Midland Car & Truck Wreck Lawyer — Permian Basin MVA Resource
If you are reading this from a hospital bed, from a kitchen table stacked with towing receipts and insurance letters, or from a phone in a parking lot where the glass is still on the ground — we are talking to you. A wreck in Midland does not feel like a statistic when it is yours. It feels like the floor dropped out from under everything you were going to do today, this week, this year. The car is wrecked. The body hurts in ways you cannot always name. The phone is ringing with someone from an insurance company who sounds friendly and is not. And somewhere in Midland County, the clock on your right to recover has already started ticking.
Midland sits in the heart of the Permian Basin — oil country, where the roads carry a mix of passenger vehicles, interstate freight, and heavy oilfield trucks that most American cities never see. Interstate 20 runs through this city east to west. Highway 191 connects Midland to Odessa twenty miles down the road. On any given day, those corridors carry water haulers, frac sand transporters, crude oil tankers, and equipment trucks alongside families heading to work, to school, or to events downtown — including the major conventions and community gatherings that bring visitors to the Bush Convention Center in the heart of Midland. When a city hosts a convention and visitors fill downtown streets they have never driven before, the traffic density goes up and the margin for error goes down. More cars on unfamiliar roads. More pedestrians, including children. More risk. That is not a prediction of disaster. It is just physics — and the reason we built this page.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We handle car accident cases and commercial-truck crash cases across Texas, including the Permian Basin. This page is not about a specific wreck — it is the resource we wish every person in Midland had before the adjuster called, before the tow yard charged its third day of storage, before the ER bill arrived, and before anyone signed anything. Everything here is Texas law, real evidence clocks, and the actual mechanics of how a wreck case is built and won. If you want to talk to us after reading it, the call is free: 1-888-ATTY-911.
What Texas Law Says After a Midland Wreck
Texas personal-injury law is built on three pillars that decide almost every wreck case: the deadline to file, the rule on shared fault, and the insurance reality. Knowing all three before you talk to an adjuster is the first protection we can give you.
The Two-Year Deadline
Texas gives you two years to file a personal-injury lawsuit after a wreck. Not two years to call a lawyer — two years to have a case on file in a courthouse. The same two-year window applies to wrongful-death claims. This is not a soft guideline. It is a hard wall. Miss it and the court will dismiss your case no matter how strong it is, no matter how badly you were hurt, no matter how clear the other driver’s fault.
A person must bring suit for personal injury “not later than two years after the day the cause of action accrues.”
That language — drawn from Texas’s statute of limitations for personal injury — is the clock that governs your case. There are narrow exceptions (the discovery rule for injuries that manifest later, tolling for minors), but the baseline is two years, and the burden is on you to know it. The insurance company knows it. The adjuster who calls you the week of the wreck knows it. And some adjusters use it — dragging out “review” of your claim until the window narrows, then offering a fraction of what you need because they know you are running out of time to do anything about it.
Texas Comparative Negligence — the 51% Bar
Texas follows a modified comparative-negligence rule. In plain English: if you were partly at fault for the wreck, you can still recover — but your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, and if you are 51% or more at fault, you recover nothing. The 50% line is the cliff. At 50% fault, you recover half your damages. At 51%, you recover zero.
This is why the adjuster’s first move is almost always to pin percentage points on you. Every point of fault they can assign to you is money off their payout. “You were speeding slightly.” “You didn’t signal.” “You could have stopped sooner.” Each of these is not just a factual argument — it is a dollar calculation. And the adjuster is making it before you have a lawyer, before the police report is final, before the black-box data has been pulled, and before anyone has measured the skid marks.
Texas Minimum Insurance — and Why It Is Never Enough
Texas requires every driver to carry at least $30,000 in bodily-injury coverage per person, $60,000 per crash, and $25,000 for property damage. One night in a trauma center can pass $30,000 before sunrise. A serious brain injury or spinal injury runs into the hundreds of thousands or millions. The at-fault driver’s minimum policy is a fraction of what a catastrophic wreck costs — which is why identifying every source of coverage, including your own uninsured/underinsured-motorist (UM/UIM) protection, is half the value of the case.
Texas law requires insurers to offer you UM/UIM coverage. If you did not explicitly reject it in writing, you likely have it. That coverage can be the difference between recovering real money and recovering nothing when the at-fault driver carried only the legal minimum — or worse, carried no insurance at all.
The Permian Basin Truck Threat on Midland’s Roads
Midland is not a sleepy West Texas town. It is the economic capital of the Permian Basin — the most productive oil field in the United States. The trucks that serve that field are on your roads every day, and when one of them hits a passenger car, the physics are devastating.
The Weight Disparity
A loaded tractor-trailer can weigh 80,000 pounds. A passenger car weighs about 4,000. That is a 20-to-1 ratio — the truck weighs as much as twenty of your cars stacked together. When the two collide, the people in the car absorb the overwhelming majority of the violent change in velocity, and that change in velocity — what crash scientists call delta-V — is the single best predictor of how badly the people inside will be hurt. The numbers tell the rest of the story: in fatal crashes involving large trucks, roughly two out of every three people killed are not in the truck. They are in the other vehicle.
The Stopping Distance
A fully loaded tractor-trailer traveling at 65 miles per hour needs approximately 525 feet to come to a complete stop under ideal conditions — roughly the length of two football fields. A passenger car at the same speed needs about 316 feet. When a truck driver is following too closely, or is distracted, or has been behind the wheel too long, those extra 200 feet are the difference between a near-miss and a catastrophe. Speed makes it worse: the energy of a moving vehicle grows with the square of its speed, so a truck going 70 mph is carrying dramatically more destructive energy than one going 60 — not 10% more, but 36% more.
The Oilfield Truck Problem
The Permian Basin puts a specific category of heavy truck on Midland’s roads that most American cities never see: water haulers carrying hundreds of barrels of produced water, frac sand transporters, crude oil tankers, pump trucks, and wireline trucks. These vehicles operate on demanding schedules, on roads that were built for a fraction of this traffic, often driven by workers on long shifts in an industry that runs around the clock. We handle oilfield truck accidents across the Permian Basin, and the risks on Highway 191 and the I-20 corridor through Midland are exactly the risks that page was built to address.
Federal Hours-of-Service Rules
Federal law caps a commercial truck driver at 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour shift, after which the law says the driver is too tired to be on the road. The carrier must keep the driver’s electronic logs — the Record of Duty Status — for six months. After that, federal law allows the company to destroy them. Those logs are the single best proof of a fatigued driver, and they have an expiration date. This is why a preservation letter — a formal demand that the carrier freeze all logs, data, and records — has to go out in days, not months. We do not wait.
Who Is Responsible When a Wreck Happens in Midland
Figuring out who is responsible is not as simple as “who hit whom.” A wreck can pull in multiple defendants, each with its own insurance, each pointing at the others.
The Other Driver
The most obvious defendant is the at-fault driver. If they were speeding, distracted, drunk, running a red light, or simply not paying attention, their negligence is the spine of the case. Their auto insurance is the first layer of coverage — but as we explained, the Texas minimum of $30,000 per person may barely cover a single emergency-room visit.
The Trucking Company
When a commercial truck is involved, the company that operates the truck is on the hook for its driver’s negligence under the legal doctrine of respondeat superior — the employer is responsible for the employee’s actions on the job. But trucking companies routinely try to distance themselves from the driver, claiming the driver was an “independent contractor” rather than an employee. Federal leasing rules help here: when a carrier’s name is on the trailer and the carrier has exclusive control of the truck under the lease, the law treats that carrier as responsible for the truck on the road. The written lease is a document we demand early.
Beyond the driver’s negligence, the carrier itself can be directly liable for its own corporate choices: negligent hiring (putting a driver with a bad record behind the wheel), negligent training, negligent retention (keeping a driver after repeated problems), and negligent maintenance (running a truck with bad brakes or worn tires). The driver-qualification file — required by federal law — shows what the company knew about the driver before and during employment. The daily vehicle inspection report shows whether the truck’s defects were documented and whether anyone certified the repairs. These are separate from the driver’s moment of carelessness — they are the company’s own decisions, and they can multiply the value of the case.
The Bar or Restaurant (Dram Shop)
Texas law allows a claim against a business that over-served alcohol to a driver who was obviously intoxicated and then caused a wreck. This is the Texas dram shop law, and it can add a second defendant — and a second insurance policy — to a drunk-driving case. The evidence here includes receipts, witness statements, and the establishment’s own training and service records.
Your Own Insurance (UM/UIM and PIP)
When the at-fault driver has no insurance or not enough, your own policy may step in. Uninsured/underinsured-motorist coverage pays you when the other driver’s coverage is inadequate. Personal Injury Protection (PIP) covers medical bills and lost wages regardless of fault. These are first-party claims against your own insurer — and even your own insurer can act in bad faith by delaying or denying a valid claim.
The Evidence That Proves Your Case — and How Fast It Dies
Every wreck case is a race against the clock — not the statute-of-limitations clock, but the evidence clock. The proof that wins your case is perishable, and some of it dies faster than you would believe.
The Vehicle’s Black Box (Event Data Recorder)
Nearly every modern car carries an event data recorder — a black box — that, by federal definition, activates the moment a crash changes the vehicle’s speed by as little as five miles per hour. It captures the seconds before impact: vehicle speed, brake application, throttle position, seatbelt status, and the change in velocity at impact. If the airbags deployed, federal law requires that recording to be locked so it cannot be overwritten. If the airbags did not deploy, the recording can be written over the next time the car is driven hard. The car’s black box is a confession in numbers, recorded before anyone had a story to tell — but it has to be pulled with the right forensic tool before it disappears or the vehicle is crushed at a salvage yard.
The Truck’s Engine Computer and Electronic Logs
A commercial truck’s engine control module records hard-brake events, speed, RPM, and throttle — but the memory is small and it overwrites itself when the truck is driven again. The electronic logging device records the driver’s hours of service — but federal law only makes the carrier keep those logs for six months. The driver-qualification file must be kept for the duration of employment plus three years. The daily vehicle inspection report — the document that shows whether bad brakes or bald tires were written up before the wreck — only has to be kept for three months. Three months. The shortest retention clock in the entire federal trucking regime.
Scene Evidence
Skid marks fade. Road debris gets swept. Traffic-signal timing data, if the intersection is signalized, may be available from the city or county but is not kept indefinitely. Dash-camera footage from passing vehicles, business surveillance from nearby buildings, and the police crash report all have their own timelines. The police report in Midland is generated by the Midland Police Department or the Texas Department of Public Safety (for highway crashes), and it typically takes 5 to 10 business days to become available — but it is based on what the officer saw after the fact, not what the cameras and the black boxes recorded in real time.
Medical Records
Your medical records are the proof of your injury. The emergency-room triage note, the initial GCS score, the CT scan, the MRI, the surgical report, the physical-therapy notes — these create a contemporaneous timeline of your harm. Hospitals keep records for years, but the quality and completeness of the early records matter enormously. If you delay seeking treatment, the gap between the wreck and the first medical visit becomes the defense’s favorite argument: “If she was really hurt, why did she wait three days to see a doctor?”
The Preservation Letter
The preservation letter is the single most important first step. It is a formal written demand that every potential defendant — the other driver, the trucking company, the bar, the business whose camera caught the wreck — freeze all evidence relating to the crash. It puts them on notice that evidence destruction is now spoliation, which can trigger court sanctions including an adverse-inference instruction (the jury may be told to assume the destroyed evidence would have helped you). The preservation letter goes out the day you call us — not after weeks of “review,” not after the adjuster has finished building the defense file.
What Your Midland Wreck Case Is Worth
No honest lawyer can tell you what your case is worth without seeing the medical records, the police report, the insurance policies, and the facts of the crash. But we can tell you how the number is built — and why the adjuster’s first offer is almost always a fraction of it.
Economic Damages
Economic damages are the money you can count on a receipt: past and future medical bills, past and future lost wages, lost earning capacity, property damage, and the cost of future care. For a catastrophic injury — a traumatic brain injury, a spinal cord injury, an amputation — the future-care number is built by a certified life-care planner who projects every surgery, therapy, medication, wheelchair, and caregiver hour across the injured person’s expected lifespan, then a forensic economist reduces that stream to present value. That is how a serious injury becomes a multi-million-dollar figure — not through drama, but through arithmetic.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages are the human losses no receipt can measure: pain, suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, and the loss of the companionship and support that a family member provided. In a wrongful-death case, these include the grief and the empty chair — the things that cannot be invoiced but are real and devastating. We handle wrongful death claims, and the measure of what a lost life was worth to a family is not a spreadsheet exercise. It is a story told to a jury.
Punitive Damages
When the defendant’s conduct was more than negligent — when it was grossly negligent, reckless, or intentional — Texas allows punitive damages to punish the wrongdoer and deter similar conduct. A trucking company that knowingly ran a driver past the legal hours limit, a bar that served a visibly intoxicated driver a dozen drinks, a carrier that ignored a driver’s string of prior crashes — these are the facts that push a case from ordinary negligence into punitive territory.
The Insurance Tower
The at-fault driver’s policy is the first layer. If a commercial truck is involved, the federal minimum is $750,000 — and many carriers carry far more in layered excess and umbrella policies. Your own UM/UIM coverage stacks on top when the at-fault coverage is inadequate. Identifying every policy, in the order they pay, is half the work of maximizing recovery. The adjuster’s first offer is based on the first layer alone — not the full tower.
Hospital Liens
Texas law allows a hospital that treated your injuries to file a lien against your settlement or judgment. The lien means the hospital can take its cut directly from your recovery before you see a dime. Addressing that lien — negotiating it down, challenging its validity, or structuring the settlement to minimize its impact — is part of what a lawyer does. An adjuster who offers you a quick check before the lien is addressed is not doing you a favor. The lien follows the money, and if you cash the check without dealing with it, you may end up owing the hospital out of your own pocket.
Honest Case Values
The firm has recovered more than $50 million across its practice, including a $5 million-plus brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement, and a $2.5 million-plus truck-crash recovery. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can tell you is that the adjuster’s first offer is designed to close the file cheaply, not to make you whole — and that the gap between that offer and what a case is actually worth is the gap a lawyer exists to close.
The Injuries We See in Midland Crashes
A wreck on I-20 or Highway 191 does not produce minor injuries when a 4,000-pound car meets an 80,000-pound truck. The injuries we see in Permian Basin crashes are serious, and proving them is a medical and legal fight from day one.
Traumatic Brain Injury
A brain injury does not require a direct blow to the head or a loss of consciousness. The sudden deceleration of a crash causes the brain to twist inside the skull, stretching and tearing the nerve fibers that connect its regions — a mechanism called diffuse axonal injury. The standard ER CT scan comes back normal in roughly 90% of mild traumatic brain injuries — not because nothing is wrong, but because the damage is microscopic tearing the scan was never designed to see. The word “mild” is a hospital triage word, not a promise about your future. More than one in three people who score a 13 on the 15-point Glasgow Coma Scale — the top of the “mild” range — have potentially life-threatening bleeds in the brain. At least one in seven people with a “mild” brain injury never fully recovers; the headaches, the memory gaps, the personality changes, the short fuse — these become permanent. We handle brain injury cases, and the proof is built from neuropsychological testing, advanced imaging, and the testimony of people who knew the person before.
Spinal Cord Injury
A spinal cord injury from a crash can mean a wheelchair for life and millions of dollars in medical care. The national data that tracks these injuries puts the first-year cost of a neck-level injury at roughly $1.4 million and the lifetime care for a young adult at more than $6 million — and that figure deliberately excludes every lost paycheck. The higher the injury sits on the spine, the wider the paralysis, and the more life it quietly takes: a cervical injury can mean paralysis from the neck down, round-the-clock care, and a shortened lifespan.
Whiplash and Soft-Tissue Injury
Do not let anyone tell you whiplash is minor. The forces that snap the head forward and back in a rear-end collision can tear the muscles, ligaments, and fascia of the neck and shoulders — injuries that do not show on a standard X-ray but cause months or years of pain, limited motion, and headaches. The defense playbook on soft-tissue injuries is predictable: “The CT was normal, so nothing is wrong.” The counter is the medical literature, the treating physician’s findings, and the documented progression of symptoms over time.
Fractures and Internal Injury
High-energy crashes produce broken bones — ribs, femurs, pelvis, facial bones — and internal organ damage from seatbelt forces, steering-column impact, or blunt trauma. A fractured pelvis can mean weeks of non-weight-bearing and surgery. A ruptured spleen or lacerated liver is a life-threatening emergency. These injuries have clear diagnostic proof (CT, MRI, operative reports), but the defense will still argue about pre-existing conditions and future-treatment necessity.
The Delayed-Injury Trap
Some injuries do not declare themselves at the scene. Adrenaline masks pain. A concussion may not become obvious until the next day. Internal bleeding may not produce symptoms for hours. This is why we tell every client: get checked by a doctor immediately, even if you feel “okay.” The gap between the wreck and the first medical visit is the defense’s favorite argument. “If she was really hurt, why did she wait?” Close that gap before it opens.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How to Counter It
The adjuster who calls you within days of the wreck is not your friend. They are a trained professional whose job is to close your file for the smallest amount possible. Here are the plays we see most often — and the counter to each.
Play 1: The Recorded Statement
The adjuster calls and asks you to “just tell us what happened” on a recording. The call is engineered to get you to say “I’m feeling okay” or “I think I’m fine” — language that will be quoted back to you months later to minimize your injury. The counter: do not give a recorded statement without a lawyer. You have no legal obligation to let the at-fault driver’s insurer record you. Your statement to your own insurer is different — that may be required by your policy — but even then, you should know what you are doing before you pick up the phone.
Play 2: The Quick Check
A check arrives fast — sometimes within a week of the wreck — with a release document attached. The release says that by cashing the check, you give up your right to seek any further compensation. The check may look generous relative to your current bills, but it is designed to arrive before the real injuries are diagnosed — before the MRI shows the torn rotator cuff, before the neuropsychological testing documents the brain injury, before the surgeon says you need a spinal fusion. The counter: never sign a release without understanding the full scope of your injuries. That scope cannot be known in the first weeks. The check is a trap, not a favor.
Play 3: The “Pre-Existing Condition” Argument
The adjuster pulls your medical history and attributes your current pain to a prior condition — an old back injury, a previous car accident, age-related degeneration. The counter is the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine: the defendant takes the victim as they find them. A person with a quiet back condition who was functioning fine before the wreck and is now in constant pain was made worse by the crash — and the law holds the at-fault party responsible for the full extent of the harm, not just the portion that would have injured a perfectly healthy person.
Play 4: The Surveillance Watch
The insurance company may conduct surveillance — filming you at the grocery store, in your yard, at a social event — looking for footage that contradicts your injury claim. They also mine your social media. A photo of you at a family barbecue smiling can be presented out of context to argue you are not really hurt. The counter: assume you are being watched. Do not post about the wreck, your injuries, or your activities on social media. Follow your doctor’s restrictions. If you are supposed to be on limited activity and you are filmed doing something that exceeds those limits, the defense will use it.
Play 5: The Independent Medical Examination
The insurer sends you to a doctor of their choosing for an “independent” medical examination. That doctor is not independent — they are selected by the insurance company, and they know what the insurer is looking for. The examination is often brief, and the report almost always minimizes your injuries. The counter: your own treating physicians’ records — built over weeks and months of actual care — are the honest record. A ten-minute exam by a defense-picked doctor does not outweigh a documented treatment history.
How a Wreck Case Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a real case moves from the day you call to the day it resolves.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out — to the other driver, to the trucking company, to every business whose camera might have caught the wreck, to the carrier whose electronic logs are on a six-month death clock. The black box in your car is identified and a plan is made to image it before the vehicle is sold or crushed. The police crash report is requested. Your medical treatment is documented and followed.
Weeks two through eight. The medical record builds. You are treating, following doctor’s orders, and documenting your symptoms. We are pulling the at-fault driver’s insurance declarations, the trucking company’s safety records from the FMCSA database, and the driver’s qualification file. If a truck was involved, we are pulling the SAFER Company Snapshot — the government’s public scorecard on the carrier’s inspections, violations, and crash history. We are identifying every layer of insurance — the at-fault policy, your UM/UIM, any excess or umbrella coverage.
Months two through six. The medical picture matures. If your injuries have stabilized, your treating physician may assign a permanent impairment rating. If the injuries are catastrophic, a life-care planner is retained to project decades of future care. A forensic economist begins building the present-value model of your lost earnings and future medical costs. For a brain injury, neuropsychological testing is completed. For a spinal injury, the surgical records and imaging are assembled.
Months six through twelve. A demand package is assembled — the complete story of what happened, who is responsible, what it cost you, and what it will continue to cost. The package is sent to the insurance company with a number and a deadline. The insurer responds — almost always with a counteroffer that is a fraction of the demand. Negotiation begins. If the insurer will not offer a fair number, the case is filed in the courthouse — in Midland County, that means the Midland County district courts.
Litigation. If the case does not settle, a lawsuit is filed. Discovery begins — written questions, document demands, depositions of the at-fault driver, the trucking company’s safety director, the responding police officer, and your treating physicians. The defense hires its own experts. We hire ours — accident reconstructionists, life-care planners, forensic economists, treating specialists. Motions are filed and argued. A trial date is set. And in most cases, the closer the trial date gets, the more willing the insurance company becomes to offer real money — because a jury of twelve people from Midland County is the one thing the insurer cannot control.
Your First 72 Hours After a Midland Wreck
What you do in the first three days after a wreck can decide the case.
Hour 1. Call 911 if anyone is injured. Get medical attention for anyone who needs it — even if you think you are “okay.” Accept transport to the hospital if the paramedics recommend it. Adrenaline masks pain. A person who walks away from a bad wreck may have a brain bleed that does not declare itself for hours.
Hour 1 to 24. If you are able, photograph everything — the vehicles, the scene, the road conditions, any skid marks, the traffic signals, the weather. Get contact information from every witness. Do not discuss fault with the other driver. Do not apologize. Do not give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. If your own insurer calls, you may need to cooperate under your policy — but know what you are doing before you describe your injuries, and never speculate.
Day 1 to 3. Follow up with a doctor if you were not transported from the scene. Document every symptom — headaches, dizziness, neck pain, back pain, numbness, confusion, sleep disturbance. Keep a daily symptom journal. Do not post about the wreck on social media. Do not sign anything from any insurance company. If the tow yard is charging daily storage, find out what it costs to move the vehicle to a storage lot you control — but do not let the vehicle be scrapped, because it is evidence.
Day 1 to 3 — call a lawyer. The preservation letter should go out within days. The black box should be imaged before the car is sold. The truck’s electronic logs are on a six-month clock, and the daily inspection reports are on a three-month clock. Every day you wait is a day the evidence degrades. The call is free. The consultation is free. You do not pay us anything unless we win your case. There is no reason to wait.
For a broader walkthrough, our guide to what to do after a car accident covers the steps in more detail.
Why Attorney911 Handles Midland Wreck Cases
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are based in Houston and Beaumont, and we take cases across Texas, including the Permian Basin and Midland County. We work with local counsel where required. We do not claim an office in Midland. What we bring is the experience and the resources of a firm that has been fighting for injured Texans since 2001.
Ralph Manginello — our Managing Partner — has been licensed in Texas since 1998, 27-plus years of trial practice including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the evidence tells and present it to a jury in language they understand. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He has led cases from car wrecks to catastrophic injury to wrongful death, and the firm has recovered more than $50 million for its clients across its practice.
Lupe Peña — our Associate Attorney — spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the claim is valued in the carrier’s system, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, how the independent medical examination is set up, and how the surveillance is deployed. Now he sits on your side of the table. He is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
How We Get Paid
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. Our fee is 33.33% of the recovery before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. You pay nothing upfront. You pay nothing for the consultation. You pay nothing for the preservation letters, the investigation, the expert retention, or the years of work it takes to build the case — unless we recover money for you. “No fee unless we win” is not a marketing line. It is the structure of our practice. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you — and the consultation still costs nothing.
What the First Call Feels Like
The first call is not a sales pitch. It is a conversation. We listen to what happened. We ask about your injuries, your treatment, your insurance, and the facts of the crash. We tell you honestly whether we think you have a case, what the next steps are, and what we can do to help. If you decide to hire us, we send the preservation letters that week. If you decide not to, you still leave the call knowing more than the adjuster wanted you to know. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week — live staff, not an answering service.
Hablamos Español
Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish. If your family prays in Spanish, your lawyer can speak to you in Spanish. We serve the Midland community fully in both languages.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a lawsuit after a wreck in Midland, Texas?
Two years. Texas law requires that a personal-injury lawsuit be filed within two years of the date of the injury. The same two-year window applies to wrongful-death claims, measured from the date of death. This is a hard deadline — missing it means the court will dismiss your case regardless of how strong it is. There are narrow exceptions, but you should never assume one applies without consulting a lawyer. The safest move is to call early, because the evidence clock (logs, video, black-box data) runs much faster than the legal clock.
What if the other driver didn’t have insurance?
Texas requires insurers to offer you uninsured/underinsured-motorist (UM/UIM) coverage. If you did not reject it in writing, you likely have it. UM coverage pays you when the at-fault driver has no insurance. UIM pays you when the at-fault driver’s coverage is not enough to cover your injuries. Your own policy may also include Personal Injury Protection (PIP), which covers medical bills and lost wages regardless of fault. Identifying and pursuing every available source of coverage is a core part of what we do.
I was partly at fault for the wreck — can I still recover?
Yes, up to a point. Texas follows a modified comparative-negligence rule. If you were 50% or less at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault but you still recover. If you were 51% or more at fault, you recover nothing. This is exactly why the adjuster works so hard to pin fault on you — every percentage point they can assign to you is money off their payout. Do not accept the adjuster’s characterization of fault. The fault analysis should be done by someone on your side, with access to the police report, the black-box data, and the scene evidence.
How much is my Midland wreck case worth?
No honest answer is possible without seeing the medical records, the police report, the insurance policies, and the full facts of the crash. What we can tell you is how the number is built: economic damages (past and future medical bills, lost wages, lost earning capacity, future care), non-economic damages (pain, suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life), and in some cases punitive damages. The firm has recovered more than $50 million across its practice, including a $5 million-plus brain-injury settlement and a $2.5 million-plus truck-crash recovery. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The only way to know what your case is worth is to have it evaluated by a lawyer who can see all the pieces. For a deeper look, Ralph Manginello explains how case value is determined.
What if I was hit by an oilfield truck in the Permian Basin?
Oilfield truck cases are different from ordinary car-wreck cases. The truck may belong to a carrier operating under federal authority, which means federal hours-of-service rules, electronic logging requirements, and minimum insurance levels apply. The driver may have been on a long shift in an industry that runs around the clock. The company may have a safety record in the FMCSA database that shows a pattern of violations. And the coverage tower on a commercial truck is typically far larger than a personal auto policy — but only if you identify and pursue every layer. We handle oilfield truck cases across the Permian Basin, including the water haulers, sand trucks, and crude tankers that run the I-20 corridor and Highway 191 through Midland.
Should I give a recorded statement to the insurance company?
Not without a lawyer. You have no legal obligation to give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. The call is designed to get you to say things that will be used against you later — “I’m feeling okay,” “I think it was partly my fault,” “I didn’t see the stop sign.” Your own insurer may require a statement under your policy, but even then, you should understand what you are doing and what the adjuster is looking for before you pick up the phone. Our guide on what not to say to an insurance adjuster covers the specifics.
The insurance company already offered me a check — should I take it?
Almost certainly not without having a lawyer review it. The first offer is designed to close your file cheaply, before the full scope of your injuries is known. It may look adequate relative to your current bills, but a check that arrives within a week of the wreck is arriving before the MRI, before the specialist referral, before the surgery recommendation, and before anyone has projected your future care costs. If the check comes with a release — and it will — cashing it means giving up your right to seek any further compensation. That is a decision you should make with full information, not in the first week.
How much does it cost to hire a lawyer?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We front the costs of the case — preservation letters, investigation, expert fees, filing fees — and those costs are repaid from the recovery. If we do not recover money for you, you owe us nothing for our time. The consultation is free. The call is free. You can reach us 24/7 at 1-888-ATTY-911.
What if my loved one was killed in a Midland wreck?
Texas law allows certain family members to bring a wrongful-death claim — typically the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the decedent. The claim compensates the family for the financial support, companionship, care, and guidance the deceased would have provided. There is also a survival claim, which belongs to the estate and covers the deceased’s own pain and suffering between the injury and death, plus medical bills and funeral costs. Both claims are subject to the two-year statute of limitations. We handle wrongful death cases with the gravity they deserve, and the first conversation is always free.
I didn’t go to the hospital right away — is that a problem?
It can be, but it does not destroy your case. Many serious injuries — including brain injuries and spinal injuries — do not produce obvious symptoms at the scene. Adrenaline masks pain. Concussions may not become apparent until the next day. However, the gap between the wreck and the first medical visit is the defense’s favorite argument: “If she was really hurt, why did she wait?” The counter is medical literature, documented symptom progression, and the testimony of people who noticed the change. But the best protection is to get checked immediately — even if you think you feel fine. Close the gap before the defense can exploit it.
Can I still recover if I was hit by a commercial truck but the company says the driver was an “independent contractor”?
Yes. Federal leasing rules require that when a carrier’s name is on the trailer and the carrier has exclusive control of the truck under the lease, the carrier is responsible for the truck on the road. The “independent contractor” label is the trucking company’s favorite defense — but federal law and the control facts usually pierce it. Beyond that, the carrier can be directly liable for its own corporate choices: negligent hiring, negligent training, negligent maintenance. The contractor label closes one door (automatic employer liability) but leaves several others wide open.
If you are in Midland and you have been in a wreck — on I-20, on the 191, downtown near the convention center, or anywhere in Midland County — the clock is already running. The evidence is already dying. The adjuster is already building their file. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The call is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Hablamos Español. Let us get to work.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.