You’re Watching the Water Rise and Wondering What Comes Next
If you are reading this in the next forty-eight hours, you are likely doing one of three things. You are sitting in a car on I-45 or US-59 watching the dashboard gauge climb past the tires, wondering whether the white line in the next lane is a road or a river. You are on a porch in Meyerland, Sharpstown, or the Heights watching brown water creep toward the front door, with a phone in one hand and a moving box you did not get to in the other. Or you are in a hospital waiting room, a tow-yard parking lot, or a kitchen table where the power is out and the adjuster’s number is already blinking on the caller ID.
We are the firm that picks up.
This page is not a news article. The National Hurricane Center has issued its first advisory on Potential Storm One — the system forecast to become Tropical Storm Arthur, tracking along the Upper Texas Coast and making landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border late Wednesday into Thursday, with four to eight inches of widespread rainfall, isolated totals up to a foot, and one to four feet of storm surge along the coast. A Tropical Storm Watch runs from Sargent, Texas, to Morgan City, Louisiana. That part is in the forecast.
What is not in the forecast is what happens to you after the water goes down. The insurance call. The medical bill. The apartment complex that knew the retention pond was undersized and leased you the unit anyway. The TxDOT barricade that was not there. The 18-wheeler that hydroplaned into your lane on the Katy Freeway. The downed CenterPoint line in the yard where your child was playing. The drowning that happens in a submerged car on a road that looked fine an hour ago.
We have been doing this work for twenty-seven years. Ralph Manginello has tried cases in federal court, recovered more than $50 million for Texas families since 1998, and fought in the BP Texas City refinery litigation. Lupe Peña spent years on the other side of the table — inside a national insurance-defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software priced your claim down before you ever picked up the phone. He now sits on your side of that table, fully bilingual. Together with our team, we represent Houston and Gulf Coast families in English and Spanish.
The call is free. There is no fee unless we win. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. And the most important thing you can do, right now, while the rain is still coming down, is read the next section carefully. The sixty-day clock that determines whether you can ever sue the State of Texas, Harris County, the City of Houston, or your local MUD is already running.
What Is Happening Off the Texas Coast Right Now
A tropical low over northeastern Mexico is forecast to emerge back over the northwestern Gulf of Mexico by midweek, where it could strengthen into Tropical Storm Arthur before tracking along the Upper Texas Coast and making landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border late Wednesday into Thursday. The National Hurricane Center has issued a Tropical Storm Watch from Sargent, Texas, to Morgan City, Louisiana — a stretch that covers coastal Brazoria, Galveston, and Chambers Counties.
The expected impacts:
- Rainfall. Four to eight inches widespread, with isolated totals up to twelve inches — enough to produce street and urban flooding across the Houston metro and life-threatening flash flooding in the usual low spots.
- Wind. Gusts of thirty to forty miles per hour within the watch area; twenty-five to thirty miles per hour elsewhere across Southeast Texas.
- Storm surge. One to four feet of surge along the upper Texas and Louisiana coast, capable of inundating Galveston Island, the Bolivar Peninsula, and the bay-side communities that have already been washed over by Harvey and Imelda.
- The danger that does not make the cone. Tropical-storm systems do not need to be hurricanes to kill. They kill by rain. Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 and dropped more than fifty inches on parts of Houston. Imelda was barely a tropical storm and still drowned drivers in Jefferson County. The forecast four-to-eight with isolated twelve is enough.
Houston is one of the most flood-prone major metros in the country for reasons that did not begin with this storm and will not end with it. The city sits on a flat coastal plain crossed by bayous — Buffalo Bayou, Brays Bayou, White Oak Bayou, Sims Bayou, and others — that were never designed to carry tropical rainfall. The drainage infrastructure is aging. The impervious cover is enormous. And the same corridors flood every single time: I-45 at North Main, I-10 at the Heights, US-59 at Greens Road, State Highway 288 at the Binz and Blodgett exits, Beltway 8 at multiple underpasses, and the dozens of neighborhood streets that never make the news because nobody drowned there this time.
We bring this up because what happens on those corridors in the next forty-eight hours is going to produce a wave of claims — and the people who make the right moves in the first seventy-two hours will recover, and the people who do not will discover, six months from now, that the evidence they needed is gone and the deadline they did not know about has passed.
If You Were Injured in This Storm — Your Legal Options
The next sections walk through the four situations we are already seeing and the ones we expect to see in the days ahead. Find the one that matches what happened to you or your family.
Scenario One: You Drove Into High Water and Got Trapped
If you were on I-45, I-10, US-59, Loop 610, Beltway 8, SH 288, or any of the surface streets that flooded Wednesday or Thursday, and your vehicle stalled, was swept, or was struck by another vehicle in standing water, you have a Texas personal injury case and a two-year deadline to file it under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003.
The question that will decide the value of your case is fault — and the defense will try to put most of it on you. “Why were you driving in a flood watch?” they will ask. The honest answer is that Texans drive in rain every day of their lives, that Tropical Storm Watches do not prohibit travel, and that the duty of care runs both ways: the driver who hit you still had a duty to reduce speed for hazardous conditions under the federal standard at 49 CFR § 392.14, and TxDOT still had a duty to post barricades and maintain drainage at known flood-prone locations. Texas follows a modified comparative fault rule under § 33.001 — if you are fifty percent or less at fault, you still recover, reduced by your percentage. If you are fifty-one percent or more at fault, you recover nothing. The percentage they pin on you is the case.
The proof you need is already disappearing. TranStar traffic cameras operate on a thirty-to-ninety-day retention cycle. Without a preservation request on file within days, the footage that shows the barricade down, the water rising across your lane, or the other driver hydroplaning into you will be overwritten. We send those requests the day you call. See our guide to what to do after a car accident for the immediate steps that protect your case.
Scenario Two: Your Apartment or Home Flooded and Someone Got Hurt
If a child drowned in a flooded retention pond behind a complex that knew the pond was undersized, if an elderly parent slipped on water that came through a sliding glass door that the landlord knew leaked, if a tenant was electrocuted by a submerged appliance the maintenance staff had been told to replace — that is premises liability, and Texas law treats it as such.
The key piece of evidence in every apartment-flood case is prior knowledge. Did the landlord know? Did the management company know? Did the insurance carrier know? The answer is almost always yes, and almost always documented somewhere: maintenance logs, tenant complaint files, prior insurance claims, internal emails about drainage, the engineer’s report from the last time the retention pond overflowed. We demand those records within days of you calling, because routine document destruction schedules will erase them in thirty to ninety days.
The basic premises-liability duty in Texas has not changed. A landlord who rents you a unit with a known flooding hazard owes you a duty to warn, a duty to mitigate, and a duty not to lease you a dangerous apartment in the first place. When they breach that duty and your family is the one carried out by the fire department, the law gives you a case. See our wrongful death practice page for what that looks like when the worst has happened.
Scenario Three: An 18-Wheeler or Commercial Vehicle Hit You in the Storm
If a commercial truck or tanker struck you during the storm, you have the same case you would have on a dry day — except the storm changes two things.
First, federal law raises the standard of care. Under 49 CFR § 392.14, a commercial driver must exercise extreme caution when hazardous conditions — including rain, flooding, and reduced visibility — adversely affect traction, and must reduce speed. If conditions become dangerous enough, the regulation says the operation must be discontinued and shall not be resumed until the vehicle can be safely operated. A driver who kept moving at highway speed through standing water on I-10 or US-59 violated federal law, and the violation is admissible in your case.
Second, the carrier’s dispatch and weather policy becomes evidence. Did the carrier pull its trucks off the road when the Tropical Storm Watch was issued? Did the company have a written severe-weather protocol, or did the dispatcher just keep loading? Did the driver have the training to recognize when to stop? Those questions are answered by records the carrier is required to keep — driver qualification files under 49 CFR § 391.51, electronic logging device data, dispatch communications, training records. They are not volunteered. We demand them. See our 18-wheeler accident practice page for the full picture of how these cases are built.
An 80,000-pound tractor-trailer carries twenty times the mass of your car. Kinetic energy scales with the square of speed. A rig that does not slow for flooded lanes is a weapon, and the company that put it there is liable for the result.
Scenario Four: You Were Electrocuted by a Downed Line or Struck a Submerged Hazard
If you or a family member was electrocuted by a downed CenterPoint Energy power line, struck a submerged object, or injured by any utility-related hazard in the storm zone, you have a case against the utility under Texas negligence and premises-liability theories. CenterPoint has been a named defendant in multiple post-Harvey wrongful death suits involving downed lines in flooded areas, and the pattern repeats in every major storm. Utility companies have a duty to de-energize lines that fall, to warn the public, and to maintain their infrastructure against foreseeable weather events. When they fail, the result is on them.
If your case involves electrocution and the victim survived but is now unresponsive or cognitively impaired, you are looking at an anoxic brain injury — the same category of injury we handle in our brain injury practice. The first-year costs of severe anoxic injury routinely exceed a million dollars. The lifetime cost is several million more. The compensation available in Texas for these cases is not capped.
Who Can Be Held Liable After a Texas Flooding Accident
The defendant list in a Texas flood-injury case is longer than most people realize. We name them in the order we usually find them.
Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). If a state highway, FM road, or US highway in the impact zone was inadequately drained, missing a barricade, missing high-water warning signs, or had a known chronic flooding problem that TxDOT failed to address, TxDOT is a defendant under the Texas Tort Claims Act. The waiver of sovereign immunity for premises defects is found at Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 101.021. The 60-day pre-suit notice is at § 101.101. The two-year suit deadline is at § 101.106.
Harris County and the Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD). HCFCD operates the regional bayou system. When a bayou overtops its banks because a maintenance project was deferred, because a regional detention basin was inadequate, or because a flood-warning system was not activated in time, the county is in the case. Harris County has been a defendant in Harvey litigation and will be again.
City of Houston and Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs). City storm sewers, neighborhood drainage, and the operation of municipal retention basins are city responsibility. MUDs handle subdivision-scale drainage in much of unincorporated Harris County and the ETJ. Both are governmental defendants for purposes of the Texas Tort Claims Act, both require 60-day notice, and both can be sued for negligent operation of flood-control infrastructure.
Property owners, landlords, and commercial premises. Apartment complexes, shopping centers, hotels, and parking lots in the impact zone. Premises liability. The deeper the prior-knowledge evidence, the larger the case.
Developers and construction companies. Post-Harvey litigation produced successful claims against developers who filled wetlands, altered natural drainage, or built in floodways without adequate mitigation. The Perry Homes, Lennar, and other developer class actions generated meaningful settlements and produced litigation templates still in active use today.
Commercial motor carriers. When 18-wheelers, tankers, or delivery vans strike vehicles or pedestrians in storm conditions, the carrier is a defendant. The federal FMCSA emergency exception under 49 CFR § 390.23 may temporarily suspend certain hours-of-service rules in a declared emergency — but it does not suspend CDL requirements, drug and alcohol testing, or vehicle maintenance standards. The carrier remains on the hook.
Utility companies. CenterPoint Energy and any other electric utility serving the impact zone. Downed-line electrocution, failure to de-energize, failure to warn.
Insurance carriers (first-party). Your own homeowner, flood, auto, or commercial insurer may owe you benefits they are delaying or denying. Texas Insurance Code Chapter 541 (unfair settlement practices) and Chapter 542 (prompt payment) provide for an eighteen percent statutory penalty plus attorneys’ fees when an insurer handles a claim in bad faith. The post-storm insurance claims surge is one of the most reliable mass-tort pipelines in Texas plaintiff practice. See our insurance claim practice page for the framework.
The 60-Day Texas Tort Claims Act Deadline
If a government entity — TxDOT, Harris County, the City of Houston, a MUD, the Texas Department of Public Safety — is potentially at fault in your case, you have sixty days from the date of the incident to serve written notice on the proper governmental officer under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 101.101. Sixty days. Not sixty business days. Sixty calendar days.
If you miss that deadline, your claim against the governmental entity is barred — and you cannot get it back. The Texas Supreme Court has tightened this rule in recent years, and the 2019 H.B. 2864 amendments to the Tort Claims Act reinforced the strictness of the notice requirement while expanding plaintiff access to certain drainage and maintenance records.
Here is what the sixty-day notice must contain, per the statute: the name of the injured person, the date, time, and place of the incident, and a description of the injury or damage sustained. It must be served on the right person — the risk management division for the state, the county clerk for the county, the mayor or city secretary for the municipality, the superintendent for a school district. Service by certified mail, return receipt requested, is the safest method. We handle this paperwork on every case where a governmental entity is even a possible defendant, because the cost of sending the notice is small and the cost of missing the deadline is total.
The bottom line: if you were injured by a flooded TxDOT roadway, by a county-maintained drainage feature, by a city storm sewer, by a MUD retention pond, by a police vehicle, or by any other governmental actor, the sixty-day clock is running right now. We file that notice for you within the first week of representation — usually the same day you retain us.
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 (statute of limitations): “A person must bring suit for personal injury or wrongful death not later than two years after the cause of action accrues.” The two-year deadline runs alongside the sixty-day TCA notice — and on a storm case, both are measured from the incident, not from when you decided to call a lawyer.
What We Are Doing Right Now to Preserve Your Case
Storm evidence dies fast. Every day you wait is a day a camera overwrites, a maintenance log is purged, a witness phone is lost, and a social-media post disappears. Here is what we send and demand in the first seventy-two hours of a storm case, and how fast each piece of evidence can legally disappear if we do not.
NHC advisories and NWS warnings. Public records preserved by NOAA, but the specific advisory that was in effect at the moment of your injury may be revised or archived in a way that loses context. We capture and preserve the version that mattered.
TranStar traffic cameras. Houston TranStar operates more than one thousand traffic cameras across the region. Footage from flooded roadways, intersections, and high-water locations during the storm is essential evidence. TranStar’s retention cycle is roughly thirty to ninety days, and the footage is not preserved for any specific incident unless a request is on file. We serve preservation requests within forty-eight hours of being retained.
TxDOT maintenance and drainage records. Subject to routine destruction schedules. The preservation letter must be in TxDOT’s hands within days of the storm, before the post-storm cleanup erases the paper trail of what was inspected, what was repaired, and what was not.
Police reports, fire reports, EMS records, and 911 audio. We file Texas Public Information Act requests within the first one to two weeks. Many agencies have thirty-to-ninety-day retention. 911 audio often requires a specific litigation-hold request because it is treated differently from the written call log.
Witness cell phone video, dashcam footage, and security camera footage. Witnesses post storm footage to social media and then delete it. Dashcam and doorbell cameras (Ring, Nest, Blink, Wyze) hold footage for days to weeks before overwriting. We identify witnesses through the police report and other evidence, then issue preservation subpoenas within thirty days. We also deploy social-media monitoring tools to capture and download public posts before they are removed.
Commercial vehicle EDR data, ELD records, and dispatch communications. For 18-wheeler and tanker cases, we serve a 49 CFR § 379 preservation letter on the carrier within the first week. The engine-control-module data, electronic-logging-device records, and dispatch communications are the spine of the case against the carrier. If we do not get the letter out before the carrier’s preservation window closes, the records disappear.
Apartment and commercial property maintenance records, prior flood history, and tenant complaint files. The single most important piece of evidence in any premises-flood case is prior knowledge — did the landlord know? Did the management company know? Did they have it in writing? We send litigation-hold letters within days of representation, because routine document destruction will erase this evidence in thirty to ninety days.
Insurance claim files. For first-party bad-faith claims, the carrier’s claim file is the case. Adjuster notes, engineering reports, internal communications, and the chronology of the handling are all produced only after litigation begins. We file the first-party claim immediately and serve a litigation hold with the bad-faith complaint.
Meteorological expert reconstruction data. NEXRAD radar data is preserved by NOAA; ALERT gauge data from the Harris County Flood Control District is preserved in primary retention for a defined window. We request both immediately, before they roll into archive-only access that makes expert analysis harder.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook — What Is Coming for You in the Next Two Weeks
Lupe spent years on the other side of this — inside a national insurance-defense firm, in the rooms where the playbook was built. Here is what is coming for you, in the order it is coming.
Play One: The friendly “just checking in” call. Within forty-eight hours of the storm, an adjuster will call. The adjuster will sound kind. The adjuster will ask how you are doing, whether you are back in your home, whether the kids are okay. Then the adjuster will ask you to walk them through what happened — on a recording. Every word you say on that call will be transcribed, summarized, and used against you later. Texas law gives you the right to decline the recorded statement. Use it. See our guide to what not to say to an insurance adjuster for the specific traps.
Play Two: The fast check. A first offer will arrive quickly — often within days — and the check will be attached to a release that signs away your right to sue for the full value of your case. The offer will be calculated by software that has never met you, and it will be calibrated to feel like relief. It is not relief. It is the cheapest settlement the carrier can get you to sign before your MRI results, your specialist opinions, and your long-term prognosis are in the record.
Play Three: The independent engineer who is not independent. The carrier will send an engineer or adjuster to your property to “evaluate the damage.” That engineer works for the carrier or for a firm the carrier pays. The report they write becomes the carrier’s anchor in the negotiation. You are not obligated to let them in without your own representative present. We attend these inspections and make sure the scope is honest.
Play Four: The surveillance. If your injury is significant enough, the carrier will hire an investigator to watch you. They will photograph you at the grocery store, at physical therapy, at your kid’s soccer game. Anything you do that looks inconsistent with the injury they have on paper becomes an exhibit. Be careful what you post on social media during this period — the investigator is reading it.
Play Five: The delay. When the offer does not come quickly enough, when the calls stop returning, when the adjuster “has to check with supervisor” — that delay is not administrative. It is strategy. Texas Insurance Code § 542.058 imposes an eighteen percent statutory penalty plus attorneys’ fees on carriers who unreasonably delay payment. We use that statute to convert delay into leverage. See our guide to denied claims for the full framework.
The counter to every one of these plays is the same: representation, in writing, from a lawyer the adjuster knows will try the case. The playbook only works when the other side is unrepresented.
What Your Case Is Worth
Texas does not cap non-economic damages in general personal injury or wrongful death cases. That single fact is why Harris County is the venue of choice for storm cases across the Gulf Coast. Juries here have produced six-, seven-, eight-, and nine-figure verdicts in flood cases. The range you should expect:
- Low end, $25,000 to $250,000. Minor property damage and soft-tissue injuries. Mostly vehicle submersion cases with no significant physical injury.
- Mid-range, $500,000 to $3,000,000. Serious orthopedic injuries requiring surgery, hydroplane accidents with permanent consequences, commercial-vehicle crashes in storm conditions, significant apartment flood losses with documented health effects.
- High end, $5,000,000 to $25,000,000 and up. Catastrophic injuries — traumatic brain injury, anoxic brain injury from near-drowning, spinal cord injury, severe burns, amputations — and most wrongful death claims. Our firm has recovered $5 million or more on brain-injury cases and $3.8 million or more on amputation cases for Texas families.
- Extreme high, $25,000,000 to $100,000,000 and beyond. Cases involving egregious municipal misconduct, mass-tort class actions, or commercial-carrier gross negligence during a named storm. Punitive damages in Texas are capped at the greater of $200,000 or two times economic damages plus an amount of non-economic damages not to exceed $750,000, under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 41.008 — but the compensatory damages underneath the punitives are uncapped, and Harris County juries return verdicts at that level when the evidence supports it.
The economic damages in a flood case stack the way a tropical storm stacks — emergency room, helicopter transport, intensive care, multiple surgeries, months of inpatient rehabilitation, outpatient therapy, durable medical equipment, home and vehicle modifications, lost wages from the day of the storm forward, diminished earning capacity for the rest of your working life, and the household services you can no longer perform. The collateral source rule in Texas allows you to recover the full billed amount of your medical expenses even if your health insurance paid less — a major multiplier on economic damages.
The non-economic damages — physical pain, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium — are the part the insurance company’s software does not see and cannot value. That is the part a Harris County jury values for you. We present that part with witnesses, with photographs, with the life you lived before the storm and the life you are living now.
The wrongful death damages under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.002 include pecuniary loss, loss of inheritance, loss of services, loss of care and counsel and advice, and loss of companionship and society. The survival action under § 71.021 allows the estate to recover the decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering. Where the conduct was willful, wanton, or grossly negligent — a landlord who rented a known-flood-prone unit, a municipality that ignored years of drainage complaints — punitive damages are available.
We will not promise you a number. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we will tell you is the range the evidence supports and the venue supports, and the work we will do to put your case at the top of that range.
How a Storm Case Is Actually Built — From Preservation to Verdict
Here is how a flood-injury case moves from the night of the storm to a result that funds your recovery. We walk it the way we walk it in our own case files.
Week one. The preservation letters go out the day you call. TranStar, TxDOT, HCFCD, the local police agency, the commercial carrier, the apartment complex, the utility company, the insurance carrier. Each letter is tailored to the records and footage that exist and the deadlines they face. For a governmental defendant, the 60-day Tort Claims notice is drafted and served within the first week — usually within forty-eight hours. For a commercial carrier in a truck case, the 49 CFR § 379 preservation letter is mailed certified the same day.
Week two to week four. Field investigators go out to capture what is still on the ground: drone footage of still-flooded areas, photographs of high-water marks on buildings and bridges, measurements of debris lines, walk-throughs of damaged properties before cleanup erases the scene. We retain a meteorological expert to reconstruct the storm at the specific time and place of the incident, a hydrological expert to model the drainage failure if one is in the case, and an accident-reconstruction expert if a vehicle is involved. We file the Texas Public Information Act requests for police, fire, EMS, and 911 records.
Month two to month six. The first-party claim is filed if appropriate. The Tort Claims notice period expires, and we evaluate whether to file suit against the governmental defendant. We serve written discovery on the commercial carrier demanding the driver qualification file, the ELD records, the dispatch communications, the training materials, and the weather policy. We take the recorded statement of the property manager, the apartment maintenance supervisor, and the eyewitnesses identified in the police report. We retain a life-care planner and economist to project the lifetime cost of a catastrophic injury.
Month six to month eighteen. Dispositive motions, expert designations, depositions. The deposition of the corporate representative of the apartment complex is where the prior-knowledge evidence usually surfaces. The deposition of the carrier’s safety director is where the weather policy either exists or does not. The deposition of the TxDOT maintenance supervisor is where the drainage history comes out.
Month eighteen to trial. Mediation in Harris County is typically ordered within nine to twelve months of suit. We prepare a detailed demand package that ties the evidence to the damages and serves it under the Stowers doctrine — the Texas common-law duty that obligates an insurer to settle within policy limits when a reasonable settlement demand is made and the verdict potential exceeds limits. When the insurer fails to settle, the bad-faith exposure expands under Texas Insurance Code Chapter 541. When the case cannot settle, we try it.
Harris County juries have returned verdicts in flood cases that exceed available insurance. That is why the Stowers strategy and the bad-faith exposure under Chapter 541 are the spine of the negotiation in every case with real damages. See our guide to car accident settlements for how the negotiation framework works across claim types.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a storm-injury lawsuit in Texas?
Two years from the date of the incident for personal injury and wrongful death, under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003. If a government entity is a defendant, you also have sixty days from the incident to serve written notice under § 101.101 of the Texas Tort Claims Act. Both deadlines run from the same date — and both can bar your case forever if you miss them.
What if I was partly at fault for driving into high water?
Texas follows a modified comparative fault rule under § 33.001. If you are fifty percent or less at fault, you can still recover, with your damages reduced by your percentage. If you are fifty-one percent or more at fault, you recover nothing. The percentage the defense pins on you is money — and the defense will try to pin as much as possible. We push back with the federal standard (49 CFR § 392.14), with the duty of the governmental defendant to warn and barricade, and with the actual conditions you faced. See our guide to partial fault.
Do I have to give a recorded statement to the insurance company?
No. Texas law gives you the right to decline the recorded statement. We strongly recommend you do, at least until you have talked to a lawyer. The adjuster’s questions are designed to get you to commit to facts and minimize symptoms before you have the medical evidence to back up your claim. See our guide to what not to say to an insurance adjuster.
My insurance company is denying my flood claim or underpaying me. What can I do?
Texas Insurance Code Chapter 541 prohibits unfair settlement practices, and Chapter 542 imposes an eighteen percent statutory penalty plus attorneys’ fees when an insurer unreasonably delays or underpays a claim. We file the claim, request the claim file, and litigate when the carrier refuses to pay what the policy owes. See our guide to denied claims and our insurance claim practice page.
What if my child drowned in a flooded retention pond?
You have a wrongful death case under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.002, and a premises liability case against the property owner. The key evidence is prior knowledge — did the owner know the pond was dangerous, did they receive prior complaints, did prior incidents occur. We send preservation letters within days and retain a hydrological expert to reconstruct the failure. See our wrongful death practice page.
What if I was electrocuted by a downed power line?
You have a case against the utility under Texas negligence and premises-liability theories. The utility has a duty to de-energize lines that fall, to warn the public, and to maintain infrastructure for foreseeable weather. If the injury resulted in an anoxic brain injury, see our brain injury practice page and our guide to brain injury lawsuits.
How much does it cost to hire a storm-injury lawyer?
We work on contingency. There is no fee unless we win. The consultation is free, the case evaluation is free, and you pay nothing out of pocket. Our fee is a percentage of the recovery, and if there is no recovery, you owe us nothing. See our guide to contingency fees.
Is it worth getting a lawyer for a storm-injury case?
Yes — and not because we say so. The insurance carrier has a team. The governmental defendant has a team. The commercial carrier has a team. Without representation, you are negotiating against teams that have done this a thousand times. With representation, the playbook changes. See our guide on whether personal-injury lawyers are worth it.
What if I already gave a recorded statement or signed a release?
It depends on what was said and what was signed. Recorded statements can sometimes be impeached or contextualized. Releases can sometimes be set aside for fraud, mutual mistake, or unconscionability. The earlier you call us, the more options we have. Do not sign anything else.
What about my own flood insurance through FEMA or the National Flood Insurance Program?
NFIP claims have their own rules, deadlines, and administrative process. The standard two-year suit deadline applies but is layered on top of the proof-of-loss requirements and the adjustment process. We work with NFIP claims as part of the full recovery, alongside any private flood, homeowner, auto, or umbrella coverage that applies.
What if a member of my family was killed in this storm?
Texas wrongful death claims under § 71.002 may be brought by the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the deceased. Survival claims under § 71.021 belong to the estate. Punitive damages are available where the defendant’s conduct was willful, wanton, or grossly negligent. The two-year statute of limitations under § 16.003 runs from the date of death. We handle these cases with the dignity they require and the trial-readiness they demand. See our wrongful death practice page.
Why Our Firm — The Texas Gulf Coast Is Our Home
We have been doing this work for more than twenty-seven years. Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, was a journalist before he was a trial lawyer — a trained storyteller who became a championship-level litigator, admitted to the State Bar of Texas in 1998 (Bar Card #24007597) and to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He has recovered more than $50 million for Texas families since 1998 and fought in the BP Texas City refinery explosion litigation. See Ralph Manginello’s full biography.
Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, was a third-generation Texan with family roots tying to the King Ranch before he became a lawyer. He spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours — and now sits on your side of the table. He is fully bilingual and serves Houston families in Spanish and English. See Lupe Peña’s full biography.
Our practice covers the full range of personal injury matters across the Gulf Coast and across Texas — 18-wheeler accidents, car accidents, wrongful death, brain injuries, refinery accidents, offshore injuries, construction accidents, toxic tort, insurance claim disputes, and more. We also handle workers’ compensation and select criminal defense matters. See our full practice areas.
Our Houston office is at 1177 West Loop South, Suite 1600, Houston, Texas 77027. We have additional offices in Austin and Beaumont. We answer the phone twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The consultation is free. There is no fee unless we win. We serve Houston and Gulf Coast families fully in Spanish — Hablamos Español. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can tell you is the process, the law, the venue, and the work. What we cannot guarantee is the result. We can guarantee that we will fight for the full value of your case — and that we will not stop until the evidence is frozen, the deadline is met, and your side has been heard.
If you are reading this in the storm — if your car is in standing water, if your home is flooding, if a loved one has been taken to the hospital — call us first. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The sixty-day Tort Claims notice goes out within the first week. The insurance adjuster does not get to talk to you until we are on the line. The call costs you nothing, and it may save your case. Reach us anytime through our contact page.
1-888-ATTY-911. Free 24/7 consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español.