begin to compensate a family for the loss of a 41-year-old with decades of working life ahead. But if a dram shop defendant is identified — a bar or restaurant that overserved the driver to the point of obvious intoxication — the coverage landscape changes entirely. Liquor liability policies typically carry limits of $1,000,000 or more. That is the difference between a case that pays funeral expenses and a case that holds every responsible party accountable for the full measure of your family’s loss.
If you want to understand more about how these claims work, our DUI/DWI accident practice page covers the civil implications of intoxicated driving in detail.
The Gravel Strip and the Road Itself
The DPS preliminary report says the motorcycle’s front tire contacted a gravel strip on the shoulder of SH 349 before the bike veered off the roadway. That gravel strip is a physical fact, and it raises a question that a complete investigation must examine: was that gravel condition a normal, expected roadside feature, or was it a hazardous condition that the roadway’s design or maintenance created or allowed to worsen?
State Highway 349 is a major north-south corridor running through Midland County in the heart of the Permian Basin. It carries a heavy mix of oilfield service traffic — water haulers, frac sand transporters, pump trucks, wireline trucks — alongside commercial trucks and passenger vehicles. The increased traffic volume from years of oil and gas development has put enormous stress on the corridor’s infrastructure, and roadside conditions on these Permian Basin highways often include gravel shoulders, drainage features, and surface transitions that pose elevated risks to motorcyclists specifically. A gravel strip that a car would drive through without incident can cause a motorcycle’s front tire to lose traction and wash out in an instant — that is basic motorcycle physics, not a controversial claim.
Any potential claim against TxDOT for roadway design or maintenance would be governed by the Texas Tort Claims Act, which imposes significant limitations on sovereign immunity and strict notice requirements. Claims against government entities in Texas face shortened notice deadlines — the failure to provide timely notice can extinguish the claim entirely. We evaluate these claims carefully and honestly. They are difficult, they are subject to immunity defenses, and the notice deadlines are unforgiving. But a complete investigation examines every contributing factor, including the roadway, because the goal is to identify every party whose conduct or choices contributed to the crash — not just the most obvious one.
What we will not do is speculate, while the DPS investigation is ongoing, about the precise role the gravel strip played versus the role the alleged intoxicated driver played. What we will do is document the scene — the gravel, the shoulder condition, the roadway geometry, the pole the motorcycle struck — before any of those conditions change. Road conditions can be altered by maintenance, weather, or construction. The scene must be photographed, measured, and preserved by a qualified reconstruction expert before the evidence degrades.
Who Can Be Held Accountable — The Defendant Map
A complete wrongful death investigation identifies every party whose conduct contributed to the crash and every source of insurance or assets that can compensate the family. In a DWI motorcycle fatality on SH 349, the potential defendants and coverage sources include:
The alleged intoxicated driver. He has been charged with felony vehicular homicide and felony DWI. His criminal charges establish a strong foundation for civil liability — both for negligence per se (the violation of the DWI statute) and for gross negligence (the conscious indifference of driving while intoxicated). His auto liability insurance is the primary coverage source. Texas minimum financial responsibility requirements are 30/60/25 — $30,000 per person for bodily injury, $60,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage. Many drivers carry more than the minimum, and some carry umbrella or excess policies that stack on top. Identifying every policy and every layer is one of the first tasks in any case.
The alcohol provider. As explained above, if a licensed establishment served the driver to the point of obvious intoxication, Texas dram shop law imposes civil liability on that provider. The 2:42 AM crash time creates a strong inference of recent commercial alcohol service. The dram shop investigation is the highest-priority civil track because the evidence evaporates fastest.
The driver’s employer. If the alleged intoxicated driver was operating a company-owned vehicle, an oilfield service truck, or was within the course and scope of employment at the time of the 2:42 AM crash, vicarious liability and negligent entrustment theories may reach the employer. In the Permian Basin, where oilfield service companies operate fleets that run at all hours, this is a question that must be investigated immediately. If the employer knew or should have known of the driver’s intoxication history or propensity, negligent entrustment attaches independently of respondeat superior.
TxDOT. As discussed above, the gravel strip and roadway conditions may implicate roadway design or maintenance, but the Texas Tort Claims Act imposes strict limitations and notice deadlines on such claims.
Each of these potential defendants carries different insurance, raises different defenses, and requires different evidence. The defendant map is not a list — it is an investigation plan, and the order of operations matters because the evidence for each defendant dies on a different clock.
For a broader understanding of how motorcycle crashes are investigated and litigated, our motorcycle accident practice page covers the full range of scenarios and legal theories.
Comparative Fault: The Defense They Will Run
Here is the play the defense will run, and we want you to hear it before it surprises you. The DPS preliminary report says the motorcycle “failed to maintain a single lane of traffic.” The defense will take that sentence and build an entire comparative fault argument around it. They will argue that the rider was independently negligent — that he failed to control his motorcycle, that he was responsible for his own lane departure, that the crash was his fault, not the drunk driver’s.
Texas’s modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar means that if the defense can pin 51% of the fault on the rider, your family recovers nothing. Even if they pin 30% or 40% on the rider, your family’s recovery is reduced by that percentage. Every percentage point the defense assigns to the rider is money subtracted from your family’s compensation.
This is where the civil investigation’s crash reconstruction becomes decisive. The preliminary DPS report describes the motorcycle’s loss of control — but it does not explain why the motorcycle left its lane. A qualified reconstruction engineer examines the physical evidence — the tire marks, the scrape marks, the point of departure from the roadway, the angle of travel, the damage to the motorcycle and the pole — and determines whether the lane departure was the rider’s independent error or a predictable response to an external threat.
Here is what that means in a DWI motorcycle case: if the alleged intoxicated driver’s vehicle drifted into the motorcycle’s lane, or made an erratic maneuver that forced the rider into an evasive action, the rider’s loss of control was not independent negligence — it was a proximate consequence of the drunk driver’s actions. The gravel strip did not cause the crash by itself. The drunk driver caused the rider to be in a position where the gravel strip became unavoidable. That is the causal chain the civil case must build, and it requires a reconstruction expert who understands motorcycle dynamics — how a motorcycle responds to sudden steering inputs, how front-tire traction breaks on gravel, how an evasive maneuver at highway speed can become a fatal departure from the roadway.
The defense will also look at the rider’s toxicology. If the DPS investigation tested the rider’s blood for alcohol or drugs, the defense will use any positive result to argue comparative fault. We address this honestly: if the rider had alcohol in his system, the defense will exploit it, and we must be prepared to demonstrate that the rider’s condition did not cause the crash — that the drunk driver’s conduct was the sole proximate cause, and that the gravel strip and the pole were consequences of the driver’s actions, not the rider’s impairment.
This is the fight. It is the fight in every motorcycle case where the rider cannot tell their own story, and it is the fight we prepare for from day one. The DPS preliminary report is a first look, not a final judgment. The civil case builds the complete picture — and the complete picture includes what the drunk driver did to put that rider on that gravel strip.
Evidence That Is Dying Right Now
We have referenced evidence clocks throughout this page. Now we want to lay them out system by system, because understanding what evidence exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally disappear is the single most important thing a family can learn in the first days after a fatal crash.
Bar and restaurant surveillance video. This is the fastest-dying evidence in the entire case. Bar surveillance systems typically record over themselves on a rolling cycle of 7 to 30 days. If the alleged intoxicated driver was at a bar before the crash, the video that shows him being served, how many drinks he had, and how he appeared when he left is being erased right now — automatically, on a timer, with no one watching. The only thing that stops the erasure is a formal preservation demand — a letter from an attorney telling the establishment to lock down the footage and not let it be overwritten. That letter has to go out in days, not weeks. Every day it does not go out, the dram shop claim weakens.
Point-of-sale records. The electronic transaction records that show exactly what was purchased, when, and on whose tab may be retained longer than video, but they are still on a deletion cycle. These records are the corroboration — they match the video to the dollar amounts and timestamps, proving not just that the driver was there but how much he was served.
The alleged intoxicated driver’s toxicology and BAC results. The criminal arrest will generate blood alcohol concentration testing through a crime laboratory. These results may take weeks to months to process. They are critical to the civil case because they establish the level of intoxication that supports both negligence per se and gross negligence. Civil counsel should coordinate with the prosecutor’s office to obtain these results through discovery or through a parallel civil subpoena.
The DPS crash report (CR-3) and reconstruction data. The official crash report is the foundation of the civil case. A preliminary report may be available within days, but the full reconstruction — which includes measurements, diagrams, contributing factor determinations, and the investigating trooper’s analysis of the other driver’s role — takes weeks. The DPS investigation is ongoing, and the final report may change the preliminary account significantly.
The alleged intoxicated driver’s vehicle. If his vehicle made contact with the motorcycle, the damage pattern and paint transfer will prove it. If his vehicle did not make contact but his driving forced the evasive maneuver, the vehicle’s event data recorder (EDR) may show speed, braking, steering inputs, and other telemetry that reconstructs his driving in the seconds before the crash. The vehicle may be impounded as part of the criminal case, but it could be released, repaired, or scrapped. The EDR data must be imaged by a qualified expert before the vehicle is disposed of.
The motorcycle itself. A 2013 Harley-Davidson may or may not have an event data recorder, but the physical damage — the pattern of impact with the pole, the scrape marks from the gravel, the tire condition, the angle of departure — tells the reconstruction story. The motorcycle is likely in an impound yard. It must not be released, repaired, or scrapped before a forensic examination documents every piece of physical evidence. The motorcycle is evidence, and it must be preserved.
Witness statements. Anyone who saw the crash — other drivers, passengers, people at nearby residences or businesses — has information that degrades with every passing day. Memory fades. Witnesses move. The earlier statements are taken, the more accurate and complete they are.
Cell phone records for the alleged intoxicated driver. These establish the timeline of his movements in the hours before the crash, potentially corroborating which bar he was at and when he left. Cell phone records also reveal whether he was distracted at the time of the crash. Provider retention periods vary, and a preservation letter is required immediately.
Roadway condition documentation. The gravel strip and shoulder condition that contributed to the crash can be altered by maintenance, weather, or construction. The scene must be photographed and measured by a qualified expert before any changes occur.
The driver’s prior DWI or criminal history. If the alleged intoxicated driver has prior alcohol-related offenses, that history is relevant to both negligent entrustment theories (if an employer is involved) and to the gross negligence analysis. This record is public and pullable, but it must be obtained and analyzed early.
Every one of these evidence sources has a clock. Some die in days. Some die in weeks. None of them wait for the criminal case to conclude. This is why the preservation letter — the formal demand that evidence be frozen and not destroyed — is the first thing that goes out when a family calls us. Not after the funeral. Not after the criminal case. The day you call.
To understand how evidence preservation works across motorcycle cases more broadly, our guide on vulnerable road user accidents covers the full range of proof sources and preservation strategies.
The Insurance Reality — Following the Money
A wrongful death case is only worth what can be collected. The damages in the death of a 41-year-old with decades of working life ahead are substantial on paper — but the recovery is entirely dependent on identifying solvent defendants with adequate insurance or assets. Here is the insurance reality, honestly:
The alleged intoxicated driver’s auto liability coverage. Texas minimum financial responsibility is 30/60/25 — $30,000 per person, $60,000 per accident for bodily injury, and $25,000 for property damage. If the driver carries only the minimum, that $30,000 is the starting point, not the ending point. Many policies carry higher limits — $50,000, $100,000, or $250,000 per person. Some drivers carry umbrella or excess policies of $1,000,000 or more that stack on top of the primary coverage. Identifying every policy, every layer, and every applicable endorsement is one of the first tasks in the case. We do not take the first answer the insurance company gives about coverage limits — we demand the declarations page, the policy, and every excess layer.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. If the rider carried uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage on his own motorcycle policy, that coverage may provide additional recovery if the at-fault driver was uninsured or underinsured. UM/UIM coverage is one of the most important protections a motorcyclist can carry, and many families do not realize it applies even when the at-fault driver has some insurance — if that insurance is insufficient to fully compensate the family. We examine the rider’s own policy carefully for UM/UIM, medical payments coverage, and any other applicable benefits.
Dram shop / liquor liability coverage. If a bar or restaurant is identified as a defendant, its commercial general liability policy and any liquor liability endorsement provide a separate coverage tower. These policies typically carry limits of $1,000,000 or more. This is the coverage that can transform a case from a minimum-limits recovery into a full accountability recovery.
Employer coverage. If the alleged intoxicated driver was on duty or driving a company vehicle, the employer’s commercial auto and general liability policies may apply. Commercial vehicle policies often carry substantially higher limits than personal auto policies — $1,000,000 or more is common for oilfield service vehicles.
The driver’s personal assets. If the driver has meaningful personal assets — real estate, savings, investments — a judgment can be enforced against those assets. In practice, many DWI defendants are not wealthy, and the insurance coverage is the primary recovery source. But a complete analysis examines the driver’s asset profile, especially if exemplary damages are on the table.
The insurance investigation is not a single conversation with the at-fault driver’s carrier. It is a systematic process of identifying every policy, every layer, every endorsement, and every alternative source of recovery. The first offer from an insurance company is almost never the full value of the claim — and in a DWI wrongful death case, the first offer may arrive before the family has even buried their loved one. We discuss the adjuster’s playbook below.
What a 41-Year-Old’s Life Is Worth
This is the question every family eventually asks, and it is the question that dishonest attorneys answer with a number pulled from thin air. We will not do that. What we will do is explain how the number is actually built — the categories of damages, the method of calculating each, and the factors that drive the total up or down.
Economic damages are the objectively calculable losses. For a 41-year-old killed in a motorcycle crash, the economic stream includes:
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Lost earning capacity. A 41-year-old had, on average, 24 to 26 years of remaining working life. A forensic economist projects the income the deceased person would have earned over that working life, based on their occupation, education, earning history, and likely career trajectory. This is not a guess — it is a calculation built from federal labor data, the person’s actual earnings records, and worklife expectancy tables. The projection includes wage growth, fringe benefits (which the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports average roughly 30% of total compensation for private-sector workers), and is reduced to present value using a discount rate the economist defends.
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Lost household services. The unpaid work the deceased person did at home — cooking, cleaning, repairs, childcare, household management, driving — has a real economic value. The law measures it by the replacement-cost method: what would it cost to hire someone to perform those services, multiplied by the hours the person performed them, projected across their remaining life expectancy. For a non-wage-earning spouse or a parent who managed the household, this number alone can be substantial.
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Funeral and burial expenses. These are documented costs, typically ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars.
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Pre-death medical expenses. If the rider survived for any period after the crash and received medical treatment before being pronounced dead, those expenses are recoverable through the survival action.
Non-economic damages are the human losses that no receipt can measure:
- Mental anguish and emotional distress of the surviving family members
- Loss of companionship, society, and counsel — the relationship that was taken from the family
- Loss of inheritance — what the deceased person would have accumulated and left to the family
- The decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering (through the survival action) — if the rider experienced conscious pain and suffering between the crash and death, that harm is compensable
Exemplary damages. In a DWI wrongful death case, the felony-level intoxication charge supports a gross negligence finding that unlocks exemplary damages. These are damages designed to punish the wrongdoer and deter similar conduct, and in a fatal intoxication case, they can significantly enhance the total recovery. Texas imposes certain statutory limitations on exemplary damages, and the specific cap analysis depends on the economic damage profile of the case.
The honest range. Based on the facts available in this case, and being clear that every case depends on its specific facts: if the only defendant is the alleged intoxicated driver carrying Texas minimum liability limits, and no dram shop defendant is identified, the recovery may be in the range of $30,000 to $300,000 — limited by the available coverage and collectibility. If the driver carries meaningful liability coverage or an umbrella policy, and a dram shop defendant is identified with typical liquor liability limits of $1,000,000 or more, the recovery range can extend to $1,000,000 to $3,500,000 or beyond, depending on the strength of the gross negligence showing, the economic damage profile, and the jury’s assessment of non-economic harm.
The primary value driver in this case is collectibility — identifying solvent defendants with adequate insurance. The damages on paper for a 41-year-old’s wrongful death are substantial. The question is not whether the harm is worth millions. The question is whether the defendants have the insurance or assets to pay what the harm is worth. That is why the dram shop investigation and the coverage investigation are the two highest-priority tracks in the first weeks of the case.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can tell you is that the firm has recovered more than $50,000,000 in aggregate across its practice, and we build every case as if it is going to trial — because that is how you get the attention of an insurance company that would otherwise pay as little as it can get away with.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before he came to this side of the table. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like your family. He knows the plays because he used to run them. Here are the plays the adjuster is already running or will run soon, and here is the counter to each:
Play 1: The “just checking in” recorded statement. Within days of the crash, someone from the at-fault driver’s insurance company will call. They will sound warm, sympathetic, and concerned. They will ask if you are okay. They will ask if you would “just tell us what happened” — on a recording. This call is not a courtesy. It is a fishing expedition designed to get you to say something — anything — that can be quoted later to undermine your claim. “He was a safe driver” becomes “even the family admits the rider was fine before the crash.” “I’m doing okay” becomes “the family is not suffering significant emotional distress.”
The counter: Do not give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Not now, not ever. You are not required to. Anything you say can and will be used to reduce the value of your claim. If they call, take their name and number and say nothing else. Let your attorney handle every communication with the carrier.
Play 2: The fast settlement check. A check may arrive in the mail quickly — sometimes within weeks of the crash. It may look like a generous offer given how fast it came. It will come with a release — a document that, once signed, extinguishes your family’s right to pursue any further compensation from the driver or the insurance company. The check is designed to arrive before you know the full extent of your losses, before the DPS investigation is complete, before the dram shop investigation identifies the bar, and before you have hired a lawyer. Once you sign that release, the case is over — no matter what evidence later surfaces.
The counter: Never sign a release from an insurance company without having an attorney review it. The first offer is almost never the full value of the claim. In a DWI wrongful death case, the first offer may be a fraction of what the case is worth — and it is designed to close the case before the family discovers the dram shop claim, the excess coverage, or the gross negligence theory that unlocks exemplary damages.
Play 3: Blaming the motorcyclist. The adjuster will seize on the DPS preliminary report’s language about the motorcycle “failing to maintain a single lane” and build a comparative fault narrative. They will argue the rider was speeding, was inexperienced, was riding impaired, or was otherwise responsible for his own death. They will assign a percentage of fault to the rider and reduce their offer accordingly. In Texas, if they can assign 51%, the family recovers nothing.
The counter: A qualified crash reconstruction expert builds the true causal story. The preliminary DPS report describes the motorcycle’s loss of control — it does not explain the other driver’s role. The reconstruction examines whether the alleged intoxicated driver’s conduct caused the lane departure, whether the rider was forced into an evasive maneuver, and whether the gravel strip was a contributing condition that the drunk driver’s actions made unavoidable. The comparative fault argument is beaten with physics, not rhetoric.
Play 4: Social media surveillance. The insurance company will monitor the family’s social media accounts. A photograph of a family dinner, a vacation check-in, a joke shared with friends — all of these can be taken out of context and presented as evidence that the family is not suffering, that the loss was not devastating, that the grief is not real. Insurance companies hire vendors whose entire job is to scrape social media for ammunition.
The counter: Set all social media accounts to private. Do not post about the crash, the case, the legal process, or your emotional state. Do not discuss the case online, in texts, or in emails. Assume everything you write is being read by someone whose job is to reduce the value of your family’s loss.
Play 5: The “we need more information” delay. The adjuster will request additional documentation — more medical records, more financial records, more information about the deceased person’s life — and use each request as a reason to delay the claim. The purpose of the delay is to push the family toward the statute of limitations, to exhaust the family’s patience, and to make a low settlement offer look attractive by comparison.
The counter: A lawyer who handles these cases knows what documentation the insurance company is actually entitled to and what it is not. We control the flow of information, provide what is necessary when it is necessary, and do not let the adjuster use discovery-style document demands as a delay tactic.
For more on how insurance companies operate and how to protect yourself, our wrongful death practice page covers the full range of strategies and protections.
The First Days and Weeks: A Roadmap
If your family is in the first days after this crash, here is what needs to happen — not in months, not after the funeral, now:
Day 1 through 3: Do not speak to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Do not sign anything from any insurance company. Do not post about the crash on social media. Do sign nothing and say nothing to adjusters. If the DPS asks for information, cooperate fully — but do not give recorded statements to insurance companies.
Day 1 through 7: Contact a wrongful death attorney. The preservation letters need to go out. The dram shop investigation needs to begin. The scene needs to be documented. The motorcycle and the other driver’s vehicle need to be examined before they are released. Every day that passes before these steps are taken is a day the evidence weakens.
Week 1 through 3: The bar canvass. A private investigator should be deployed to canvass Midland-area bars and restaurants along the SH 349 corridor and throughout the city, identifying establishments open and serving in the hours before 2:00 AM on the night of the crash. Surveillance video and point-of-sale records must be requested before they are overwritten. Bartenders and servers must be identified and interviewed before they quit, move, or forget.
Week 2 through 6: The crash reconstruction. A qualified reconstruction expert should be retained to examine the physical evidence — the motorcycle, the scene, the roadway conditions, the other driver’s vehicle if available — and build the causal story that connects the alleged intoxication to the fatal loss of control. The DPS investigation will still be ongoing, and the reconstruction expert’s findings may supplement, corroborate, or contradict the DPS preliminary findings.
Week 4 through 12: The coverage investigation. Every insurance policy must be identified — the at-fault driver’s auto liability, any umbrella or excess, the rider’s own UM/UIM and medical payments, any employer coverage if applicable, and any dram shop liquor liability if a bar is identified. The declarations pages and policy language must be obtained and analyzed for every applicable coverage source.
Month 3 through 6: The criminal case monitoring. The criminal prosecution of the alleged intoxicated driver will be proceeding through the Midland County courts. Civil counsel should monitor the criminal docket, coordinate with the district attorney’s office, and obtain all criminal discovery products — toxicology, crash reconstruction, witness statements, the defendant’s prior record — as they become available. These products feed directly into the civil case.
Month 6 through 18: The civil case builds. The wrongful death and survival actions are filed. Discovery proceeds — depositions of the at-fault driver, the bar staff, any witnesses, the investigating troopers. Experts are retained and reports are prepared. The case is built for trial, because the willingness to try the case is what produces fair settlement offers.
Mediation and resolution. Mediation should be deferred until the criminal case has resolved and all insurance coverage and dram shop defendants have been identified. Premature mediation undervalues the case — the defense will not offer full value until they know the full scope of the evidence and the full extent of the exposure. We prepare every case as if it will be tried to a Midland County jury, because that preparation is what drives fair resolution.
Who We Are
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a Texas trial firm that handles wrongful death, catastrophic injury, commercial vehicle, and dram shop cases. We work on contingency: 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free, and we have live staff available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — not an answering service.
Ralph P. Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — 27+ years of trial practice, including in federal court. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he was trained to find the story the evidence actually tells, not the story the other side wants the jury to hear. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association. He is lead counsel in the active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi and the University of Houston. Ralph’s full background is here.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He has been licensed in Texas since December 6, 2012 — 13+ years. He is also admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before he came to our side of the table, Lupe spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their lawyers decided how to value, deny, and devalue claims from injured people. He knows how the insurance industry prices a claim, how it selects IME doctors, how it uses surveillance, and how it runs delay tactics — because he used to do those things. Now he uses that knowledge for injured families. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Lupe’s background is here.
We serve Midland, Midland County, and the entire Permian Basin from our offices in Houston, Austin, and Beaumont, and we take cases statewide. The number for our 24/7 emergency hotline is 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). We answer at 2 AM because that is when families need us.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we sue if the driver was drunk but the motorcycle lost control on its own?
Yes — if the driver’s intoxication played a causal role in the motorcycle’s loss of control. The fact that the motorcycle “failed to maintain a single lane” does not mean the rider was independently at fault. If the drunk driver’s vehicle drifted into the motorcycle’s lane, made an erratic maneuver, or created a dangerous condition that forced the rider into an evasive action, the rider’s loss of control was a proximate consequence of the drunk driver’s negligence — not an independent act of rider error. The civil investigation’s crash reconstruction is what establishes this causal connection, and it is the difference between a viable wrongful death case and a defense verdict.
How long do we have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Texas?
Two years from the date of death. This is the statute of limitations for both the wrongful death action and the survival action in Texas. Two years may sound like a long time, but the evidence your case needs — bar surveillance video, witness statements, the motorcycle’s physical evidence — disappears in days and weeks, not years. The statute of limitations is the outer deadline; the practical deadline for preserving evidence is measured in days.
Do we have to wait for the criminal case to finish before we file a civil lawsuit?
No. The civil and criminal cases run on parallel tracks. Your family does not have to wait for the criminal prosecution to conclude before filing a wrongful death action. In fact, waiting is dangerous because the civil statute of limitations runs independently of the criminal case. A skilled civil attorney monitors the criminal prosecution and uses its discovery products — toxicology, reconstruction, witness statements — to strengthen the civil case, but the civil case must be built and filed on its own timeline.
What if the drunk driver only has minimum insurance?
Texas minimum auto liability limits are $30,000 per person. If the at-fault driver carries only the minimum, the auto policy alone will not come close to compensating your family for the loss of a 41-year-old. This is why the dram shop investigation is so critical — if a bar overserved the driver, its liquor liability coverage (typically $1,000,000 or more) provides a separate, larger source of recovery. We also examine the rider’s own uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, any employer coverage if the driver was on duty, and any umbrella or excess policies. The coverage investigation is as important as the liability investigation.
What is a dram shop claim and how do we know if one applies?
A dram shop claim holds a licensed alcohol provider — a bar, restaurant, or club — civilly liable for overserving a patron who then causes a crash. To prove a dram shop claim in Texas, you must show that the provider served the patron to a level of obvious intoxication creating a clear danger to self and others, and that the intoxication was a proximate cause of the death. The 2:42 AM crash time — 42 minutes after Texas’s 2:00 AM bar closing time — creates a strong inference that the driver was recently at a licensed establishment. A private investigator canvasses bars along the SH 349 corridor to identify which establishment served him, and surveillance video and point-of-sale records provide the proof. The dram shop investigation must begin within days because bar surveillance video overwrites itself in 7 to 30 days.
Will the defense blame the motorcyclist?
Almost certainly. The defense will use the DPS preliminary report’s language about the motorcycle “failing to maintain a single lane” to argue comparative fault. Texas’s modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar means that if the rider is found 51% at fault, the family recovers nothing. The defense will assign as much fault to the rider as they can, because every percentage point reduces the recovery. The counter is a qualified crash reconstruction expert who can demonstrate that the rider’s loss of control was caused by the drunk driver’s actions — not by independent rider negligence. We prepare for this fight from day one because it is the fight in every motorcycle wrongful death case.
How much is our case worth?
We cannot give you a specific number without a complete analysis of the facts, the coverage, and the damages. What we can tell you is that the damages for a 41-year-old’s wrongful death are substantial — lost earning capacity over 24+ years of remaining working life, lost household services, funeral expenses, mental anguish, loss of companionship, and potentially exemplary damages for gross negligence. The primary variable is collectibility: if the only defendant carries Texas minimum limits, the recovery is limited by that coverage. If a dram shop defendant is identified with $1,000,000+ in liquor liability coverage, the recovery range increases dramatically. We give every family an honest, evidence-based valuation after the initial investigation — not a number pulled from thin air to get you to sign.
What does it cost to hire a wrongful death attorney?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency — 33.33% of the recovery before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. There are no hourly charges and no retainer fees. The cost of the investigation — the reconstruction expert, the private investigator, the forensic economist — is advanced by the firm and recovered from the settlement or verdict. If we do not recover for your family, you do not owe us attorney’s fees.
Can we still pursue a case if the rider had been drinking?
Possibly. Texas comparative negligence reduces recovery by the rider’s percentage of fault but does not bar it unless the rider is 51% or more at fault. If the rider had alcohol in his system, the defense will exploit it — but the question is whether the rider’s condition caused the crash, or whether the drunk driver’s conduct was the sole proximate cause. The reconstruction and the toxicology evidence are what answer this question. We handle these cases honestly and build the strongest possible causal argument regardless of what the rider’s toxicology shows.
How quickly do we need to act?
Today. Not next week. Not after the funeral. Today. Bar surveillance video is being erased on a rolling cycle right now. The motorcycle is sitting in an impound yard where it could be released or scrapped. The other driver’s vehicle and its event data recorder could be disposed of. Witnesses’ memories are degrading. The scene could be altered by maintenance or weather. The single most important thing your family can do — besides taking care of each other through the grief — is to have a preservation letter sent to every entity that holds evidence in this case. That letter is what stops the clock on evidence destruction. The day you call us is the day that letter goes out.
Call Us Now
If your family has lost someone to a drunk driver on State Highway 349 or anywhere in the Permian Basin, the time to act is now — not because we want your case, but because the evidence that will hold the responsible parties accountable is disappearing while you read this.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). We answer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The consultation is free and confidential. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Hablamos Español — your family can speak with us fully in Spanish, from the first call through every step of the case.
You can also reach Ralph Manginello directly at (713) 528-9070 or (713) 443-4781, or by email at ralph@atty911.com. Lupe Peña can be reached at lupe@atty911.com.
We built this firm to be the call a family makes at 2 AM — the call that stops the evidence from disappearing, that stops the insurance company from calling, and that starts the fight for the full measure of what your family has lost. That fight begins the moment you pick up the phone.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.