Midland Semi-Truck Killed a Woman on an E-Bike: What Her Family Needs to Know Right Now
If you are reading this, someone you love was killed on a bicycle in Midland by a commercial truck. The Department of Public Safety has a crash report. The truck has been towed or driven away. The driver may have been tested or may not have been. And the trucking company’s insurance adjuster has already opened a file — not to help you, but to limit what your family can ever recover.
You are in the hours and days after a death that did not have to happen. An e-bike rider is the most vulnerable person on any road — no steel frame, no airbag, sitting at the height of a truck’s wheels, in a city where the oil industry has put more heavy trucks on roads built for a fraction of this traffic. The forces involved are not a collision. They are annihilation. And the company that put that truck on the road is already working to control what the evidence shows.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle commercial trucking wrongful-death cases. Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you — and now sits on your side of the table. We know what the carrier is doing right now because Lupe used to be the person doing it.
This page is the education, the governing law, the evidence clocks, the honest case-value evaluation, and the decision power your family needs at this moment. We are a powerful resource for what a case like this requires — the preservation demands, the forensic reconstruction, the corporate-structure analysis, the lifetime damages model. If we are not the right fit for your family, we will tell you. But everything below is yours regardless.
The Direct Answers: What Happened, Who Can Be Sued, and How Long You Have
Can we sue the trucking company? Yes — if the truck driver was working for a carrier at the time of the crash, the company is legally responsible for its driver’s conduct on the road. The company may also be directly responsible for its own choices — hiring, training, scheduling, maintenance — that put a dangerous driver or a dangerous truck on the road.
How long do we have? Texas gives you two years from the date of death to file a wrongful-death lawsuit. That deadline is in the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Miss it and the case is gone — no matter how strong the evidence is. But the real deadline is not two years. The real deadline is six months — because that is how long federal law requires the trucking company to keep the driver’s hours-of-service logs before it is legally allowed to destroy them.
Who can file the claim? Under Texas law, a wrongful-death claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the person killed. If none of them file within three months of the death, the executor or administrator of the estate may file on their behalf.
What is the case worth? That depends on the facts — the decedent’s age, earning capacity, health, family relationships, and the degree of the trucking company’s fault. Texas does not cap non-economic damages in trucking wrongful-death cases the way it does in medical-malpractice cases. A catastrophic truck-crash death in the Permian Basin, where oil-industry wages are high and juries understand trucking, can carry significant value. We build the number from a life-care plan and a forensic economist’s projection — not from a formula.
Was it partly her fault? The insurance adjuster will try to make it so. Texas follows a modified comparative-fault rule: if the victim was 50% or less at fault, the family’s recovery is reduced by that percentage. If the victim was 51% or more at fault, the family recovers nothing. Every percentage point the adjuster pins on the e-bike rider is money subtracted from your family’s recovery. This is exactly why the evidence — the truck’s data, the scene reconstruction, the video — has to be frozen immediately.
The Physics: 80,000 Pounds Versus a Human Being on a Bicycle
A fully loaded tractor-trailer can weigh up to 80,000 pounds. An e-bike with a rider might weigh 220 pounds. That is a ratio of roughly 360 to 1. In a crash between those two masses, the laws of physics do not produce a “collision” — they produce a transfer of energy so disproportionate that the lighter object is effectively destroyed.
Kinetic energy scales with the square of speed. A truck traveling at 60 miles per hour carries four times the destructive energy of the same truck at 30 miles per hour. When that energy meets a human body on a bicycle — with no crash structure, no seatbelt, no airbag, and a center of gravity that puts the rider’s torso at the height of the truck’s front bumper or its wheels — the body absorbs forces it was never built to survive.
The crash types that kill cyclists and e-bike riders in commercial-truck collisions are well documented:
The right hook. The truck and the e-bike are traveling in the same direction. The truck driver decides to turn right — into a driveway, a parking lot, a side street — and either does not see the rider in his blind spot or misjudges the rider’s speed. E-bikes travel faster than traditional bicycles — up to 20 or 28 miles per hour depending on the class — and a driver who expects a cyclist to be moving at 10 mph can turn directly into the path of an e-bike approaching at twice that speed. The rider is caught between the truck and the curb, or pulled beneath the trailer’s rear wheels.
The squeeze. The truck passes the e-bike rider without leaving enough lateral clearance. The aerodynamic draft of a trailer at highway speed can pull a rider sideways. The margin between a safe pass and a fatal one can be measured in inches.
The underride. When a cyclist is struck and goes down, the rider’s body can slide beneath the trailer — where the trailer’s undercarriage, the rear wheels, or the tandem axles cause catastrophic injury. Side underride guards are not required on most trailers the way rear underride guards are, and even rear guards have been shown to fail at moderate speeds.
A loaded tractor-trailer traveling at 65 miles per hour needs approximately 525 feet to stop under ideal conditions — roughly the length of two football fields. An e-bike rider who appears in the truck’s path has seconds, not car-lengths, before the physics become irreversible. And a truck driver who was fatigued, distracted, or speeding had even less.
This is why the reconstruction matters. The skid marks, the debris field, the point of impact, the final resting positions of the truck and the e-bike, the damage to the truck’s front end or undercarriage — each of these is a physical fact that tells the true story of what happened, regardless of what the driver later says.
Who Is Responsible: The Corporate Structure Behind the Truck
The name on the truck’s door is almost never the whole story. Commercial trucking in the Permian Basin operates through layered corporate structures designed to separate the company that profits from the truck from the company that is liable when the truck kills someone.
Here is what we look for:
The operating carrier. This is the entity that holds the federal operating authority — the USDOT number and the MC number registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. This is the company legally responsible for the driver’s hours, the truck’s maintenance, and the driver’s qualifications. It is the first defendant. But it may be a thinly capitalized LLC.
The leasing company. Under federal regulation 49 CFR § 376.12, when a trucking company leases on a driver and his rig, the authorized carrier takes “exclusive possession, control, and use of the equipment” and assumes “complete responsibility for the operation of the equipment for the duration of the lease.” This means the carrier whose name is displayed on the truck cannot simply wave the driver off as “just a contractor.” The law put the carrier in control and made it responsible.
The parent company. The operating carrier may be a subsidiary of a larger holding company. The real money — the balance sheet, the insurance tower, the decision-makers who set the safety policies — may sit one or two entities up the chain. Identifying the parent is how a case with a thin operating LLC becomes a case with real recovery.
The shipper or broker. In the Permian Basin, the cargo is often oilfield-related — produced water, frac sand, crude oil, equipment. The company that hired the truck to move that cargo may bear separate responsibility if it knowingly hired an unsafe carrier to save money.
The maintenance provider. If the truck’s brakes, tires, or steering were defective — and a prior driver had already written up the defect in a daily inspection report — the company that was supposed to fix it and certified the repair is a separate defendant.
We pull the FMCSA SAFER database to identify the operating carrier’s USDOT number, its crash and inspection history, its out-of-service rates, and its insurance filings on the day of the crash. We pull the Secretary of State filings to map the corporate structure. And we name every entity whose choices contributed to putting that truck on the road in Midland on the day it killed your loved one.
In the Permian Basin specifically, the oil-field trucking industry operates under a special federal hours-of-service exception that allows oilfield drivers to run longer than ordinary truckers legally can. The trucks that move produced water, frac sand, and crude oil across the Permian Basin are some of the heaviest, most dangerous vehicles on any road — and the pressure to keep them moving comes from drilling schedules that do not pause for safety. If the truck that killed your loved one was an oil-field truck, that industry context is part of the case.
The Evidence Clock: What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Dies
This is the section that decides whether your case is strong or impossible. The evidence in a commercial-trucking wrongful-death case is perishable on a clock that federal law itself sets — and the trucking company controls most of it.
The Hours-of-Service Logs — 6 Months
Federal regulation 49 CFR § 395.8(k)(1) states:
“A motor carrier shall retain records of duty status and supporting documents required under this part for each of its drivers for a period of not less than 6 months from the date of receipt.”
That is the clock. The driver’s electronic logging device data — the minute-by-minute record of how long he had been driving, whether he was over his 11-hour limit, whether he had taken his required 30-minute break, whether he had been on duty beyond 14 hours — is only required to survive for six months. After that, the company is legally permitted to erase it.
If your family waits to call a lawyer, the single most important proof of a fatigued driver can be gone — legally shredded — before anyone ever asks for it. That is why the preservation letter goes out the day you call, not the month you feel ready.
The Electronic Logging Device and Telematics — Days to Weeks
The ELD data on the truck itself — the raw speed, RPM, hard-brake events, GPS position — can be overwritten on the device far faster than the six-month carrier-retention floor. Some systems overwrite hard-brake event data on the next triggering event. If the truck is driven again after the crash, the data from the day your loved one was killed can be gone within hours.
The Daily Vehicle Inspection Report — 3 Months
Under 49 CFR § 396.11, drivers are required to write up bad brakes, bald tires, broken lights, and steering defects every single day — and the company must certify it fixed them. These reports only have to be kept for three months. If the brakes on the truck that killed your loved one had been written up two weeks earlier, that document is on the shortest retention clock in the entire FMCSA regime.
The Post-Crash Drug and Alcohol Test — 8 Hours / 32 Hours
After a fatal crash, federal regulation 49 CFR § 382.303 requires the company to test the driver for alcohol and controlled substances. For alcohol, the testing window closes at 8 hours — after that, the company must stop trying and document why. For drugs, the window closes at 32 hours. If the test was never done, the company must put in writing why not. A missing test or a missing excuse is its own evidence.
The Truck Itself — Days
The truck is evidence. Its brakes, its steering, its tires, its front-end damage, its event recorder — all of it tells the story of what happened. But if the truck is released to the carrier and repaired, or sold for salvage, or scrapped, the physical proof is destroyed. The preservation letter must demand that the truck be held unrepaired until a forensic inspection can be performed.
The Scene Evidence — Days
The DPS crash report (the CR-3) will be completed within days. Skid marks fade. Debris is swept. Traffic-camera footage from nearby intersections or businesses overwrites on a loop — often 30 days or less. Dash-camera footage from the truck itself, from other vehicles, or from the e-bike (if it had a camera) can disappear within the same window.
The DPS report contains the investigating officer’s measurements, diagram, and witness information. The officer’s conclusions about fault may not be admissible at trial, but the factual data — the measurements, the diagram, the identities — is the foundation a reconstruction engineer builds on.
The Counter-Move: The Preservation Letter
The only thing that stops these clocks is a written preservation demand — a litigation-hold letter sent to the carrier, the driver, the truck’s data vendor, and any third party holding evidence. The letter orders them to freeze the logs, the ELD data, the truck itself, the dashcam video, the maintenance records, the driver-qualification file, and the post-crash test results. Once that letter is on file, any evidence the company lets die becomes a spoliation issue — and the jury can be told that the destroyed evidence would have helped your case.
This letter goes out the day you call. Not the week. Not the month. The day.
The Medicine: What an 80,000-Pound Truck Does to a Human Body
We handle this section with the restraint this moment demands. What follows is the medical reality of why an e-bike rider hit by a commercial truck is almost always a fatal-injury case — and why the medical evidence, if any exists, is part of the case value.
Mechanism of Injury
When an unprotected human body is struck by a vehicle weighing 40 to 80,000 pounds, the energy transfer is catastrophic regardless of the truck’s speed. The body is subjected to blunt-force trauma, crush forces, and shear forces that no biological structure can withstand:
- Blunt aortic injury. The sudden deceleration can tear the aorta — the body’s largest artery — causing fatal internal bleeding within minutes.
- Traumatic brain injury. Even with a helmet, the rotational and linear acceleration forces can cause diffuse axonal injury — the tearing of the brain’s white-matter tracts — or catastrophic skull fracture and intracranial hemorrhage.
- Spinal cord injury. The forces can fracture or dislocate the cervical spine, severing the spinal cord and causing paralysis or death from respiratory failure if the injury is at C1-C4.
- Crush injury and degloving. If the body is run over by the truck’s wheels — which can weigh thousands of pounds each — the injuries include crush syndrome, degloving (the skin and soft tissue stripped from the underlying bone), and traumatic amputation.
- Internal organ rupture. The liver, spleen, and kidneys are particularly vulnerable to blunt impact. Rupture causes massive internal hemorrhage that can kill within minutes.
The Forensic Timeline
In most truck-versus-bicycle fatal crashes, death occurs at the scene or within minutes. If there was a survival period — even a short one — the medical records from Midland Memorial Hospital or any air-medical transport become evidence of conscious pain and suffering. In Texas, the survival action allows the estate to recover for the decedent’s pain, suffering, and mental anguish between the injury and death. Even a few minutes of awareness between impact and death can carry significant damages value.
The Autopsy
If an autopsy was performed by the medical examiner, the autopsy report is a public record that documents the mechanism and cause of death. The findings — the specific injuries, the toxicology, the time of death — are evidence. If no autopsy was performed, the family should request one. The physical evidence of what the truck did to the body is part of the proof.
The Trauma-Flight Reality
Midland Memorial Hospital is the local receiving facility, but it is not a Level I trauma center. The nearest Level I trauma centers serving the Midland-Odessa region are hours away — potentially in Lubbock or El Paso. If your loved one was airlifted, those flight records, the EMS run sheets, and the trauma-center records are all part of the medical timeline. If she was pronounced at the scene, the justice of the peace or medical investigator records are the official record.
The Money: Insurance Coverage and What This Case Is Worth
The Federal Coverage Floor
Federal regulation 49 CFR § 387.9 sets the minimum financial-responsibility requirement for interstate motor carriers:
- $750,000 for a for-hire carrier of non-hazardous property in interstate commerce.
- $1,000,000 for carriers hauling oil or certain hazardous materials.
- $5,000,000 for carriers hauling the most dangerous hazardous materials in bulk.
These are floors, not ceilings. A self-insured national fleet may carry far more — layered in a tower of primary, excess, and umbrella policies. The same crash can have $750,000 of coverage or $50,000,000 of coverage depending on which company operated the truck and what policies were in force. Identifying the coverage tower is half the value of the case.
For a Permian Basin oil-field truck, the coverage may be at the $1,000,000 level or higher, depending on what was being hauled. But oil-field carriers also frequently operate under complex leasing and brokerage arrangements that can stack multiple policies.
The Damages Categories
In a Texas wrongful-death case, the family can recover:
Economic damages:
– Medical expenses incurred before death (if any)
– Funeral and burial costs
– Lost earning capacity — the wages and benefits the decedent would have earned over her expected worklife, reduced to present value
– Loss of inheritance
– Lost household services — the value of the work the decedent did at home that now must be replaced
Non-economic damages:
– Mental anguish and emotional distress of the surviving family members
– Loss of companionship, society, and counsel
– The pain and suffering the decedent experienced between injury and death (through the survival action)
Exemplary (punitive) damages:
– Available in Texas when the defendant acted with gross negligence — a conscious indifference to the safety of others. A trucking company that knowingly let a fatigued driver run past his hours, or that ignored a known brake defect, may face punitive damages.
Texas does not cap non-economic damages in trucking wrongful-death cases. The cap that exists in Texas (on medical-malpractice cases) does not apply here. This is a significant advantage — the human loss is not artificially limited.
How the Number Is Built
A real case value is not a guess. It is built from:
- A life-care plan if there was a survival period (the cost of the medical care between injury and death).
- A forensic economist’s projection of lost earning capacity — using worklife-expectancy tables, wage data, fringe-benefit multipliers (approximately 30% of wages per federal data), and a present-value discount rate.
- A household-services valuation — the replacement cost of the cooking, childcare, driving, and household management the decedent performed, calculated from federal time-use data and local market wages.
- A personal-consumption deduction — in a wrongful-death case, the decedent’s own spending on themselves is subtracted from gross lost earnings because the family’s claim is for the support they would have received, not the gross paycheck.
- The comparative-fault reduction — whatever percentage the jury assigns to the e-bike rider.
The Honest Range
We will not quote you a number on this page because every case depends on its facts — the decedent’s age, occupation, health, family structure, and the specific evidence of the trucking company’s fault. What we can tell you is that the firm has recovered $2.5 million-plus in a truck-crash case, $5 million-plus in a brain-injury settlement, and $50 million-plus in aggregate recoveries. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can also tell you is that a wrongful-death case involving a commercial truck and a vulnerable road user — in a county where the jury pool understands trucking and the oil industry — is among the most serious cases on the civil docket.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook: What They Are Already Doing
Lupe Peña sat in the rooms where these decisions were made. Here is what the carrier is doing right now — and the counter to each move.
Play 1: The “Just Checking In” Call
Within days of the crash, someone friendly will call the family. They will say they are “just checking on you” or “just need to close our file.” They will ask you to “just tell us what happened” — on a recording. Every word you say is being measured for a sentence they can quote later: “She came out of nowhere” or “I think the truck tried to stop” or “I’m feeling okay.” That last one, said in grief and shock, becomes “the family was not seriously affected” in a damages brief six months later.
The counter: Do not give a recorded statement. Not to the carrier, not to the adjuster, not to the “investigator” who shows up at the house. You are not required to. Tell them to contact your lawyer. If you do not have a lawyer yet, tell them you will not speak with them until you do. Then call one.
Play 2: The Quick Check with a Release
A check may arrive fast — within weeks — with a release printed on the back or enclosed. The amount will look meaningful to a family that is looking at funeral bills. It is a fraction of the case’s value. Signing the release or endorsing the check settles the claim. Forever.
The counter: Do not sign anything. Do not cash any check from the trucking company or its insurer. Bring every document to a lawyer before you touch it. A release signed in the weeks after a death, while the family is in shock, is exactly what the adjuster is counting on.
Play 3: The “She Was Riding in the Road” Fault Argument
The adjuster will look for every fact that puts percentage points on the e-bike rider. Was she in the traffic lane instead of a bike lane? Was she riding at dusk without a light? Was she wearing a helmet? Was she riding an e-bike that can travel faster than a regular bicycle? Each of these is a lever the adjuster will pull to reduce the recovery under Texas’s comparative-fault rule.
The counter: Every percentage point is money. A trained lawyer’s job is to hold the trucking company to its full share — and to prove that a professional driver in an 80,000-pound truck owed a heightened duty to watch for vulnerable road users. The truck’s blind spots, the driver’s failure to check, the speed, the fatigue — those are the facts that shift the percentage back where it belongs.
Play 4: The Social Media and Surveillance Watch
The adjuster is monitoring the family’s social media. A photo of a family dinner, a vacation check-in, a smile at a memorial — any of these can be taken out of context and used to argue the family’s emotional-distress claim is exaggerated. In serious cases, the carrier may conduct surveillance.
The counter: Set all social media to private. Do not post about the crash, the truck, the driver, the investigation, or the family’s grief. Do not discuss the case with anyone except your lawyer. Assume everything you say or post is being read by the insurance company.
Play 5: The Delay Aim at the Statute
The adjuster may be friendly, responsive, and slow. Months pass. “We’re still investigating.” “We need more documentation.” The goal is to run the clock toward the two-year statute of limitations — because once it passes, the case is dead. The adjuster knows this. The family usually does not.
The counter: The deadline is real. The Texas two-year statute of limitations for wrongful death is a hard bar. The counter is to have a lawyer file the case — or at minimum have the preservation and investigation underway — long before the deadline approaches. The earlier the case is filed, the more evidence survives.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk — from the day you call to the day the case resolves.
Week One. The preservation letter goes out — to the carrier, the driver, the truck’s data vendor, and any third party holding evidence. The letter freezes the logs, the ELD data, the truck itself, the dashcam video, the maintenance records, the driver-qualification file, and the post-crash test results. We pull the FMCSA SAFER snapshot to identify the operating carrier, its crash history, and its insurance filings. We pull the DPS crash report. We identify and contact every witness.
Weeks Two Through Four. The truck is inspected by a forensic reconstruction expert — before the carrier can repair it or scrap it. The ELD and engine-control-module data are downloaded by a qualified technician using the right forensic tools. The scene is mapped — skid marks, debris field, sight lines, traffic-signal timing. Any available video — dashcam, traffic camera, business surveillance — is pulled before it overwrites. The medical records, the autopsy report, and the EMS run sheets are obtained.
Months One Through Three. The driver-qualification file is demanded — his employment application, his driving record, his road-test certificate, his medical examiner’s certificate, his annual reviews. The written lease between the carrier and the driver’s entity is demanded. The maintenance records — the DVIRs, the repair orders, the inspection histories — are demanded. We begin building the corporate-structure map: who owns the operating carrier, who owns the truck, who insured it, who hired it.
Months Three Through Six. Experts are retained — a reconstruction engineer, a forensic economist, a life-care planner if there was a survival period. Depositions are taken — the driver, the safety director, the dispatcher, the maintenance manager. Under oath, the safety director explains the company’s choices: the hiring, the training, the scheduling, the maintenance. The hours-of-service logs are compared to the supporting documents — fuel receipts, toll records, GPS pings — and any gaps between the logbook and the receipts are the proof of a fatigued driver or a falsified log.
Months Six Through Twelve. The damages model is built — the economist projects lost earning capacity, the household-services valuation is completed, the medical and funeral costs are documented. The number at the end is built from all of it. The demand is sent. The carrier responds — usually with a fraction. The negotiation begins. If the carrier will not meet the number, the case is tried.
This is the work. It is not fast. But the evidence that makes it possible dies on a clock measured in days and months, not years — which is why the day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
Do These Things
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Get the DPS crash report number. The investigating officer should provide you with a crash report number or a way to obtain the report. This report contains the officer’s measurements, diagram, and witness information. It is the foundation of the investigation.
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Preserve everything you have. Your loved one’s phone, her e-bike (if it was not destroyed), any camera or video device she was carrying, her helmet, her clothing — all of it is evidence. Store it in a safe place and do not clean or alter anything.
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Document the scene if you can. If a family member can safely photograph the crash site — the skid marks, the debris, the traffic signs, the road conditions — do so. Do not interfere with the investigation. But the scene changes fast.
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Identify witnesses. If anyone saw the crash and you have their name or contact information, write it down. Witnesses disperse. Memory fades. The first person your loved one’s family talks to may be the last person who can confirm what happened.
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Request an autopsy if one has not been ordered. The medical evidence of what the truck did to her body is part of the proof. If the justice of the peace or medical examiner has not ordered an autopsy, the family can request one.
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Call a lawyer. Not next month. Not after the funeral. Now — because the evidence clock is running and the preservation letter is the only thing that stops it.
Do Not Do These Things
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Do not give a recorded statement to the insurance company. Not to the trucking company’s adjuster, not to the carrier’s lawyer, not to the “investigator” who shows up at your door.
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Do not sign anything. No release, no authorization, no “permission to obtain records.” Bring every document to a lawyer before you touch it.
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Do not post on social media. About the crash, about the truck, about the driver, about the family’s grief, about anything related to the case. Set your accounts to private. Assume everything is being read.
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Do not discuss the case with anyone except your lawyer. Not with friends, not with coworkers, not with the trucking company’s representatives. The insurance company will use anything you say.
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Do not accept any check from the trucking company or its insurer. Even a small check. Even a “good faith” payment. Endorsing it can settle the claim.
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Do not let the truck be repaired, moved, or scrapped. If you have any ability to influence this — through your lawyer — the truck must be held unrepaired until a forensic inspection is performed. The physical evidence on the truck is irreplaceable.
The Law That Protects Your Family
The Texas Wrongful Death Act
Texas law gives certain family members the right to bring a wrongful-death claim when a person’s death is caused by the “wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or negligence” of another. The claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children, and parents. Each has an independent claim. If none of them files within three months of the death, the executor or administrator of the estate may file on behalf of all of them.
The Statute of Limitations
The deadline to file a wrongful-death lawsuit in Texas is two years from the date of death. This is a hard deadline — if the lawsuit is not filed within two years, the claim is barred. There are very limited exceptions, and none of them should be relied upon without consulting a lawyer.
But the real deadline is not two years. The real deadline is six months — the federal retention clock on the truck driver’s hours-of-service logs. The real deadline is days — the overwrite cycle on dashcam video and traffic-camera footage. The real deadline is hours — the window in which the truck’s ELD data can be corrupted or overwritten by continued operation. The two-year statute is the outer limit. The evidence clock is the real urgency.
Modified Comparative Fault
Texas follows a modified comparative-fault rule with a 51% bar. If the victim was 50% or less at fault, the family’s recovery is reduced by that percentage. If the victim was 51% or more at fault, the family recovers nothing. This is the rule the insurance adjuster is working from when they look for facts to pin on the e-bike rider — every percentage point is money.
The counter is the evidence. A professional truck driver operating an 80,000-pound commercial vehicle owes a heightened duty to watch for vulnerable road users. The truck’s blind spots, the driver’s failure to check them, the speed, the fatigue, the failure to yield — those are the facts that hold the trucking company to its full share.
The Survival Action
Separate from the wrongful-death claim, the estate can bring a survival action for the decedent’s pain and suffering between the injury and death. Even a brief period of awareness — seconds or minutes — can carry damages value. The survival action also recovers any medical expenses incurred before death.
No Caps on Non-Economic Damages
Unlike medical-malpractice cases in Texas — where non-economic damages are capped — there is no cap on non-economic damages in a trucking wrongful-death case. The mental anguish, loss of companionship, and loss of society are valued at what the jury finds them to be worth. This is a significant advantage in a case involving the death of a family member.
Punitive Damages for Gross Negligence
Texas allows exemplary (punitive) damages when the defendant acted with gross negligence — meaning the defendant was consciously indifferent to the safety of others. A trucking company that knowingly let a fatigued driver run past his federal hours, or that ignored a known brake defect, or that hired a driver with a record it was required to check and did not — that is gross negligence. Punitive damages are not covered by most insurance policies, which means they come from the company’s own assets — and that is leverage.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can the trucking company be sued if the driver was an independent contractor?
Yes — and this is one of the most important things to understand. Under federal regulation 49 CFR § 376.12, when a trucking company leases on a driver and his rig, the authorized carrier takes “exclusive possession, control, and use of the equipment” and assumes “complete responsibility for the operation of the equipment for the duration of the lease.” The company whose name is on the truck cannot escape by calling the driver a contractor. The law put the carrier in control and made it responsible. The company may also be directly liable for its own choices — negligent hiring, negligent training, negligent supervision — independent of the driver’s status.
How long do we have to file a lawsuit?
Two years from the date of death under Texas law. But the evidence disappears faster than the deadline. The truck’s hours-of-service logs can be legally destroyed after six months. Dashcam and traffic-camera footage can overwrite in days or weeks. The preservation letter that freezes the evidence has to go out immediately — not near the deadline.
What if the e-bike rider was partly at fault?
Texas follows a modified comparative-fault rule. If the victim was 50% or less at fault, the family’s recovery is reduced by that percentage but not eliminated. If the victim was 51% or more at fault, the family recovers nothing. The insurance adjuster will look for every fact that puts percentage points on the rider. The counter is the evidence — the truck’s data, the scene reconstruction, the driver’s record — and a lawyer who knows how to hold the trucking company to its full share.
How much is a wrongful-death case against a trucking company worth?
That depends on the decedent’s age, earning capacity, health, family relationships, and the degree of the trucking company’s fault. Texas does not cap non-economic damages in trucking wrongful-death cases. The firm has recovered $2.5 million-plus in a truck-crash case and $50 million-plus in aggregate recoveries. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. An honest evaluation requires reviewing the specific facts — and we provide that evaluation free of charge.
Does the trucking company’s insurance cover this?
Federal law requires interstate carriers to carry at least $750,000 in coverage — and more if they haul hazardous materials. But many carriers carry far more in layered excess and umbrella policies. The same crash can have $750,000 of coverage or $50,000,000 of coverage depending on which company operated the truck and what policies were in force. Identifying the coverage tower is part of the work.
What if the truck was an oil-field truck?
The Permian Basin runs on oil-field trucking — water haulers, sand transporters, crude tankers, equipment movers. These trucks operate under a special federal hours-of-service exception that allows oilfield drivers to run longer than ordinary truckers. The pressure to keep them moving comes from drilling schedules that do not pause for safety. If the truck that killed your loved one was an oil-field truck, the industry context — the deadlines, the scheduling pressure, the roads built for a fraction of this traffic — is part of the case. We have specific experience with Permian Basin oil-field trucking cases.
Can we still file if the crash report says the e-bike rider was at fault?
The DPS crash report reflects the investigating officer’s assessment at the scene — but it is not the final word. The officer’s conclusions about fault may not even be admissible at trial. What matters is the physical evidence — the skid marks, the debris field, the truck’s data, the reconstruction — and the legal duty the truck driver owed to a vulnerable road user. A crash report that is unfavorable is not the end of the case. It is the starting point for the investigation.
What does it cost to hire a lawyer?
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% of the recovery before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. You pay nothing out of pocket. The consultation is free. And if we are not the right fit for your family, we will tell you.
Should we talk to the insurance adjuster?
No. The adjuster works for the trucking company, not for you. Everything you say can and will be used to reduce the value of your claim. The adjuster may sound friendly and concerned — that is their job. Your job is to tell them to contact your lawyer and then to call one.
How soon should we call a lawyer?
Today. The evidence clock is running. The truck’s data can be overwritten in days. The logs can be destroyed in six months. The preservation letter that freezes the evidence is the single most time-sensitive step in the entire case — and it goes out the day you call.
Why Attorney911
Ralph Manginello
Ralph P. Manginello is the Managing Partner of The Manginello Law Firm. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — 27+ years of trial practice, including admission to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association — Million Dollar Member. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the evidence tells — and how to tell it to a jury. He is the lead counsel in the active $10 million-plus Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston hazing lawsuit. He handles the commercial-trucking, catastrophic-injury, and wrongful-death cases that demand a trial lawyer who has been in courtrooms for nearly three decades.
Lupe Peña
Lupe Peña is an Associate Attorney, licensed in Texas since 2012. He is a former insurance-defense attorney who practiced at a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He knows how the carrier sets a low reserve in the first 48 hours before the real injuries are diagnosed. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered. He knows how the claim is fed into valuation software that discounts pain it cannot see. He knows which doctors the insurer picks for “independent” medical exams. And he now uses all of that knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — a third-generation Texan with family roots in the King Ranch, born and raised in Sugar Land.
The Firm
Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — has been in business since July 18, 2001. We have recovered $50 million-plus in aggregate. We have 4.9 stars and 251+ Google reviews. We have a 24/7 live staff — not an answering service. We send same-day spoliation letters. We operate on a 48-hour evidence-preservation protocol. We do not get paid unless we win. The consultation is free.
We handle 18-wheeler accident cases and wrongful-death claims across Texas — including the Permian Basin. We have specific experience with Texas oilfield commercial truck accidents — the water haulers, sand transporters, and crude-oil tankers that make the Midland roads deadly. And we handle vulnerable road user cases — the cyclists, e-bike riders, and pedestrians who are most at risk when an 80,000-pound truck comes through.
You can learn more about Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña on their attorney pages. And if you want to understand more about how we approach commercial truck crashes, our Houston truck accident practice page walks through the full methodology.
The Call
The trucking company’s adjuster has already opened a file. The driver may have already given a statement. The truck may already be in a repair facility — or on its way back to the road. The logs that show how long the driver had been behind the wheel are on a six-month clock. The video that shows what happened is overwriting itself.
You cannot undo what happened. But you can control what happens to the evidence — and what happens to the company that put that truck on the road.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. We have a 24/7 live staff — not an answering service. And the preservation letter goes out the day you call.
Hablamos Español.
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.