The Fire After the Rollover: What It Means for Your Family
If you are reading this page, someone you love is gone — or someone you love is in a hospital bed in Lubbock right now, and you are sitting in a kitchen in Andrews at two in the morning trying to understand what happened on that county road. The Texas Department of Public Safety has already said what happened on the surface: a Dodge Charger was traveling too fast, the driver lost the curve, the car hit a boulder, it rolled over, and it caught fire. A 40-year-old passenger from Andrews was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver was taken to University Medical Center in Lubbock with serious injuries, more than a hundred miles from where the crash happened.
Here is what the news did not tell you, and what the investigating officers are not going to tell you: the fire is the question that changes everything. A car that rolls over and hits a boulder is a crash. A car that rolls over, hits a boulder, and then burns is two events — the crash and the fire — and the law treats them separately. If the fuel system held together the way it was supposed to, the fire should not have happened. And if the person who died was alive after the impact but perished in the fire, the manufacturer of that vehicle may share responsibility for her death alongside whoever was behind the wheel.
That is not a theory we are spinning. It is a recognized body of law — crashworthiness — that has been applied against automakers for more than fifty years. And it is the reason the single most important thing happening right now, while you are reading this, is whether the burned wreckage of that Dodge Charger is still sitting in a tow yard or whether it has already been crushed and sold for scrap.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle wrongful death claims and catastrophic car accident cases across Texas, including the Permian Basin and the rural county roads of West Texas where distances are vast, help is far, and the evidence disappears faster than anyone expects. This page is for you — the family of the woman who died, or the family of the driver who survived, or anyone who has lost someone in a fiery crash on a West Texas road and needs to understand what their rights actually are before the evidence is gone and the deadline passes.
What Happened on County Road 2001
Around 7:45 on a Sunday morning, a 2018 Dodge Charger was traveling northwest on County Road 2001 in Andrews County. DPS investigators say the vehicle was moving at an unsafe speed when the driver failed to negotiate a curve. The car left the roadway, struck a boulder, rolled over, and caught fire. The passenger — a 40-year-old woman from Andrews — was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver — a 33-year-old woman, also from Andrews — was transported to University Medical Center in Lubbock with serious injuries. DPS continues to investigate.
Those are the facts as reported. Here is what they mean in legal terms — and what they do not tell you.
County Road 2001 is a rural Andrews County route typical of the Permian Basin: narrow lanes, soft or absent shoulders, curves that can become deceptive at highway speeds, and limited signage or warning markers. These roads were not engineered for high-speed driving. They were built for agricultural access and oilfield service traffic — the trucks and pumpers and water haulers that crisscross the basin at all hours. When a passenger vehicle enters one of these curves too fast, the physics are unforgiving. There is no margin. There is no runoff. There is a boulder where a clear recovery area should be.
The drive from Andrews to UMC Lubbock is roughly 100 to 120 miles — more than an hour by ground ambulance, and that is in good conditions. For a seriously injured crash victim, those miles matter. The nearest Level I trauma center serving the entire Permian Basin is in Lubbock, meaning that serious crash victims across this region face significant golden-hour delays that can worsen survivable injuries. The driver who survived this crash was taken to the right place — but the distance is part of the story, and it is part of the cost.
The Fire Is the Key Question: Was This a Preventable Death?
There are two crashes in every wreck where a fire follows the impact. The first crash is the car hitting something — the boulder, the ground, the rollover itself. The second crash is the fire. The law has recognized for over half a century that a vehicle manufacturer has a duty to design a car that protects its occupants in foreseeable crashes, including rollovers, and that this duty is separate from whatever the driver did wrong.
That doctrine comes from a case called Larsen v. General Motors Corp., decided in 1968, which held that a manufacturer’s duty extends to designing a vehicle that is reasonably safe in a foreseeable collision, and that the maker should be liable for the portion of the injury caused by the defective design — over and above the damage that would have occurred from the impact alone. The crashworthiness doctrine means that even if the driver was speeding, even if the driver lost the curve, the manufacturer can still be responsible if the car turned a survivable crash into a fatal fire.
Federal law backs this up. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 301 — Fuel System Integrity — exists for exactly this situation. Its stated purpose, written into the federal code, is blunt:
“The purpose of this standard is to reduce deaths and injuries occurring from fires that result from fuel spillage during and after motor vehicle crashes…”
— Standard No. 301, 49 CFR 571.301
The standard sets specific spillage limits: a crashed vehicle is not supposed to leak more than approximately one ounce of fuel during the impact, no more than about five ounces total in the five minutes after impact, and no more than one ounce per minute thereafter. When a vehicle rolls over and burns, the question is whether the fuel system held within those limits — or whether the tank, a fuel line, or a connector ruptured in a way that a safer design would have prevented.
And here is the line the manufacturer cannot hide behind: federal law explicitly says that compliance with a federal safety standard does not exempt a company from common-law liability. The statute states:
“Compliance with a motor vehicle safety standard prescribed under this chapter does not exempt a person from liability at common law.”
— 49 U.S.C. § 30103(e)
In plain English: meeting the government’s minimum test is a floor, not a ceiling. A car can pass every federal test and still be defectively designed. A vehicle that technically meets FMVSS 301 in a controlled barrier test can still have a fuel system that fails catastrophically in a real-world rollover into a fixed object — the exact scenario that happened on CR 2001. The defense will say the car met the standard. The law says that does not end the argument.
The 2018 Dodge Charger is manufactured by Stellantis N.V. — formerly Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, with its U.S. operating arm being FCA US LLC. Stellantis is a global automaker with the resources to investigate, the resources to defend, and the resources to pay what a jury says a preventable fire death is worth. But the investigation into whether the fuel system failed in a foreseeable way — whether a fuel line ruptured, whether the tank was inadequately shielded, whether a connector separated under rollover forces — requires the vehicle. Not a photograph of the vehicle. Not a DPS report about the vehicle. The actual, burned, rolled-over, physical vehicle, with every component, every weld, every fracture surface, every burn pattern still intact.
That vehicle is sitting in a tow yard right now. And it is on a clock.
Who Can Be Held Accountable
There are three potential defendants in a crash like this, and each one requires a different legal theory, a different investigation, and a different timeline.
The driver. DPS has already stated the vehicle was traveling at an unsafe speed and the driver failed to negotiate the curve. Under Texas law, every driver owes a duty of ordinary care to their passengers. Speeding on a rural county road and failing to negotiate a curve is a breach of that duty. The passenger who died was a foreseeable person within the zone of danger. Duty, breach, and causation are established on the reported facts. A negligence claim against the driver is the most straightforward theory — but it is also the one most limited by the driver’s insurance coverage, which may be nowhere near what this loss is worth.
The manufacturer — Stellantis / FCA US LLC. This is the theory that can transform the case. Under the crashworthiness doctrine, if the fuel system failed in a foreseeable rollover-into-fixed-object crash and the failure caused or enhanced the fire, the manufacturer is liable for the injuries the fire added — beyond what the impact alone would have caused. The critical medical-forensic question is whether the passenger was alive after the rollover impact but died in the fire. If she was, the manufacturer may be responsible for her death — not just for making a bad crash worse, but for the specific mechanism that killed her. This theory does not depend on proving the driver was careful. It depends on proving the car was supposed to hold its fuel in a crash like this, and it did not.
Andrews County — the roadway maintainer. A large boulder positioned where a vehicle leaving a curve would strike it may constitute an unreasonably dangerous roadside fixed-object hazard. Modern road design standards — the AASHTO Roadside Design Guide, which is the recognized national standard — call for clear zones and the removal or shielding of fixed objects on curves where run-off-road crashes are foreseeable. If the county knew or should have known about the boulder and failed to remove it, shield it, or warn of it, a claim may exist under the Texas Tort Claims Act. But this is the hardest theory to win. Governmental immunity is a significant barrier in Texas, the notice-of-claim deadline is short — typically six months from the incident date — and damage caps significantly limit what can be recovered from a governmental entity. This theory requires early evaluation by an attorney who can determine whether the factual basis exists before the notice deadline passes.
The driver and the manufacturer are not mutually exclusive defendants. Texas law allows — and a competent trial strategy demands — that both be pursued in parallel. The driver’s negligence caused the crash. The manufacturer’s defect may have caused the death. A jury can apportion responsibility between them. And the passenger’s family does not have to choose one theory over the other before the evidence is gathered.
Texas Wrongful Death and Survival Law
Texas law gives families two separate legal claims after a death like this, and understanding the difference between them is the first step in understanding what the case is worth.
The wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family — the spouse, the children, and the parents of the person who died. Texas’s Wrongful Death Act allows these beneficiaries to recover for the losses they suffered because of the death: the lost earning capacity of the person who died (a 40-year-old has approximately 25 years of projected working life ahead — a significant economic loss), the loss of companionship, society, advice, and emotional support, the mental anguish of the surviving family, and funeral and burial expenses. If none of the statutory beneficiaries file within three months of the death, the executor or administrator of the estate may file on their behalf.
The survival claim belongs to the estate of the person who died. It captures what the decedent personally experienced between the injury and death — the pain, the terror, the suffering, the medical expenses incurred before death. If the passenger in this crash was conscious after the rollover impact but was trapped in the vehicle when the fire began, the survival claim captures the horror of those moments. And that is among the most profoundly compensable categories of damages in Texas law.
The difference between a case where the decedent died on impact and a case where the decedent was alive and conscious during a post-crash fire can be the difference between a significant case and a life-changing one. The medical examiner’s findings — soot in the airways, carboxyhemoglobin levels in the blood, burn depth and pattern — are the evidence that decides this question. Those findings may not be available for 60 to 90 days after the autopsy. But the autopsy itself is performed within 24 to 72 hours of death, which means the tissue and the evidence are being collected right now — and the medical examiner’s office must be contacted immediately to ensure complete documentation and tissue retention.
Comparative fault. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51 percent bar. A claimant must be 50 percent or less at fault to recover, and damages are reduced by the claimant’s percentage of fault. As a passenger with no alleged contributory conduct, the estate of the woman who died should face minimal comparative-fault exposure. The driver’s share of fault will be significant — but the manufacturer’s share, if a defect is proven, is separate and additional. A jury can apportion fault between the driver and the manufacturer, and the family recovers from each according to their share.
The statute of limitations. In Texas, the general two-year statute of limitations applies to both wrongful death and survival actions. The clock starts running from the date of death. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing in a hospital corridor or planning a funeral. It is not. Between the DPS investigation, the autopsy, the vehicle inspection, the product-defect analysis, the discovery of insurance coverage, and the litigation itself, two years passes faster than any family in grief expects. The deadline is unforgiving — miss it and the case is over, no matter how strong it is.
Exemplary damages. Texas caps exemplary — punitive — damages under Chapter 41 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. These caps apply based on the defendant’s net worth and the nature of the conduct. Punitive damages are available if the defendant acted with malice or conscious indifference to a known risk. Against the driver, extreme speed might support a gross-negligence claim. Against the manufacturer, if evidence shows Stellantis knew about a fuel-system vulnerability in the 2018 Charger and failed to address it, the conscious-indifference standard may be met. Punitive damages are never guaranteed, but the fire mechanism — and the manufacturer’s internal knowledge — are what put them on the table.
The Evidence That Is Disappearing Right Now
Every piece of evidence that decides this case is on a clock right now, and some of those clocks are measured in days, not months.
The vehicle. This is the single most critical piece of evidence in the entire case. The 2018 Dodge Charger — its burned hull, its fuel system components, its fuel tank, its fuel line routing, its door latches, its seatbelt retractors, its airbag control module, its burn patterns — is the physical record of whether the car was crashworthy. Without the vehicle, there is no products-liability case. There is no crashworthiness theory. There is no way to prove the fuel system failed. Impound lots typically hold vehicles 30 to 60 days before charging storage and ultimately crushing or auctioning unclaimed wrecks. A fire-damaged vehicle may be deemed a total loss and processed even faster. A preservation letter to the impound facility, DPS, the driver’s insurer, and Stellantis must go out within days — and if necessary, a petition for a temporary restraining order to prevent destruction of the wreck. The day a family calls us is the day that letter goes out.
The Event Data Recorder — the car’s black box. A 2018 Dodge Charger is required by federal law to carry an Event Data Recorder that captures pre-crash data. Under federal regulation, the recorder must log vehicle speed, brake application, throttle position, seatbelt status, airbag deployment timing, and the change in velocity during the crash — the delta-V — in the seconds before and during the impact. For a 2018 model, the pre-crash window captures approximately five seconds of data at two samples per second. If the airbags deployed — which is likely in a rollover into a boulder — federal law requires the recording to be locked so it cannot be overwritten. But fire damage can destroy the module. And if the vehicle is crushed, the data dies with it. The EDR must be imaged by a qualified technician before the vehicle is moved or destroyed. This data either corroborates or challenges DPS’s “unsafe speed” determination — and it is the single most objective record of what happened in those final seconds.
The DPS crash report and investigator field notes. The official CR-3 crash report contains the investigating officer’s reconstruction findings, road conditions, measurements, witness statements, and speed analysis. Preliminary reports are typically available within 10 to 14 days; full reconstruction reports can take 30 to 90 days. This report is foundational to the negligence claim and is admissible as a business record. It must be requested through DPS as soon as the report number is available.
The autopsy and medical examiner records. This is the evidence that decides the survival claim. The medical examiner’s findings will establish: the cause and manner of death, the presence or absence of soot in the airways — which indicates the person was breathing during the fire — the carboxyhemoglobin saturation level, which measures carbon monoxide in the blood from the fire, the burn depth and pattern, and whether death preceded or followed the fire. The autopsy is typically performed within 24 to 72 hours of death, but toxicology and final reports can take 60 to 90 days. The medical examiner’s office must be contacted immediately to ensure complete documentation and tissue retention — because if the tissue is not preserved, the forensic question of whether she was alive during the fire may become unanswerable.
The driver’s cell phone records. Distraction — texting, calling, app use — is a concurrent cause of the failure to negotiate the curve that DPS may not have investigated. Cell carrier retention policies vary; some purge call detail records after 90 to 180 days. A preservation letter to the carrier must be sent within weeks, and a subpoena may be needed if the driver does not consent.
Scene evidence — the boulder, skid marks, roadway geometry, signage. The physical layout of the curve, the sight distance, the presence or absence of warning signs, chevrons, guardrail, or reflectors, the boulder’s size and proximity to the travel lane, and any skid marks or yaw marks showing pre-crash vehicle dynamics — all of this is essential for both reconstruction and any roadway-design claim. Skid marks fade within days to weeks depending on weather and traffic. The boulder and roadway geometry are durable, but documentation should occur before any county road crew alters the scene.
The driver’s medical records and toxicology from UMC Lubbock. The nature and extent of the driver’s injuries are relevant to her own damages and to the crash reconstruction. Her admission bloodwork — drawn at the hospital — may include alcohol and drug screening that DPS did not obtain. If that toxicology is positive, it dramatically strengthens both the negligence claim and the punitive-damages theory. Hospital records are retained for years, but admission toxicology must be specifically requested and may not be included in routine chart production.
When evidence is destroyed after a preservation letter has been sent, the law provides a remedy: a court can give the jury an adverse-inference instruction — telling them they may assume the lost evidence was as bad for the destroyer as the plaintiff says it was. Sanctions are available. In some cases, a separate claim for the destruction itself may exist. But the leverage begins the moment the letter is on file — which is why the preservation letter goes out before the funeral, not after the insurance company calls.
The Medicine: Burns, Inhalation, and Pre-Death Consciousness
Understanding what happened inside that vehicle requires understanding fire medicine — and the defense will exploit every gap in the family’s understanding.
A post-crash vehicle fire is not a single event. It is a sequence: fuel ignites, the fire propagates through the engine compartment or cabin, temperatures climb rapidly, and the occupants face three distinct threats — thermal burns from direct flame contact, inhalation injury from superheated gases and smoke, and carbon monoxide poisoning from incomplete combustion.
Thermal burns are graded by depth. A first-degree burn is a sunburn-like injury to the surface layer of skin. A second-degree burn extends into the dermis and causes blistering. A third-degree — full-thickness — burn has destroyed the skin entirely, reaching into the subcutaneous tissue. A fourth-degree burn extends through the skin into muscle, tendon, ligament, or bone. One of the most counterintuitive facts in burn medicine is that a full-thickness burn is often painless — because the nerve endings that transmit pain have been destroyed. A person who is not screaming may have the worst burns, not the mildest. The defense will exploit this — arguing that the absence of signs of suffering means the death was quick. The medicine says the opposite.
Inhalation injury is the invisible killer. Superheated gases and smoke inhaled during a vehicle fire damage the airway from the inside — swelling the tissues, filling the lungs with toxic products of combustion, and causing respiratory failure that can kill hours after the person is pulled from the vehicle. Singed nasal hairs, soot in the mouth or throat, and a hoarse voice are the warning signs that the airway is involved. The American Burn Association treats suspected inhalation injury as an automatic burn-center-referral criterion — because the airway can swell shut hours after the exposure.
Carbon monoxide is the silent accelerant of fire deaths. Carbon monoxide is a product of incomplete combustion — it is in the smoke. It binds to hemoglobin in the blood far more aggressively than oxygen, displacing the oxygen the body needs and causing hypoxia — oxygen starvation — at the cellular level. The carboxyhemoglobin level in the blood, measured at autopsy, tells the forensic story: a elevated level means the person was alive and breathing during the fire. A near-zero level may mean the person died before the fire began. This single number — the carboxyhemoglobin saturation — can be the difference between a survival claim worth seven figures and one worth a fraction of that.
The medical examiner’s report will contain all of this: the soot pattern, the carboxyhemoglobin level, the burn depth, the presence or absence of inhalation injury, and the pathologist’s opinion on the cause and manner of death. If the findings show soot in the lower airways, elevated carboxyhemoglobin, and burns sustained while the person was alive, the survival claim is established — and the terror and pain of being trapped in a burning vehicle is among the most profoundly compensable categories of damages in Texas law.
For the driver, who survived and was transported to UMC Lubbock, the injuries may include burns, inhalation injury, fractures from the rollover, traumatic brain injury from the impact forces, and the psychological trauma of surviving a crash that killed her passenger. Her brain injury — if she sustained one — may not show up on a standard CT scan. The mechanism of diffuse axonal injury, where the brain’s internal wiring is torn by rotational forces during the rollover, can produce cognitive and emotional deficits that are invisible on imaging but devastating in daily life. Her own recovery and her own case are part of this story — she is both a potential defendant and a critical witness to what happened in the moments before and after the crash.
What a Case Like This Is Worth
The honest answer is: it depends on facts that have not been gathered yet. But the range, and the factors that drive it, can be stated.
Low end — approximately $100,000. This assumes the driver carries only Texas’s legal minimum liability coverage — $30,000 per person and $60,000 per occurrence — with no significant assets, and the products-liability investigation reveals no actionable defect. Recovery would be limited to the driver’s policy limits plus any applicable uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage on the decedent’s own auto policy. One night in a trauma center can exhaust Texas’s minimum coverage. This is the floor, not the ceiling — but it is a real floor, and families need to know it exists.
High end — potentially $5,000,000 or more. This assumes a proven fuel-system-integrity defect against Stellantis — a deep-pocket manufacturer with global resources — combined with full wrongful death and survival damages for a 40-year-old decedent who was conscious and alive during the fire. The survival damages alone — for the pre-death pain, terror, and suffering of being trapped in a burning vehicle — can exceed seven figures. The wrongful death damages — 25 years of lost earning capacity, loss of companionship and society to the surviving family, mental anguish — add substantially on top. And if the manufacturer’s conduct meets the conscious-indifference standard for punitive damages under Texas law, the exposure increases further.
The fire mechanism is the single value multiplier. A rollover crash into a boulder that kills on impact is a tragic case with a certain value range. A rollover crash into a boulder that is survivable — but a post-crash fire caused by a fuel-system failure turns it fatal — is a fundamentally different case. The difference is the manufacturer’s enhanced-injury liability and the survival damages that flow from it. This is why the vehicle inspection and the autopsy are the two investigations that decide the value of the case.
A real number is built from specific documents: a life-care planner prices the future medical needs. A forensic economist projects the lost earning capacity and reduces it to present value. The mental anguish and loss-of-companionship components are proven through the testimony of the people who lost her. The punitive component, if it exists, is proven through the manufacturer’s internal documents — the engineering memos, the safety meeting minutes, the recall databases, the prior complaints that show what they knew and when they knew it. None of this can be done from a DPS report and a news article. It requires the vehicle, the records, the experts, and the legal machinery to force all of it into the light.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the firm has recovered more than $50 million across its cases, including a $5 million-plus brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement, and millions recovered in trucking wrongful-death cases — and the process that produced those results is the same process that applies here: preserve the evidence, investigate the defect, build the life-care plan, and put the case in front of a jury if the other side will not pay what it is worth.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook
If the driver had insurance, her carrier has already opened a file. The adjuster assigned to that file has one job: to resolve the claim for as little money as possible, as fast as possible. Here is what that looks like, and here is how each play is countered.
Play 1 — The friendly “check-in” call. Within days of the crash, someone from the driver’s insurance company may call the family. The tone will be warm, sympathetic, concerned. The purpose will be to get the family talking — on a recording — about what happened, who was at fault, how the family is doing, and whether they have a lawyer. Every word spoken on that call is being captured to be used against the family later. The counter: do not take the call. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not describe the crash, the injuries, or the family’s plans. A statement given in the first week of grief, before the autopsy is complete and before the vehicle has been inspected, is a statement the defense will quote at trial. The only safe answer is: “I am not giving a statement. I will have my attorney contact you.”
Play 2 — The fast settlement check. A check may arrive quickly — sometimes before the funeral — with a release printed on the back or enclosed with it. The amount will look meaningful to a family that is suddenly facing funeral costs and lost income. The release, once signed or endorsed, extinguishes the entire claim — including the products-liability claim against the manufacturer that may be worth many times more. The family will not yet know whether the car was defective. They will not yet know whether their loved one was alive during the fire. They will not yet know the full extent of the economic loss. The counter: do not sign anything, do not deposit anything, do not cash anything from an insurance company without speaking to an attorney first. A check that arrives in week one is not generosity — it is a calculated purchase of a release before the family knows what they are giving up.
Play 3 — The “the driver was at fault, not the car” frame. The insurance company — and the manufacturer’s lawyers, if they become involved — will frame the entire case around the driver’s speed and the failure to negotiate the curve. They will say: the crash was the driver’s fault. The fire was just a consequence of the crash. The car did not cause the wreck. The counter is the crashworthiness doctrine itself: the manufacturer’s duty is independent of the driver’s negligence. The law does not ask whether the car caused the crash. It asks whether the car was reasonably safe in a foreseeable crash — and a rollover into a fixed object on a rural county road is exactly the kind of foreseeable crash the fuel system was supposed to survive. The driver’s speed explains the crash. It does not explain the fire.
Play 4 — The valuation software lowball. Most major auto insurers use claims-valuation software — programs like Colossus — that assign dollar values to injuries based on standardized inputs. These programs systematically undervalue the things that are hardest to quantify: mental anguish, loss of companionship, the terror of a pre-death fire. They also cannot account for a products-liability theory that has not yet been developed. The first offer will be a software-generated number that bears no relationship to what a jury would return. The counter: a case is not valued by software. It is valued by the evidence, the expert reports, the life-care plan, and the willingness to take it to trial. An offer that does not reflect the full damages picture — including the survival claim and the manufacturer’s exposure — is not an offer. It is a test of whether the family will accept a fraction of what the case is worth.
Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before joining this side of the table. He sat in the rooms where adjusters set reserves, where valuation software was run, where IME doctors were selected, where surveillance was ordered, and where delay tactics were deployed. He knows how each play is engineered because he helped engineer them — and now he uses that knowledge for the families the insurance company is trying to outmaneuver. That is not a marketing line. It is the specific, operational advantage of having someone on your side who has been on the other side.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
Do get medical care first — for yourself and for anyone who was in the vehicle. If you were in the crash, your injuries may not be obvious in the first hours. Concussion symptoms can develop over 24 to 48 hours. Internal injuries can declare themselves days later. Go to the emergency room. Let the doctors document everything. Your health comes before any legal consideration.
Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance company. Not the driver’s insurer, not your own insurer, not the manufacturer’s representative. You are not required to give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Your own insurer may require cooperation under your policy — but even then, a lawyer should be present.
Do not sign anything from an insurance company. No releases, no authorizations, no settlement agreements. Nothing. A document that looks like a routine form can extinguish your claim permanently.
Do not post about the crash on social media. No photos, no commentary, no tributes that reference the circumstances of the crash. Insurance adjusters and defense investigators monitor social media accounts. A photo posted in grief can be recontextualized at trial.
Do contact the medical examiner’s office. If you are the next of kin, ask that complete documentation be prepared — including soot-in-airway analysis, carboxyhemoglobin testing, and full toxicology. Ask that tissue be retained for future forensic analysis. The autopsy findings are the foundation of the survival claim.
Do photograph the scene if you can safely do so. The boulder, the roadway, the curve, any remaining skid marks, the signage or lack of it. These photographs should be taken before weather, traffic, or county maintenance alters the scene. Do not disturb anything — document it.
Do contact an attorney. Not next month. Not after the funeral. Not after the insurance company makes an offer. Now. The preservation letter that freezes the vehicle, the EDR data, the cell phone records, and the scene evidence should go out within 48 hours of the crash — because every day that passes is a day closer to the destruction of the evidence that decides the case. The consultation is free. The call is 1-888-ATTY-911. And there is no fee unless we win your case.
Why This Firm
Ralph P. Manginello is the managing partner of Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — 27 years of trial practice, including in federal court. He is a journalist who became a lawyer, and he approaches every case the way a reporter approaches a story: find the facts, follow the evidence, and tell the truth to a jury in a language they cannot ignore. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. Ralph’s full background is here.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney — and the advantage the insurance company does not expect. Before he joined this firm, Lupe spent years at a national insurance-defense firm, where he was trained inside the industry. He knows how adjusters set reserves in the first 48 hours. He knows how claims-valuation software works. He knows which IME doctors the insurers pick and why. He knows about surveillance and social-media monitoring and the “we need more time” delay aimed at running the statute of limitations. He knows all of it because he used to do it — and now he uses that knowledge for the people the insurance company is trying to outmaneuver. Lupe is a third-generation Texan, fluent in Spanish, and he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Lupe’s full background is here.
We work on contingency. That means we front every cost — the experts, the inspections, the filings, the depositions — and we are paid only if we recover for you. The fee is 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you. The consultation is free, it is confidential, and it is available 24 hours a day through our live staff — not an answering service. Hablamos Español.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case is different. But the deadlines are real, the evidence is perishable, and the insurance company has already started its clock. The question is whether yours has started too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can the family sue if the driver was a friend or relative?
Yes. In Texas, a wrongful death claim is brought against the person or entity whose wrongful conduct caused the death — regardless of the personal relationship between the claimant and the defendant. The driver’s negligence caused the crash, and the law does not exempt friends or family members from accountability for the harm they cause to their passengers. In practice, the claim is usually paid by the driver’s auto insurance, not by the driver personally — which is why the insurance coverage investigation is one of the first things we do. The emotional difficulty of pursuing a claim against someone you know is real, and we handle it with care — but the financial reality is that without a legal claim, the family bears the entire economic burden of a death they did not cause.
How long do I have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
Texas applies a general two-year statute of limitations to both wrongful death and survival actions, running from the date of death. Two years is the outer boundary — but the practical deadline is much sooner. If there is a claim against Andrews County under the Texas Tort Claims Act, the notice-of-claim deadline is typically six months from the incident date — far shorter than two years. And the evidence that decides the case — the vehicle, the EDR data, the skid marks, the cell phone records — disappears on its own schedule that has nothing to do with the statute of limitations. The preservation letter should go out within days, not months.
What if the driver only has minimum insurance?
Texas requires only $30,000 per person and $60,000 per occurrence in liability coverage. For a fatal crash, that is a fraction of the true loss — one night of trauma care can exceed it. But minimum coverage is not the end of the road. First, the driver may carry more than the minimum — the actual policy limits must be confirmed. Second, if the decedent had uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage on her own auto policy, that coverage may stack on top of the driver’s limits. Third — and most importantly — if the fuel-system investigation reveals a defect, the manufacturer becomes a defendant with resources far beyond any auto policy. The products-liability theory is the path to full compensation when the driver’s insurance is inadequate.
Can I sue the car manufacturer if the car caught fire after the crash?
Yes — and this is the theory that can transform the case. Under the crashworthiness doctrine, a vehicle manufacturer has a duty to design a car that protects occupants in foreseeable crashes, including rollovers. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 301 requires fuel systems to withstand crash forces without excessive fuel leakage. If the fuel system failed in this rollover and the failure caused or enhanced the fire, the manufacturer is liable for the injuries the fire added — beyond what the impact alone would have caused. The critical question is whether the passenger was alive after the impact but died in the fire. If she was, the manufacturer may be responsible for her death. This theory requires the physical vehicle, a crashworthiness expert, and a fuel-system engineer — and it requires acting before the vehicle is destroyed.
What evidence needs to be preserved after a fiery crash?
The vehicle itself is the most critical evidence — every fuel system component, every burn pattern, every fracture surface, and the EDR module. Second is the autopsy — soot in the airways, carboxyhemoglobin levels, and burn depth determine whether the survival claim exists. Third is the EDR data — the car’s pre-crash speed, braking, and crash forces. Fourth is the scene — the boulder, the curve geometry, the signage, and any skid marks, which fade within days. Fifth is the driver’s cell phone records — for potential distraction evidence. Sixth is the DPS crash report. A preservation letter to every evidence holder — the impound lot, DPS, the insurers, the cell carrier, and the manufacturer — must go out within days of the crash. If evidence is destroyed after a preservation letter is on file, a court can instruct the jury to assume the worst about what was lost.
How is the value of a wrongful death case determined?
The value is built from several components. Economic damages include the lost earning capacity of the person who died — a 40-year-old has approximately 25 years of projected working life, which represents a significant economic loss — plus funeral and burial expenses and any medical costs incurred before death. Non-economic damages include the mental anguish of the surviving family, the loss of companionship and society, and the loss of the advice and emotional support the person would have provided. The survival claim adds the decedent’s own pre-death pain and suffering — which, in a fire death where the person was conscious, can be among the largest components of the case. A life-care planner prices the future needs. A forensic economist projects the lost earnings and reduces them to present value. The final number is built from these documents — not from a formula, not from software, and not from what the insurance company offers first.
What if the road design contributed to the crash?
A large boulder positioned where a vehicle leaving a curve would strike it may constitute an unreasonably dangerous roadside hazard. The AASHTO Roadside Design Guide — the recognized national standard for roadway safety — calls for clear zones and the removal or shielding of fixed objects on curves where run-off-road crashes are foreseeable. If Andrews County knew or should have known about the boulder and failed to remove it, shield it, or warn of it, a claim may exist under the Texas Tort Claims Act. But this is the hardest theory to win: governmental immunity is a significant barrier, the notice deadline is short — typically six months — and damage caps limit recovery. This theory requires early evaluation by an attorney who can assess the factual basis and file the notice before the deadline passes.
Do I need a lawyer if the insurance company already offered a settlement?
An offer in the first weeks after a fatal crash — before the autopsy is complete, before the vehicle has been inspected, before the products-liability investigation has begun, before the full economic loss has been calculated — is not a settlement. It is a purchase offer for a release, and its purpose is to close the file before the family knows what the case is worth. The insurance company has lawyers and adjusters working on its side from day one. The family deserves the same. The consultation is free, and the fee is contingent — which means it costs nothing to find out whether the offer is fair. In nearly every fatal crash case, the first offer is a fraction of the case’s actual value.
What is a survival claim and how is it different from wrongful death?
A wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family and compensates their losses — the financial support they no longer receive, the companionship they lost, the anguish they suffer. A survival claim belongs to the estate of the person who died and compensates what she experienced — the pain, the terror, the suffering between the injury and death. In a fire death, the survival claim is critically important: if the medical examiner’s findings show the person was alive and breathing during the fire — soot in the airways, elevated carboxyhemoglobin — the survival claim captures the horror of those final moments. In Texas, both claims are typically pursued together, and they are separate sources of compensation.
How much does it cost to hire a wrongful death lawyer?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency — 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We front every cost: the vehicle inspection, the expert witnesses, the crash reconstruction, the life-care planner, the forensic economist, the filing fees, the depositions. If we do not recover for you, you owe us nothing. The consultation is free, confidential, and available 24 hours a day. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español.