When a Driver Crosses the Center Line and Kills Someone You Love — Your Rights in Smith County, Texas
You are reading this because someone you love is not coming home. Maybe it was a FedEx truck you saw parked on the shoulder of Highway 64 that afternoon, and you did not yet know what had happened inside it. Maybe you got the call from a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who told you there had been a collision on a rural stretch of road east of Tyler, and that your family member — a working driver, just doing his job — did not survive. Maybe you are reading at two in the morning, with a funeral to plan and a phone that will not stop ringing from people who say they are “sorry for your loss” and then ask you to sign something. We are going to tell you what is true, what to do, and what to refuse — because the system that is about to close in around you is not designed to protect you unless you know what it is doing.
Here is the first thing: your loved one did nothing wrong. A commercial driver was exiting his vehicle on Highway 64 near Chapel Hill on July 8, 2025, at approximately 1:26 in the afternoon. Another driver — who a Smith County grand jury has now indicted for manslaughter — passed in a no-passing zone and drove on the wrong side of the roadway. The collision killed him at the scene. A grand jury of citizens from this county found that the at-fault driver’s conduct was not a mistake. It was a criminal act. And that changes everything about what your family can recover and how we build the case.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years trying cases in Texas courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña sat on the other side of the table for years — inside a national insurance-defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters decide how to value a death and how to pay the family the least amount the law allows. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations without an interpreter. We handle wrongful death claims and commercial-vehicle fatality cases across Texas, and what follows is everything we would tell you if you were sitting across from us right now.
What Happened on Highway 64 — and Why the Criminal Case Is Your Strongest Civil Weapon
On a rural two-lane state highway in East Texas, a FedEx driver was doing what FedEx drivers do hundreds of times a day across this state: stopping to make a delivery, stepping out of his truck, working his route. Highway 64 runs east-west through Smith County, connecting the Tyler metro area to smaller communities like Chapel Hill. The road features rolling terrain, limited shoulders, and marked no-passing zones — stretches where the state has painted solid yellow lines because hills and curves make it impossible to see oncoming traffic. Those lines are not suggestions. They are the state’s engineering judgment that passing there can kill.
The at-fault driver crossed those lines. He drove on the wrong side of the road in a zone where the state had specifically prohibited passing. A FedEx driver who was exiting his commercial vehicle was struck and suffered fatal injuries. He died at the scene.
On July 23, 2026, a Smith County grand jury returned a manslaughter indictment against the at-fault driver. He was arrested and booked into Smith County Jail with bond set at $250,000. This is not a traffic ticket. This is a second-degree felony — the state’s formal finding that the driver’s conduct amounted to more than ordinary carelessness, that it rose to a conscious disregard for human life.
Here is what that means for your family: the criminal case and the civil wrongful death case are two separate proceedings. The criminal case is the State of Texas punishing the at-fault driver. The civil wrongful death case is your family’s case — your separate right to hold the at-fault driver and his insurance company financially accountable for the life they took. The criminal prosecution does not replace your civil claim. It strengthens it. When a grand jury has already found that the driver’s conduct was criminally reckless, the insurance company’s ability to argue “it was just an accident” collapses. The factual findings that support the manslaughter indictment — wrong-way driving in a no-passing zone — are the same facts that establish civil negligence and, critically, gross negligence.
Who Can File a Wrongful Death Claim in Texas — and What Can the Family Recover
Texas wrongful death claims are governed by the Texas Wrongful Death Act, codified in the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. The official Texas statutes site confirms the Civil Practice and Remedies Code exists as the state’s codified body of civil law. Under the wrongful death framework, the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the decedent may bring the claim.
What the family can recover falls into categories that matter enormously — and that an insurance adjuster will try to compress into a single number that is a fraction of what the law allows:
Economic damages — the financial losses the family has suffered and will suffer. For a working-age commercial driver, this includes the loss of future earning capacity: the income your loved one would have earned over the remainder of his working life, calculated by a forensic economist and reduced to present value. It includes funeral and burial expenses. It includes any medical costs incurred between the impact and death, even if that interval was short.
Non-economic damages — the human losses. Mental anguish. Loss of companionship. Loss of care, maintenance, support, and counsel. These are the damages that pay for what was actually taken from your family — not a paycheck, but a person. The spouse who is gone from the kitchen table. The parent who will not be at the graduation. The partner whose absence changes every day that follows. Texas law recognizes these as real, compensable losses, and in a standard motor-vehicle wrongful death case against a non-medical, non-governmental defendant, Texas does not impose a statutory cap on these damages. The caps that exist in Texas law apply to medical liability cases and government tort claims — not to a private motor-vehicle wrongful death like this one.
Exemplary damages — punitive damages. Texas permits recovery of exemplary damages when the plaintiff proves gross negligence by clear and convincing evidence. The doctrine is that the defendant’s conduct showed a conscious disregard for the safety of others — exactly what a grand jury found when it indicted the at-fault driver for manslaughter. The criminal charge is powerful corroborative evidence, though the civil and criminal standards differ. The civil standard is its own threshold, but when a grand jury has already concluded that the conduct was criminally reckless, the civil gross-negligence case is built on a foundation the insurance company cannot easily dismantle.
The Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC) is a state agency that regulates the delivery of workers’ compensation benefits to injured employees and to eligible family members of employees killed on the job.
That is from the Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation — and it matters here in a way most families never learn.
The FedEx Employment Fork — Workers’ Compensation Death Benefits AND the Third-Party Claim
This is the move most families miss, and the at-fault driver’s insurance company is counting on you missing it. When a commercial driver is killed on the job, two separate lanes of recovery open — and they are independent of each other.
Lane one: the third-party wrongful death claim against the at-fault driver. This is the civil case against Darren Coleman and his automobile liability insurer. It seeks the full measure of wrongful death damages — economic, non-economic, and exemplary. It is built on the manslaughter indictment, the wrong-way driving, and the no-passing zone violation. This claim is strong. The liability is near-certain given the criminal findings. But its value is limited by the at-fault driver’s assets and insurance policy limits, which are unknown and may be modest. A single individual’s auto policy may carry only the Texas minimum — and one night in a hospital can exceed that amount, let alone a life.
Lane two: workers’ compensation death benefits through FedEx. FedEx operates through multiple service divisions with fundamentally different employment structures. FedEx Express drivers are generally direct employees of FedEx Corporation — their employees are regulated under the Railway Labor Act, a fact confirmed by public labor-relations records. FedEx Ground routes, by contrast, are frequently operated by independent contractor service providers who own or lease their vehicles. Which division your loved one drove for determines everything about this lane.
If he was a FedEx employee — as Express drivers typically are — the family has a separate workers’ compensation death benefit claim. The Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation regulates these benefits for eligible family members of employees killed on the job. These benefits are independent of the third-party claim against the at-fault driver. Pursuing the wrongful death case does not waive them. They provide a recovery floor that does not depend on the at-fault driver’s solvency or insurance limits. A self-insured employer like FedEx may carry its own program, and those benefits can provide financial security regardless of what the at-fault driver’s policy covers.
If he was an independent contractor — as many FedEx Ground drivers are — the analysis shifts. The workers’ compensation claim may run through the contractor’s own policy, and the question of whether FedEx itself may bear direct liability as a statutory employer becomes live. The independent contractor classification is not always the end of the inquiry. It is the beginning of a structural analysis that our workers’ compensation practice examines carefully, because the distinction between employee and contractor at FedEx has been the subject of IRS scrutiny and litigation for years.
The critical point: your family does not have to choose one lane. You pursue both. The workers’ compensation death benefits provide a floor. The third-party wrongful death claim provides the ceiling. And the gross-negligence finding from the criminal indictment drives the third-party case toward punitive damages that can push the value above the at-fault driver’s policy limits — creating pressure on his insurer to tender those limits rather than face a trial where a Smith County jury hears how their neighbor was killed.
How a Manslaughter Indictment Drives Civil Case Value — The Leverage You Already Have
Here is what a generalist lawyer misses and what we will not: a criminal indictment is not just a news story. It is a litigation weapon, and the way it is deployed in the civil case is where a wrongful death claim transforms from a policy-limits negotiation into something far more serious for the at-fault driver’s insurer.
The doctrine is this: when the at-fault driver’s conduct violates a statute or regulation designed to protect the public — here, the Texas Transportation Code’s prohibitions on passing in a no-passing zone and driving on the wrong side of the roadway — that violation can establish negligence per se in the civil case. The violation of the traffic statute is the negligence; the plaintiff does not need to separately prove that the driver failed to exercise reasonable care, because the statute itself defines the standard of care. The grand jury’s factual findings — wrong-way, no-passing zone — are the same facts that prove the statutory violation.
Beyond negligence per se, the manslaughter indictment supplies the predicate for gross negligence. Texas allows exemplary damages only upon a showing of gross negligence by clear and convincing evidence — a higher standard than the ordinary preponderance standard, but one that driving on the wrong side of a rural highway in a marked no-passing zone is designed to meet. The criminal charge does not automatically prove gross negligence in civil court, but it is powerful corroborative evidence. And if the criminal case results in a conviction or a guilty plea before the civil case resolves, that outcome can become near-dispositive on the question of civil liability. The insurance company knows this. Their exposure is not just the wrongful death damages — it is the punitive damages a Smith County jury may add on top.
This creates a specific kind of pressure. When liability is near-certain and punitive exposure is real, the at-fault driver’s insurer faces a decision: tender the policy limits and settle, or roll the dice at trial where a jury of Smith County residents hears that the at-fault driver was indicted for killing a working man who was just stepping out of his truck. That is not a gamble most insurers want to take. The leverage is not theoretical. It is structural, and it is built on the criminal case the state is already prosecuting for you.
The FedEx Vehicle and the Evidence That Could Decide Your Case
Although the at-fault vehicle was a passenger car, the FedEx truck involved was a commercial motor vehicle subject to federal regulation. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s rules apply to employers, employees, and commercial motor vehicles that transport property in interstate commerce under 49 CFR Parts 390-399. The FMCSA’s own regulation confirms this scope:
The rules in subchapter B of this chapter are applicable to all employers, employees, and commercial motor vehicles that transport property or passengers in interstate commerce.
This matters because FedEx vehicles are typically equipped with systems that ordinary passenger cars do not carry — telematics systems, forward-facing dashcams, GPS tracking, and event data recorders. These systems capture speed, braking, GPS location, door-open status, and impact parameters. The telematics data from the FedEx truck may show that the vehicle was stopped, that the driver’s door was open, and the exact moment of impact — establishing that the decedent was exiting when struck. That data is the difference between the insurance company arguing “we don’t know exactly what happened” and a forensic reconstruction that proves the sequence frame by frame.
The problem is time. This crash occurred on July 8, 2025. The criminal investigation and grand jury process took over a year. Evidence that existed on the day of the crash may already be gone.
Here is what we know about the evidence clock — system by system:
FedEx vehicle telematics and event data recorder data. This is the electronic record of what the truck was doing at the moment of impact — speed, braking, door status, GPS coordinates. The data exists in the vehicle’s onboard systems and in FedEx’s central data infrastructure. Telematics data may be overwritten within 30 to 90 days depending on the system and retention policy, which varies by FedEx division. The crash occurred over a year ago. If this data was not preserved by DPS during the criminal investigation, it may be lost — but if it was preserved as part of the criminal case file, it is discoverable in the civil case and must be demanded immediately.
FedEx dashcam or forward-facing camera footage. If the FedEx truck had a forward-facing camera, it may have captured the at-fault driver’s wrong-way approach and the collision itself. Video overwrite cycles are typically short — 72 hours to 14 days. Unless DPS preserved this footage during the criminal investigation, it is almost certainly gone. The only way to know is to demand it and see what was saved.
Texas DPS crash reconstruction report. The Department of Public Safety investigated this crash, and given the criminal indictment, a reconstruction report is likely complete. This report contains the official law enforcement analysis of skid marks, point of impact, vehicle final positions, and speed estimates. It is the state’s own evidence — and it is available through civil discovery or upon proper request. This report is likely the single most important document in the civil case, and it should be obtained immediately.
The Smith County grand jury indictment and criminal case file. The indictment establishes the state’s finding of manslaughter. The factual basis — wrong-way driving, no-passing zone — is leverage in the civil proceedings. The criminal case is active. Civil discovery should track the criminal proceedings for plea deals, trial testimony, and any statements the at-fault driver makes under oath. A guilty plea in the criminal case can be used in the civil case. A conviction can be near-dispositive on liability.
The at-fault driver’s cell phone records and vehicle event data recorder. Cell phone records may reveal distraction, texting, or other conduct that contributed to the decision to pass in a no-passing zone. His vehicle’s event data recorder may show speed, braking, and steering inputs in the seconds before impact. Carrier retention windows vary. Preservation demand letters should issue immediately — not after the criminal case resolves, not after the insurance company makes an offer, but now.
FedEx employment records and workers’ compensation file. These records establish whether the decedent was an employee or an independent contractor, his earning history, and the death benefits available to the family. They should be stable in employer custody, but they must be formally requested — a company does not hand them over because you ask nicely. They respond to a demand letter from a law firm that knows what to demand and why.
The FMCSA’s record-retention rules provide one anchor: motor carriers must retain records of duty status and supporting documents for each driver for not less than six months from the date of receipt. That is confirmed in the federal regulation itself:
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.
After six months, deletion is legal. The accident register must be maintained for three years. But FMCSA regulations do not establish specific retention requirements for vehicle event data recorders, telematics systems, or dashcam footage — those are governed by standard discovery rules under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, not by federal mandate. That means the preservation demand is what freezes this evidence, and the preservation demand is what a law firm sends the day you call.
The Insurance Reality — How Much Coverage Exists and Where the Money Sits
The at-fault driver is an individual. His automobile liability insurance is the first layer of coverage available to your family. Texas requires minimum liability coverage, and a single individual’s policy may carry only that minimum — which can be exhausted by a single day of intensive care, let alone a wrongful death. The actual policy limits are unknown and must be discovered through civil discovery. If his limits are modest, the recovery from the third-party claim may be capped at those limits unless substantial personal assets are discovered.
But the insurance picture does not end there. Here is where the analysis gets sharp:
If the at-fault driver carried more than the minimum — an excess or umbrella policy — those layers sit above the primary policy and can dramatically increase the available recovery. Discovering those policies is one of the first things a wrongful death case does. The at-fault driver’s insurance company has a contractual obligation to indemnify him for negligent operation up to the policy limits. When liability is near-certain — as it is here, with a manslaughter indictment — the insurer faces its own exposure: if it fails to tender the policy limits when liability is clear, and a jury returns a verdict above those limits, the insurer may be exposed to a bad-faith claim from its own insured for failing to settle within the policy. That is not our problem — it is the insurer’s problem, and it is pressure that works in your family’s favor.
The separate recovery floor is the workers’ compensation death benefit through FedEx. If the decedent was an employee, the family has a claim independent of the at-fault driver’s solvency. These benefits do not depend on whether the at-fault driver has insurance or assets. They are payable because a worker died on the job, and the Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation regulates them. The workers’ compensation carrier may have subrogation rights against the third-party recovery, but the benefits themselves are a floor that the family receives regardless of what the at-fault driver’s case produces.
The honest framing is this: the case value range for a wrongful death of a working-age commercial driver with clear gross negligence and a manslaughter indictment is potentially in the millions. The liability picture is exceptionally strong. But the primary constraint is collectibility — what the at-fault driver’s insurance and assets can actually pay. The workers’ compensation death benefits provide a separate floor. And the punitive damages exposure — driven by the criminal case — creates pressure on the at-fault driver’s insurer to settle at or above policy limits rather than face a Smith County jury. Every case is different, and past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the structural leverage here is real, and the insurance company knows it.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — What They Will Do to Your Family and How to Stop It
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters talk about cases like yours — not with sympathy, but with strategy. He knows the playbook because he ran it. Here is what the at-fault driver’s insurance company is already doing or will do, and here is what to do about each play.
Play one: the recorded statement. Within days of the crash, someone from the insurance company will call a family member. The voice will be warm. They will say they just want to “hear your side” or “get the facts” or “close our file.” The call is recorded. Everything you say can and will be used to reduce or deny the claim. If you say “he was a careful driver” about the at-fault driver in a moment of grace, that sentence will appear in a motion. If you say “I’m doing okay” when asked how you are holding up, that sentence will be used to argue your mental anguish is minimal. The counter: do not give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Not now, not ever, without legal counsel. You have no obligation to do so. None.
Play two: the quick check. A settlement check may arrive fast — sometimes before the funeral, almost always before the family understands the full value of the claim. It comes with a release attached — a document that, once signed, extinguishes all claims against the at-fault driver and his insurer forever. The amount will seem significant because the family is facing funeral bills and lost income. It is a fraction of what the case is worth. The counter: never sign a release or accept a check from the at-fault driver’s insurance company without legal counsel reviewing it. A release signed in grief is still a release. The insurance company knows this. That is why they send it now.
Play three: the “he was partially at fault” argument. The insurance company may try to argue that the FedEx driver shared some responsibility — that he was parked in a dangerous location, that he should not have been exiting the vehicle, that his own conduct contributed. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule that reduces recovery by the plaintiff’s percentage of fault and bars recovery entirely if the plaintiff is more than 50 percent at fault. The adjuster’s job is to pin percentage points on your loved one, because every point is money off the settlement. The counter: a FedEx driver legally exiting his commercial vehicle on a public highway is not negligent. The at-fault driver crossed into oncoming traffic in a no-passing zone — a criminal act. The fault allocation should be minimal or zero, and the manslaughter indictment makes the defense’s comparative-negligence argument extraordinarily difficult to sustain.
Play four: the delay aimed at the statute of limitations. Texas wrongful death claims are governed by the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, and the statute of limitations is two years from the date of death. The insurance company knows this deadline. They may string the family along with “we’re still reviewing” or “we need more documentation” until the deadline approaches — hoping the family either accepts a low offer out of fear or misses the deadline entirely. The counter: know the deadline. The two-year clock runs from the date of death — July 8, 2025. That means the filing deadline is July 8, 2027. But waiting until the deadline approaches is not a strategy — it is a surrender of leverage, because evidence continues to degrade and the criminal case may resolve in ways that either strengthen or complicate the civil claim. The earlier the case is filed, the more control the family has.
Play five: the social-media and surveillance watch. The insurance company may monitor the family’s social media accounts. A photograph of a family dinner, a vacation, a smile at a child’s birthday — these images can be screenshotted and used to argue that the family’s mental anguish and loss of companionship are not as severe as claimed. The counter: set all social media accounts to private. Do not post about the crash, the case, the at-fault driver, or your grief. Do not discuss the case online. Assume everything you post will be read by the insurance company and presented to a jury in the worst possible light.
The Medicine — What the Forensic Record Says About How He Died and What It Means for the Case
The trauma mechanism in this case is a high-energy collision while the decedent was partially outside the FedEx vehicle — exiting the truck when the at-fault driver’s vehicle struck it. This mechanism likely produced blunt force trauma consistent with crush-injury patterns: the body caught between the truck’s door frame, the vehicle structure, and the incoming force of the collision. The severity of a crush mechanism at highway speeds, against a commercial vehicle’s mass, explains why the injuries were fatal at the scene.
For the survival action — the estate’s claim for conscious pain and suffering between impact and death — the question is whether any interval of awareness can be established. If the decedent was killed instantly, the survival claim may be limited or absent. If there was any conscious interval — even seconds — between the impact and death, the estate may recover for the pain and suffering experienced during that time, plus any medical expenses incurred prior to death. This is not something a family member can establish from memory. It requires forensic reconstruction: a forensic pathologist correlates the injury pattern with the timeline, the DPS crash report establishes the physical evidence, and the medical examiner’s findings provide the scientific basis for any survival interval. The survival action is a separate claim from the wrongful death claim, brought by the estate rather than the beneficiaries, and it requires its own proof.
The medical reality also matters for the family’s own mental health. A sudden, violent death — a death without warning, without a hospital goodbye, without the chance to say what needed saying — produces a grief that is different from anticipatory grief. The family was not prepared. The loss arrived in a phone call from a stranger. The psychological literature on sudden traumatic loss is clear: the survivors face elevated rates of post-traumatic stress, depression, and complicated grief. These are not abstract concepts — they are damages, and they are part of what the wrongful death claim seeks to compensate. A life-care planner and a mental health professional can document the family’s psychological injuries and project the cost of treatment, which becomes part of the economic damages case.
The Defendant Structure Map — Who Is on the Hook and for What
Understanding who the defendants are in this case is not a formality — it is the architecture of the recovery. There are three potential sources of compensation, and each operates under a different legal theory with different coverage limits.
The at-fault driver. Darren Coleman is the primary defendant — the individual whose criminal decision to cross into oncoming traffic in a no-passing zone caused the death. His direct negligence — driving on the wrong side of the road — is the cause of the collision. The manslaughter indictment establishes gross negligence exposure for punitive damages. His automobile liability insurance is the first source of recovery, up to his policy limits. If he carried only the Texas minimum, the recovery from this defendant may be limited. If he carried an umbrella or excess policy, the available coverage increases. His personal assets — home equity, bank accounts, investments — are theoretically reachable, but most individual defendants have limited collectible assets beyond insurance. The discovery process targets all of this: policy declarations, financial records, asset schedules.
The at-fault driver’s insurance company. This is not a defendant in the traditional sense, but it is the entity that controls the money. The insurer has a contractual obligation to defend and indemnify the at-fault driver up to the policy limits. When liability is near-certain and punitive exposure is real — as it is here — the insurer’s own interests diverge from the at-fault driver’s. If the insurer refuses to tender the policy limits and a jury returns a verdict above those limits, the at-fault driver may have a bad-faith claim against his own insurer for failing to settle. That pressure — the insurer’s own exposure — is a tool in the civil case, used to drive the insurer toward a policy-limits tender rather than a trial.
FedEx as employer or statutory employer. If the decedent was a FedEx employee, the company owes workers’ compensation death benefits under Texas law. The Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation regulates these benefits, and they are independent of the third-party claim. If the decedent was an independent contractor — as many FedEx Ground drivers are — the question becomes whether FedEx may bear direct liability as a statutory employer, or whether the independent contractor’s own insurance provides the coverage. The corporate structure matters. Our corporate fleet practice examines these structures because the name on the truck is not always the entity that bears legal responsibility — and the distinction between an employee and a contractor at a company the size of FedEx can be worth millions to a family that knows to ask.
How a Case Like This Is Built — The Proof Story From Week One to Resolution
Here is how a wrongful death case with a parallel criminal prosecution is actually built — not a summary, but the walk through the process as someone who has lived it.
Week one: preservation. The day you call, the preservation letter goes out. It goes to the at-fault driver’s insurance company, demanding that all evidence be preserved — the vehicle, the event data recorder, the cell phone records, any dashcam footage, the policy declarations. It goes to FedEx, demanding that the telematics data, the dashcam footage, the employment records, and the workers’ compensation file be preserved. It goes to DPS, requesting the crash report and any preserved evidence from the criminal investigation. The letter is not a request. It is a legal notice that creates a duty to preserve — and if evidence disappears after that notice, the law answers with adverse-inference instructions, sanctions, and in some circumstances separate claims for the destruction itself.
Weeks two through four: the records. The DPS crash report is obtained. The criminal case file is tracked. The at-fault driver’s policy declarations are demanded. FedEx’s employment records are requested. The death certificate and the medical examiner’s report are obtained. The funeral bills and medical records — however brief — are gathered. Every document is a piece of the architecture.
Months one through three: the experts. An accident reconstructionist is retained to correlate the physical evidence — skid marks, point of impact, vehicle final positions, damage patterns — with the wrong-side-of-roadway findings in the DPS report. A forensic pathologist reviews the autopsy findings to establish the mechanism of death and any survival interval for the survival action. A forensic economist calculates the lost earning capacity: the decedent’s age, occupation, earning history, expected career trajectory, and the present value of the income the family will never receive.
Months three through six: discovery and depositions. The at-fault driver is deposed. His answers about what he was doing, why he passed, and what he saw are taken under oath — and they are compared against the criminal case findings. If the criminal case resolves first — a guilty plea, a conviction — that outcome locks in civil liability in ways the insurance company cannot unwind. The safety director or operations manager at FedEx, if applicable, is deposed about the employment relationship, the vehicle’s equipment, and the retention of electronic data. The insurance adjuster is deposed about the claim file, the reserve setting, and the settlement evaluation.
The resolution. A settlement demand is structured and timed. In Texas, the doctrine that governs settlement demands creates specific pressure on the insurer: when a properly framed demand is made within the policy limits, and the insurer rejects it, the insurer exposes itself to liability above those limits if the case goes to trial and the verdict exceeds the policy. This is the mechanism that converts a policy-limits case into an above-limits case — not by magic, but by the insurer’s own decision to roll the dice. The demand is timed after the criminal case resolves or after key depositions lock in liability, so the insurer is making its decision with full knowledge of the exposure.
This is not a process that happens quickly. A wrongful death case with a parallel criminal prosecution may take twelve to twenty-four months to resolve — sometimes longer if the criminal case proceeds to trial first. But the timeline is not a cost. It is the process that builds the value. Every month is a month where more evidence is locked in, more depositions are taken, and the insurance company’s exposure becomes clearer.
What to Do in the First 72 Hours After a Wrongful Death on a Texas Highway
If you are reading this in the hours or days after the crash, here is what to do now — and what not to do.
Do not speak with the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Not once. Not even to “be polite.” Every word you say is recorded and will be used to reduce the value of your family’s claim. If they call, say “I am not prepared to discuss this” and hang up. If they come to your home, do not let them in. If they send a letter, do not respond. Everything goes through your lawyer.
Do not sign anything. No releases, no authorizations, no “acknowledgments,” no settlement offers. If someone hands you a document and says it is “just a formality,” it is not a formality. It is a binding legal document that may extinguish your family’s rights forever. No document gets your signature without a lawyer reviewing it first.
Do not post on social media. Not about the crash. Not about your grief. Not about the at-fault driver. Not a photograph of the family. Not a memorial post. The insurance company is watching. Assume that everything you post will be screenshot and presented to a jury in the worst possible context. Set your accounts to private. Tell your family to do the same.
Do get the death certificate. Multiple certified copies. You will need them for insurance claims, workers’ compensation filings, estate administration, and the wrongful death case itself. The funeral home can help you obtain these.
Do get the DPS crash report number. The Texas Department of Public Safety investigated this crash. The report has a number. Your lawyer will use that number to obtain the full report, which contains the official findings — speed estimates, point of impact, vehicle positions, and the investigating trooper’s assessment. The report is a public document, but it must be requested properly.
Do begin the estate administration process. A wrongful death claim in Texas requires a personal representative — the person authorized by the probate court to bring the family’s case. If the decedent had a will, the named executor petitions for probate. If there was no will, the court appoints an administrator. This is a separate legal process from the wrongful death case itself, but it is the prerequisite. We handle this appointment as part of the case.
Do call a lawyer. Not next week. Not after the funeral. Now. Because the evidence clock does not wait for grief. The preservation demand goes out the day you call. The insurance company’s playbook begins the day of the crash. The statute of limitations is two years — but the evidence that decides the case may be gone in ninety days. The earlier the legal process begins, the more evidence is saved, the more leverage is built, and the more control the family has over the outcome.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we file a wrongful death claim while the criminal case is still going?
Yes — and in many cases, you should. The civil wrongful death claim and the criminal prosecution are separate legal proceedings with different purposes. The criminal case punishes the at-fault driver. The civil case compensates your family. They can proceed in parallel. In fact, the criminal case can strengthen your civil case: the grand jury’s findings, the factual basis for the manslaughter charge, and any conviction or guilty plea can all be used as evidence in the civil proceedings. The main consideration is timing — some families wait for the criminal case to resolve so the civil case can use the conviction or plea, while others file the civil case immediately to stop the evidence-destruction clock and preserve testimony through depositions before the criminal case resolves. The right approach depends on the facts of your case and the criminal case’s trajectory.
How long do we have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Texas?
Texas wrongful death claims are governed by the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, and the statute of limitations is two years from the date of death. For a death on July 8, 2025, the filing deadline is July 8, 2027. Two years sounds like a long time, but it is not — especially when evidence is degrading, witnesses are moving, and the criminal case may take twelve to eighteen months to resolve. Missing the deadline extinguishes the claim forever. There is no second chance. Some circumstances may toll the deadline — for example, if the decedent’s beneficiaries include minors — but you should never rely on tolling without confirming the current rule with a lawyer. The safe approach is to file well before the deadline, not near it.
Who can file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
Under the Texas Wrongful Death Act, the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the decedent may bring the claim. Each beneficiary has their own claim for their own losses — the spouse’s loss of companionship and support, the children’s loss of parental care and guidance, the parents’ loss of the relationship with their child. If the beneficiaries do not file within a certain period, the estate’s personal representative may file on behalf of the beneficiaries. The personal representative is appointed by the probate court — a process we handle as part of the case.
What if the at-fault driver does not have enough insurance to cover our loss?
This is the most common concern families have, and the answer is that insurance is not the only source of recovery. The at-fault driver’s auto policy is the first layer. If he carried an umbrella or excess policy, that is a second layer. If his personal assets are discoverable and collectible, those are a third source. Beyond the at-fault driver, if your loved one was a FedEx employee, the family has a separate workers’ compensation death benefit claim that does not depend on the at-fault driver’s insurance at all. The at-fault driver’s insurance may be modest, but the total recovery picture is broader than a single policy. The honest limitation is that an individual defendant’s assets and insurance may cap the third-party recovery — but the workers’ compensation death benefits provide a floor that is independent of that defendant’s solvency.
Does the manslaughter indictment guarantee we will win the civil case?
No legal outcome is guaranteed. The civil and criminal standards are different — the criminal standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, while the civil standard is a preponderance of the evidence. A grand jury indictment is a finding of probable cause, not a conviction. However, the indictment is powerful corroborative evidence. The factual findings — wrong-way driving in a no-passing zone — are the same facts that establish civil negligence per se. And if the at-fault driver is convicted or pleads guilty, that outcome can be near-dispositive on the question of civil liability. The insurance company knows this. The leverage is not a guarantee, but it is structural pressure that shapes the settlement posture from the moment the civil case is filed.
Can we recover punitive damages in a Texas wrongful death case?
Texas permits exemplary — punitive — damages when the plaintiff proves gross negligence by clear and convincing evidence. The standard is higher than the ordinary civil standard, but driving on the wrong side of a rural highway in a marked no-passing zone — the conduct a Smith County grand jury found sufficient to indict for manslaughter — is the type of conduct that gross-negligence law is designed to address. The criminal charge is corroborative evidence. If the at-fault driver is convicted, the civil case for punitive damages becomes substantially stronger. In standard motor-vehicle wrongful death cases against non-medical, non-governmental defendants, Texas does not impose a statutory cap on damages. That means a jury’s determination of the appropriate damages — including exemplary damages — is not automatically reduced by a statutory formula.
Should we wait for the criminal case to finish before calling a lawyer?
No. The criminal case will take months or years. Evidence is degrading every day. Telematics data may be overwritten. Cell phone records may be purged. Witnesses’ memories fade. The preservation demand that freezes evidence goes out the day you call a lawyer — not the day the criminal case resolves. The civil case and the criminal case can proceed in parallel, and the civil case can use the criminal case’s outcomes as they become available. Waiting costs evidence. Waiting costs leverage. Waiting costs the family the one thing they cannot recover: time.
How much does a wrongful death lawyer cost?
We work on contingency. That means we do not charge an hourly rate. Our fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. We advance the costs of the case — the filing fees, the expert witnesses, the deposition costs, the records requests — and those costs are repaid from the recovery at the end. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing for our time. This means every family can afford the best legal representation, not just the families who can pay by the hour. You can learn more about how this works from our main practice page or from our video on how contingency fees work.
What if my loved one was an independent contractor for FedEx, not an employee?
This is a critical question, and the answer is not always what FedEx says it is. FedEx Express drivers are generally direct employees of FedEx Corporation. FedEx Ground routes are frequently operated by independent contractor service providers. The distinction matters because it determines whether workers’ compensation death benefits are available through FedEx’s self-insured program or through a contractor’s policy, and whether FedEx itself may bear direct liability as a statutory employer. The independent contractor label is not always the end of the analysis — it is the beginning of a structural examination that looks at who controlled the work, who owned the vehicle, who set the schedule, and who bore the insurance obligation. The IRS has previously investigated FedEx Ground’s classification of drivers as independent contractors. If your loved one was classified as a contractor, do not accept that label as the final word. It may be the beginning of the fight, not the end.
Do we have to go to court, or can the case settle?
Most wrongful death cases settle before trial. The insurance company’s incentive to settle is highest when liability is clear and punitive exposure is real — both of which are true here. However, a settlement is only as good as the leverage behind it. The leverage comes from the strength of the evidence, the clarity of the liability, the credibility of the experts, and the willingness of the lawyer to take the case to trial if the insurer will not offer fair value. We prepare every case as if it will be tried. That preparation is what produces settlements — because the insurance company knows we are ready for a jury and has to value the case accordingly.
Why This Firm — and What Your First Call Costs
Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years trying cases in Texas courtrooms. He is admitted to the Southern District of Texas federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he learned to find the story the evidence tells before he learned to argue it to a jury — and he does both. He is the lead counsel in the active $10 million Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston hazing lawsuit in Harris County. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. He does not lose cases because he does not accept them if he is not prepared to win them. You can read more about Ralph on his bio page.
Lupe Peña is a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years at a national 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, before the real losses are known. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered. He knows how valuation software discounts pain it cannot see and how the quick check arrives with a release before the medical results do. He uses that knowledge for injured people now, not against them. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. You can read more about Lupe on his bio page.
The firm has recovered over $50 million in aggregate, including a $5 million-plus brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement, a $2.5 million-plus truck-crash recovery, and a $2 million-plus maritime back-injury settlement. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but the record tells you what we build cases to achieve.
We serve families in English and in Spanish. Hablamos Español — Lupe conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter, and our staff is bilingual. If your family prays in Spanish, we will speak to you in Spanish.
The first call costs nothing. The consultation is free, confidential, and 24/7 — we have live staff, not an answering service, and the number is 1-888-ATTY-911. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you. If we are, the preservation letter goes out the day you call, and the fight for your family begins.
Your loved one was a working man on a rural East Texas highway, doing his job, stepping out of his truck. Another driver made a criminal choice, and it cost him his life. The law gives your family a right to hold that driver and his insurance company accountable — fully, not partially, not at a discount. That right has a deadline and the evidence has a clock. Call us today.