Midland County Semi-Truck Crash: One Dead, One Injured — Your Rights After a Permian Basin Truck Accident
If you are reading this, someone you love is gone and someone you love is hurt, and both of those things happened on a West Texas road because a commercial truck was there. We are sorry. We are also going to tell you the truth about what happens next, because the truth is what protects you now, and the window for acting on it is shorter than anyone has told you.
A semi-truck crash in Midland County took one life and left another person injured on May 31, 2025. The specific roadway, the collision dynamics, and the identity of the commercial carrier have not yet been publicly disclosed. What we know — and what matters to your family right now — is that this crash happened in the heart of the Permian Basin, on roads built for a fraction of the truck traffic they now carry, and that the evidence proving what went wrong is already on a clock. A short one.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We handle commercial truck crash and wrongful death cases in Texas. This page is not a sales pitch. It is the full education we would give you if you were sitting across from us right now — the governing law, the evidence deadlines, the insurance industry’s playbook, and the honest evaluation of what a case like this is worth — so that you can make decisions with the same information the other side already has.
What Happened in Midland County
A semi-truck collided with another vehicle in Midland County, Texas, on May 31, 2025. One person was killed. One person was injured. The crash produced two separate legal claims: a wrongful death claim for the family of the person who died, and a personal injury claim for the person who survived.
The identity of the commercial carrier involved has not been disclosed in the available reporting. That is not a gap in the story — it is the first investigative step. In Midland County, the trucking landscape runs from major interstate freight carriers with national safety infrastructure to small independent oilfield operators running a handful of trucks on thin insurance policies. Which carrier was behind this truck — and what its federal safety record looks like — will fundamentally determine the value and collectibility of both claims. Carrier identification is day-one work.
What we do know is the setting. Midland County sits in the Permian Basin, the highest-producing oilfield in the United States. The energy industry has flooded this region with commercial truck traffic — water haulers, frac sand transports, crude carriers, and interstate freight vehicles — on corridors like Interstate 20, US Highway 385, State Highway 158, and State Highway 349. The roads were not engineered for the volume and weight they now carry, and the Midland-Odessa area has been the subject of multiple federal and state safety enforcement initiatives targeting commercial vehicle compliance in response to elevated accident rates. A jury in Midland County knows what oilfield truck traffic looks like. They drive beside it every day.
The Permian Basin Truck Traffic That Caused This
Midland County does not have an ordinary truck-traffic problem. It has an oilfield truck-traffic problem, and the difference matters to your case.
The Permian Basin produces more oil than any field in the country. Every barrel of that production rides a truck at some point — produced water to disposal wells, frac sand to well pads, crude to gathering stations, chemicals to fracking sites, and equipment to locations that change weekly. The traffic volume scales with the rig count, and the rig count in the Permian Basin has been extraordinary. The result is a region where the highways, farm-to-market roads, and state highways carry a density and weight of commercial trucking they were never designed to handle.
Interstate 20 runs east-west through Midland County and carries the interstate freight that moves coast to coast alongside the regional oilfield traffic. US Highway 385 cuts north-south through the heart of the basin, moving trucks between the oilfields and the processing and disposal infrastructure. State Highway 158 runs east toward the Goldsmith-Andrews area, and State Highway 349 runs north toward the Lubbock country. Every one of these corridors is a truck corridor, and every one of them is where oilfield truck crashes happen.
The carriers running these roads fall into three broad categories, and which one was behind your crash changes everything about the case:
Major interstate freight carriers — large, well-capitalized national companies with robust safety management systems, federal compliance infrastructure, and insurance towers that can run into the tens of millions. When one of these carriers is at fault, collectibility is rarely the issue. Their CSA scores, inspection histories, and safety ratings are public records, and a carrier with a documented pattern of hours-of-service violations or maintenance failures brings that pattern into your case as evidence of a safety culture that was already broken.
Regional oilfield service companies — mid-size operators running water haulers, frac sand trucks, and crude carriers. These companies operate under intense time pressure — oilfield logistics run on delivery windows that penalize late arrivals, and that pressure flows directly to the drivers. The trucks are heavier, the routes are less familiar, the roads are narrower, and the hours are longer. Insurance coverage varies widely. Some carry robust commercial auto towers; others carry only what the law requires and nothing more.
Small independent operators — the thin-coverage end of the spectrum. A two-truck operation hauling water for a local producer may carry the federal minimum insurance and have no safety management system at all. These operators are the hardest to identify, the fastest to dissolve after a serious crash, and the ones where carrier identification and insurance verification are most urgent. A wrongful death case against an underinsured independent operator is a different fight — one that may require reaching up the chain to the broker, the shipper, or the energy company that hired the hauler.
We handle Permian Basin oilfield truck accident cases because we understand the difference between a linehaul freight carrier and a water hauler on a Farm-to-Market road at 2 a.m. — and because that difference is the difference between a case that settles for its full value and one that leaves a family undercompensated.
Who Is Responsible: The Carrier Shell Game
When a semi-truck kills someone, the first question is not “what happened.” It is “who was behind the wheel, who owned the truck, and who is responsible for both.” In commercial trucking, those can be three different answers — and the defense’s first move is always to make them sound like the same one.
The driver is the person directly at the wheel. Their negligence — speed, fatigue, following distance, lane discipline, impairment, distraction — is the first theory of liability. The driver’s own conduct, proven through the truck’s electronic data and the scene evidence, is the foundation of every case.
The operating motor carrier is the company that employed or contracted the driver and controlled the truck. Under the legal doctrine of respondeat superior, the carrier is vicariously liable for its driver’s negligence — meaning the carrier stands behind the driver’s share of fault without needing to have done anything wrong itself. But the carrier also faces direct negligence claims that are independent of the driver’s conduct: negligent hiring, negligent training, negligent supervision, negligent retention, and negligent hours-of-service management. If the carrier hired a driver with a disqualifying record, or failed to provide the training federal law requires, or pressured the driver to exceed the legal driving hours, those are the carrier’s own failures — and they open the door to punitive damages.
The equipment owner may be a separate entity from the operating carrier. In the oilfield trucking world, it is common for the tractor or trailer to be independently owned and leased to the carrier. When the crash involves a mechanical failure — bad brakes, a tire blowout, a lighting defect — the entity responsible for maintaining the equipment is a separate defendant with its own insurance and its own liability.
The cargo loader or shipper can be liable if the load shifted or was improperly secured. A frac sand trailer that was loaded unevenly and caused the truck to overturn on a curve is a cargo-securement case under federal regulations, and the company that loaded the trailer is a potential defendant.
The broker or freight arranger is increasingly a target when a broker hired an unsafe carrier to move a load. If a broker arranged the haul and the carrier it selected had a known poor safety record, the broker’s own negligence in selecting that carrier is a separate theory that can reach a deeper pocket than the carrier itself.
Here is something the carrier is counting on you not knowing. Under federal leasing regulations, when a trucking company leases on a driver and equipment, the law makes that company take exclusive possession and control of the truck for the duration of the lease. The carrier cannot simply wave the driver off as “just a contractor” — the law put the carrier in control and made it responsible for the truck on the road. The name on the trailer door is the company the law holds accountable, regardless of what the internal contract says about employment status.
The generalist names the driver and the carrier and stops. The specialist maps the entire chain — driver, carrier, equipment owner, cargo loader, broker, shipper — because each entity carries its own insurance and its own exposure. Missing a defendant is leaving money on the table that the family will never recover.
The Evidence Clock: What Exists and How Fast It Dies
This is the most important section on this page. If you read nothing else, read this.
Every commercial truck crash generates a trail of electronic and physical evidence that proves what happened. That evidence is on a clock — and the clock is shorter than you think. The carrier’s accident-response team mobilizes within hours of the crash. The family is still at the hospital. The evidence is already being lost.
Electronic Logging Device and Hours-of-Service Records
The single most consequential evidence in trucking litigation is the driver’s record of duty status — the electronic log that shows how many hours the driver had been behind the wheel, when they took breaks, and whether they were in compliance with federal hours-of-service limits. Federal law says a trucker can drive at most 11 hours within a 14-hour shift, and only after 10 consecutive hours off-duty. Those logs are the proof of whether the driver was fatigued — and fatigue is a factor in a staggering percentage of oilfield truck crashes.
Federal law only requires the carrier to retain those records for six months from the date of receipt. After six months, the carrier can legally delete them. The driver only has to carry the previous seven days in the cab. The raw ELD data on the device itself can be overwritten on the next driving cycle — sometimes within days.
The preservation letter that freezes those logs goes out the day you call. Not the week. Not the month. The day.
Engine Control Module and Event Data Recorder
The truck’s engine computer captures pre-impact speed, braking application, throttle position, and steering inputs in the seconds before collision. This is the truck’s black box — and it can prove whether the driver was speeding, whether the brakes were applied, and how far before impact the driver reacted.
That data may be lost within 30 days without preservation. The truck can be put back into service, the memory overwritten, the evidence gone. The spoliation letter demanding the ECM data must target the carrier and the telematics provider directly.
Post-Accident Drug and Alcohol Testing
Federal law mandates post-accident drug and alcohol testing for any commercial vehicle crash involving a fatality. The testing must occur as soon as practicable — and the windows are unforgiving:
“If a test required by this section is not administered within eight hours” the employer must cease attempts and document why.
— 49 CFR § 382.303(d)(1)
For controlled substances, the window is 32 hours. If the test was not done in time, the proof of impairment — or the proof that the carrier failed to follow the law — is either established or lost forever in those first hours. The absence of a test that federal law required is itself evidence.
Dashcam and In-Cab Camera Footage
Many commercial trucks now carry forward-facing or in-cab cameras that capture the driver’s behavior, road conditions, and the collision itself. This footage is typically on a rolling overwrite cycle — commonly 30 days, sometimes as short as 7 to 14 days. Once the cycle completes, the recording of the crash is gone.
Vehicle Maintenance and Inspection Records
Drivers are required to file daily vehicle inspection reports covering brakes, steering, tires, lighting, and other safety-critical components. If a prior driver already wrote up those brakes, the carrier had the warning in its own files. Those inspection reports are only required to be retained for three months — the shortest retention clock in the federal trucking regulations.
Driver Qualification File
Before the carrier ever let the driver behind the wheel, federal law required it to build a qualification file — employment application, motor vehicle record, road-test certificate, annual review, medical examiner’s certificate. That file proves whether the carrier did its job in vetting the driver. It must be retained for the duration of employment plus three years — but personnel records can be purged quickly upon driver termination, which is common after a fatal crash.
Scene Evidence
Skid marks, gouge marks, debris fields, and tire marks enable a reconstructionist to determine speed, braking, point of impact, and vehicle trajectories. This evidence degrades within days — weather erases skid marks, traffic wears down gouge marks, and road crews repair the pavement. A qualified reconstructionist must document the scene immediately.
Qualcomm, GPS, and Telematics Data
The truck’s telematics system establishes route, speed history, location timestamps, and hard-braking events in the period before the crash. Retention varies by provider — commonly 30 to 90 days. The preservation letter must target the telemetry provider directly, not just the carrier.
The Preservation Letter
The preservation letter — also called a spoliation or litigation-hold letter — is the single most urgent action in a commercial truck crash case. It goes to the carrier, the driver, the equipment owner, the telematics provider, the ELD vendor, and any other entity that holds relevant electronic data. It orders them, in writing, to preserve every record, every device, every log, and every vehicle component until the evidence can be formally secured.
The generalist sends one letter to the carrier. The specialist sends six — to the carrier, the driver, the ELD vendor, the telematics provider, the dashcam company, and the equipment owner — because the data lives in different places, and the carrier only controls one of them. If a defendant lets required evidence die after receiving a preservation letter, the law answers: a jury may be told to assume the lost record was as bad as the plaintiff says it was.
Texas Law: Your Rights After a Fatal Truck Crash
Texas law gives you powerful tools. It also gives you deadlines. Understanding both is the difference between a family that is compensated and a family that is left with medical bills and a funeral costs and nothing else.
The Two Claims: Wrongful Death and Survival
Texas law treats one death as two separate legal claims.
A wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family — the spouse, children, and parents of the person who died. It compensates the family for what they lost: the decedent’s lost earning capacity and future financial support, the loss of care, maintenance, advice, counsel, and companionship, and the mental anguish of surviving family members. Funeral and burial expenses are recoverable here.
A survival claim belongs to the decedent’s estate. It preserves the claims the deceased person would have had — the pain, suffering, and mental anguish they experienced between the injury and death, plus pre-death medical expenses. The survival claim carries forward what the person went through before they died.
The generalist files the wrongful death claim and stops. The specialist files both — because the survival claim preserves what the deceased endured, and together the two claims capture the full measure of what the family and the estate have lost.
Comparative Negligence: The 51% Bar
Texas applies a modified comparative negligence rule. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault — but you are barred from recovery entirely only if you are found 51% or more at fault. If the deceased was 20% at fault, the family’s recovery is reduced by 20% but not eliminated. If the deceased was 51% at fault, the family recovers nothing.
This is why the adjuster works so hard to pin fault on the victim. Every percentage point of fault assigned to your side is money subtracted from your recovery. The evidence — the black box data, the scene reconstruction, the hours-of-service logs — is what keeps those percentage points where they belong.
No Non-Economic Damage Caps
Texas imposes no caps on non-economic damages in commercial vehicle wrongful death or personal injury cases. This is a critical distinction. In medical malpractice cases, Texas caps non-economic damages. In commercial truck crash cases, it does not. A jury in Midland County can award the full value of mental anguish, loss of companionship, and pain and suffering without a statutory ceiling. This is one of the strongest features of Texas law for families who have lost someone to a commercial truck crash — and the insurance company’s lawyers know it.
The Statute of Limitations: Two Years
Texas’s statute of limitations for both wrongful death and personal injury is generally two years from the date of the incident, under the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Two years sounds like a long time. It is not. The first six months of that window are when the evidence is alive. The second year is when the case must be built, the experts retained, the discovery completed, and the demand framed. Waiting to contact counsel does not extend the deadline — it shrinks the evidence window while the clock runs.
The Stowers Doctrine
Texas has a rule the insurance company hopes you never learn about. Under the Stowers doctrine, when liability and damages are sufficiently clear, and the plaintiff makes a reasonable settlement demand within the policy limits, the insurer must accept that demand or face liability above the policy limits if the case later produces a verdict exceeding those limits.
This is the most powerful leverage tool in Texas trucking litigation. If the carrier’s insurance is $1 million, and the case is clearly worth more than $1 million, and we make a properly framed Stowers demand for the $1 million, the insurer must either pay it or expose its own corporate assets to a verdict that exceeds the policy. The timing and drafting of a Stowers demand is a strategic decision that can multiply the value of a case — and it is one of the reasons an experienced trucking lawyer can recover more than the policy limits on a case a generalist would settle for the policy limits.
Punitive Damages and Gross Negligence
Texas allows punitive damages — called exemplary damages — when the evidence establishes gross negligence. Gross negligence in Texas means conduct involving an extreme degree of risk, with actual awareness of and conscious indifference to that risk. A carrier that forced hours-of-service violations, knowingly operated defective equipment, or tolerated impaired driving is not just negligent — it is grossly negligent, and a jury can punish that conduct with a punitive award on top of the full compensatory damages.
Punitive damages are not automatic. They require proof, and the proof comes from the carrier’s own records — the dispatch logs that show the driver was pressured to run late, the maintenance records that show the brakes were known to be defective, the driver qualification file that shows the carrier hired a driver it should never have put on the road.
The Insurance Ladder: Where the Money Actually Is
A commercial truck crash does not run on the driver’s personal auto insurance. It runs on a layered tower of commercial coverage, and understanding that tower is half the value of the case.
The federal minimum. A for-hire interstate carrier of non-hazardous property is federally required to carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage. A carrier hauling oil or certain hazardous materials must carry at least $1,000,000. A carrier hauling the most dangerous hazmat in bulk — explosives, poison gas — must carry at least $5,000,000. These are the floors, not the ceilings.
The real tower. Major national carriers stack layers of primary, excess, and umbrella coverage above the federal minimum — towers that can run into the tens of millions. The same crash, against a well-insured interstate carrier, can have forty times the coverage of a crash against a thin-coverage independent oilfield operator.
The MCS-90 endorsement. If the carrier was hauling hazardous materials or operating in interstate transport, the policy may carry an MCS-90 endorsement — a federal filing that guarantees payment to the public regardless of certain policy defenses. This is a coverage enhancer that can defeat the insurer’s attempts to deny the claim.
The self-insured retention. Large carriers often self-insure the first layer — meaning the company’s own money sits on the bottom of the tower before any insurance pays. A large self-insured retention means the carrier’s own dollars are at risk on every demand, which changes how aggressively the carrier fights.
The Stowers exposure. Above the tower, the Stowers doctrine creates insurer exposure beyond the policy limits when a reasonable settlement demand is rejected. This is how a case with a $1 million policy can produce a recovery of several million — the insurer’s own refusal to settle, when the law said it should have, opens the door to the carrier’s corporate assets.
The generalist sees a $750,000 policy and thinks that is the case value. The specialist knows that $750,000 is the floor — and that a Permian Basin oilfield operator may carry only that, while a national interstate carrier may stack layers into the tens of millions. Identifying which carrier was behind the truck is identifying the case’s ceiling.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook: What They Do and How to Stop It
Within days of the crash — sometimes within hours — the carrier’s insurance representatives and investigators will be working the scene and the family. They are professional, they are friendly, and they are building a defense against your claim. Here is what they do, and here is what you do about it.
Play 1: The “Just Checking In” Call
Someone friendly will call to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened” — on a recording. The purpose is not to help you. It is to lock you into a statement before you know the full extent of your injuries or the full scope of what the truck’s electronic data will show. A casually spoken “I’m feeling okay” becomes the defense’s Exhibit A against your pain-and-suffering claim.
The counter: Do not give a recorded statement. Not now. Not without counsel. You are not required to. The adjuster’s request sounds reasonable; the recording is built to be quoted against you. Every question has a purpose, and the purpose is not yours.
Play 2: The Fast Settlement Check
A check may arrive fast — with a release attached — before the medical results are in, before the full scope of the injuries is known, before the wrongful death claim is even filed. The amount will seem substantial in the moment and inadequate by the time you understand what was actually lost.
The counter: Do not sign a release. Do not cash a check with a release printed on it. No settlement should be considered until the full medical picture is understood and the liability profile is complete. A release signed in week two is a release that closes the case forever — for a fraction of its value.
Play 3: The Independent Medical Examination
The insurer will ask you to see “their doctor” for an independent medical examination. The doctor is not independent. The doctor is selected by the insurance company, paid by the insurance company, and the report is designed to minimize your injuries — to call a traumatic brain injury a “mild concussion,” to call a spinal injury a “pre-existing condition,” to call your pain “subjective.”
The counter: You have the right to see your own doctors. You have the right to choose your medical care. Let the insurer’s doctor write whatever they write — your treating physicians and your own experts are the ones whose opinions carry the case.
Play 4: Social Media Surveillance
The insurance company will monitor your social media. A photo of you at a family event becomes “the plaintiff is active and social.” A comment about “doing okay” becomes “the plaintiff is not suffering.” Every post is a potential exhibit.
The counter: Set your accounts to private. Do not post about the crash, your injuries, your recovery, or your activities. Do not discuss the case online. The family of someone who was killed does not need to be explaining their grief to an adjuster’s screenshot.
Play 5: The “You Were Partly at Fault” Argument
The adjuster will suggest that the deceased or the injured person was partly responsible — they were speeding, they changed lanes, they should have seen the truck. This is the comparative-fault play, and every percentage point of fault they assign to your side is money subtracted from your recovery under Texas’s 51% bar.
The counter: The truck’s electronic data — the speed, the braking, the hours-of-service — is what proves fault. The scene evidence — the skid marks, the gouge marks, the debris field — is what proves it. The adjuster’s opinion is not evidence. The reconstructionist’s measurements are. This is why the evidence preservation letter goes out the day you call.
If you want to hear Ralph Manginello talk directly about what to say — and what never to say — to an insurance adjuster after a crash, this short video covers it plainly.
The Medicine: What a Semi-Truck Does to a Human Body
A fully loaded tractor-trailer can weigh 80,000 pounds. A passenger vehicle weighs about 4,000. In a collision between them, the physics are not close — and the person in the smaller vehicle absorbs the difference.
The kinetic energy of a moving vehicle increases with the square of its speed. A truck traveling 65 miles per hour carries not twice but four times the destructive energy of the same truck at 32 miles per hour. When that energy is transferred to a passenger vehicle in a collision, the change in velocity — the delta-V — that the passenger vehicle experiences is the single best predictor of occupant injury severity. In a two-vehicle crash, mass decides who gets hurt, and the lighter vehicle undergoes the larger, more violent change in motion.
For the person who was killed, the medical evidence may include the cause of death, the mechanism of injury, and the time between injury and death — facts that feed the survival claim for the decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering. For the person who survived, the injuries can range from orthopedic trauma and spinal damage to traumatic brain injury and internal organ damage.
A traumatic brain injury can come with a perfectly normal CT scan. That is not the exception — it is the standard presentation of a “mild” TBI. The damage in a mild brain injury is microscopic tearing of nerve fibers — diffuse axonal injury — that a standard scan was never designed to see. The family may see it before any scan does: the headaches, the lost words, the short fuse, the person who is not quite the person they were before the crash. Advanced imaging — diffusion tensor imaging and susceptibility-weighted MRI — can detect the damage a CT misses. We work with brain injury cases because we understand the difference between a clean scan and a clean brain — and because that difference is where the defense tries to minimize a permanent, life-altering injury.
For the catastrophically injured survivor, a life-care plan is built by a certified life-care planner who prices out, year by year, every surgery, therapy, medication, wheelchair, and caregiver hour the person will need for the rest of their life. A forensic economist then reduces that cost stream to present value. That is how a real number is built — not from a formula, but from the specific medical reality of one person’s future.
What Your Case Is Worth
We will not promise you a number. Every case is different, and anyone who tells you what your case is worth before reviewing the evidence, the medical records, and the carrier’s insurance profile is not giving you an evaluation — they are giving you a sales pitch.
What we can tell you is the range and the variables.
A fatal commercial truck crash case against a well-insured carrier with clear liability in Texas — given the absence of non-economic damage caps and the availability of full compensation for lost earning capacity, loss of companionship, and mental anguish — typically supports recovery in the range of $1,000,000 to $15,000,000 or more, depending on the specific facts. The surviving victim’s separate personal injury claim adds value dependent on injury severity, medical trajectory, and permanence.
The primary variables that drive value are:
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The carrier’s insurance coverage and financial solvency. A case against a national carrier with a $10 million tower is a different case from one against a two-truck oilfield operator with the $750,000 federal minimum. Carrier identification is the first step in case valuation.
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The deceased’s age, occupation, and earning capacity. A 35-year-old oilfield worker earning $85,000 per year with 30 years of working life ahead represents a lost-earning-capacity figure in the millions. A forensic economist calculates this using worklife expectancy tables built from federal labor data — not a guess.
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The severity and permanence of the surviving victim’s injuries. A traumatic brain injury with permanent cognitive deficits, or a spinal injury with permanent impairment, carries a lifetime cost of care that a life-care planner measures in the millions.
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The comparative-fault picture. If the evidence shows the truck was entirely at fault, the full value of the claim is available. If the defense can assign 20% fault to the passenger vehicle, the recovery shrinks by 20%. The evidence — not the adjuster’s opinion — determines the allocation.
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Whether gross negligence is provable. If discovery reveals that the carrier forced hours-of-service violations, knowingly operated defective equipment, or tolerated impaired driving, punitive damages become available — and punitive damages, combined with the Stowers doctrine, can lever recovery above the policy limits.
A thin-coverage independent oilfield operator can substantially depress recoverable value. A well-insured national carrier with clear liability and a provable gross-negligence theory can produce a recovery at the top of the range and beyond. The honest evaluation requires knowing which carrier was behind the truck and what its records will show.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The firm has recovered $50,000,000+ in aggregate (marketing figure), including $2.5 million+ in truck crash recovery and millions in wrongful death cases. Those are not promises about your case — they are evidence that we have done this work before and we know how to build the number.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If the crash was recent — within the last few days — you are inside the most critical evidence window. Here is what matters and what to do.
Medical care comes first. If the surviving victim has not been fully evaluated — including advanced imaging if there is any suspicion of brain or spinal injury — get that evaluation now. Some injuries do not show up on a first scan. Symptoms can be delayed. The medical record built from day one is the spine of the injury claim.
Do not sign anything from the insurance company. No release. No authorization. No settlement. No recorded statement. The adjuster who calls is not your friend — they are a professional doing a job, and the job is to minimize the carrier’s payout. Every document they ask you to sign is designed to reduce or eliminate your claim.
Do not post on social media. Nothing about the crash, the injuries, the recovery, or your daily activities. The insurance company is watching.
Preserve the vehicle. If the passenger vehicle is in a tow yard, it must not be released, repaired, or scrapped. That vehicle is evidence — its damage profile, its restraint systems, its event data recorder all contribute to the reconstruction. The tow yard is accruing fees, and the carrier’s insurer may try to have the vehicle moved or disposed of. A preservation letter addresses this too.
Identify the carrier. If you know the name of the trucking company, its USDOT number, or any identifying information from the truck, write it down. The carrier’s federal safety record is publicly available through FMCSA’s SAFER database — and we pull that record the moment we have the DOT number.
Contact counsel. The preservation letter — the document that freezes the electronic evidence before it is overwritten or destroyed — goes out the day you call. Not the week after. Not after the funeral. The day. Because the evidence the carrier is counting on you to lose is the evidence that proves your case.
How a Case Is Actually Built
Here is the walk from day one to resolution — told by someone who has run it.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out to the carrier, the driver, the equipment owner, the ELD vendor, the telematics provider, and the dashcam company. Every record, every device, every log is frozen. The truck’s ECM is downloaded before it can be serviced. The passenger vehicle is photographed and its event data recorder is imaged. The scene is documented by a qualified reconstructionist before weather and traffic erase the physical evidence. The carrier’s FMCSA SAFER record, CSA scores, and insurance filings are pulled and dated.
Weeks two through eight. The records come in — the hours-of-service logs, the driver qualification file, the maintenance records, the post-accident drug test results, the dispatch records, the telematics data. The medical records for the surviving victim are collected and organized. For the wrongful death claim, the deceased’s employment records, earning history, and family structure are documented. A personal representative is appointed for the estate — the person Texas law authorizes to bring the family’s case.
Months two through six. Experts are retained. A certified accident reconstructionist analyzes the scene and the vehicle data to determine speed, braking, and collision dynamics. A trucking safety expert reviews the carrier’s compliance with FMCSA standards and identifies the specific violations that caused the crash. If drug or alcohol testing is at issue, a forensic toxicologist is engaged. For the damages, a life-care planner builds the future-cost stream, and a forensic economist reduces it to present value.
Months six through twelve. Discovery — the formal exchange of evidence under the rules of civil procedure. Depositions, where the carrier’s safety director, the driver, and the corporate representatives answer questions under oath. The dispatch records that show whether the driver was pressured to run late. The maintenance records that show whether the brakes were known to be defective. The internal communications that show whether the carrier knew its driver was a risk and put him on the road anyway.
Month twelve to resolution. Once the liability evidence and the medical documentation are sufficiently developed, a Stowers demand is evaluated and deployed. The demand is framed to expose the insurer to liability above the policy limits if it is rejected. Mediation is a common resolution path in Permian Basin commercial trucking litigation — but venue in Midland County offers a jury pool with firsthand familiarity with oilfield trucking dangers, which strengthens both the liability narrative and the damages presentation at trial.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue if a semi-truck killed my family member in Midland County?
Yes. Texas law allows the surviving spouse, children, and parents of a person killed by another’s negligence to bring a wrongful death claim. The estate may also bring a survival claim for the deceased’s pre-death pain and suffering and medical expenses. Both claims are filed in the county where the crash occurred or where the defendant resides. Learn more about your wrongful death rights here.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit?
Texas’s statute of limitations for both wrongful death and personal injury is generally two years from the date of the incident. Two years is the deadline to file — but the evidence that proves your case has a much shorter shelf life. The truck’s electronic data, the dashcam footage, and the scene evidence can be gone in weeks. The deadline to sue and the deadline to save the evidence are two very different clocks.
What if the trucking company says the driver was an independent contractor?
The carrier cannot escape liability by labeling the driver a contractor. Under federal leasing regulations, when a carrier leases on a driver and equipment, the law makes the carrier take exclusive possession and control of the truck. The name on the trailer door is the company the law holds responsible. Beyond that, the carrier faces direct negligence claims — hiring, training, supervision — that do not depend on employment status at all. Ralph Manginello explains the specifics of suing after a semi-truck crash in this short video.
How much is a fatal truck crash case worth?
There is no fixed number. Value depends on the carrier’s insurance coverage, the deceased’s age and earning capacity, the severity of the surviving victim’s injuries, the comparative-fault picture, and whether gross negligence is provable. A well-insured carrier with clear liability and a provable gross-negligence theory can produce a recovery in the millions. A thin-coverage independent operator can substantially depress recoverable value. An honest evaluation requires knowing which carrier was behind the truck and what its records will show.
What if the person who died was partly at fault?
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. If the deceased was less than 51% at fault, the family can still recover — but the recovery is reduced by the deceased’s percentage of fault. If the deceased was 51% or more at fault, the family is barred. This is exactly why the adjuster works so hard to pin fault on the victim, and exactly why the electronic evidence — the truck’s speed, braking, and hours-of-service data — is the proof that keeps the fault allocation honest.
Why do I need a lawyer who specifically handles commercial truck crashes?
A commercial truck crash is not a car crash with a bigger vehicle. It involves a separate federal regulatory regime — the FMCSA’s 49 CFR Parts 390-399 — that governs driver hours, vehicle maintenance, drug testing, cargo securement, and insurance. The evidence is different (ELD data, telematics, driver qualification files, DVIRs). The defendants are layered (driver, carrier, equipment owner, broker, shipper). The insurance towers are stacked. The preservation deadlines are measured in days. A lawyer who does not know these systems will miss the evidence, misidentify the defendants, and undervalue the claim. Our 18-wheeler and commercial truck crash practice handles these specific cases.
What does it cost to hire Attorney911?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We don’t get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And the staff that answers is live, 24 hours a day — not an answering service.
The insurance company already called and offered money. Should I take it?
No. Not without speaking to a lawyer first. The first offer from an insurance company after a fatal truck crash is almost always a fraction of what the case is worth. The adjuster is making that offer before the medical picture is complete, before the liability evidence is preserved, and before the carrier’s full insurance profile is known. Accepting it means signing a release that closes the case forever. The purpose of the early offer is to make the case go away cheaply. The purpose of counsel is to make the case worth what it is actually worth.
Why This Firm
Ralph P. Manginello has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — 27+ years in courtrooms, including the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is admitted to practice in federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he learned to find the story in the documents before he learned to argue it to a jury. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. He built this firm to take on the fights that other firms turn down. Read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered. He knows which doctors the insurer sends claimants to and why. He now sits on your side of the table, using that inside knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Read more about Lupe here.
Together, we have recovered $50,000,000+ in aggregate (marketing figure), including $2.5 million+ in truck crash recovery, $5 million+ in brain injury settlement, and $3.8 million+ in amputation settlement. We are rated 4.9 stars across 251+ Google reviews. We have been in business since July 18, 2001. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but they are evidence that we have done this work, and we know how to do it.
Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish. If your family communicates in Spanish, you will speak directly to your attorney in the language you are most comfortable in — not through an interpreter, not through a translated summary.
Call Now
The evidence is on a clock. The carrier’s team has been working since the day of the crash. The preservation letter — the document that freezes the electronic data before it is legally erased — goes out the day you call.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 — that is 1-888-288-9911. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. The staff that answers is live, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
We don’t get paid unless we win your case.
If you are calling about the Midland County semi-truck crash on May 31, 2025 — or any commercial truck crash in the Permian Basin that has taken a life or changed one — we are ready to talk. The conversation costs nothing. The evidence it protects is worth everything.
Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Legal Emergency Lawyers.™