Bell County, Texas Fatal Truck Crash: When a Dating App Costs a Life on I-35
If you found this page, someone you love is gone. Maybe it happened on that stretch of Interstate 35 that runs through Bell County — the same corridor you have driven a hundred times, the one that connects Temple and Belton and Killeen to Austin one way and Dallas-Fort Worth the other. Maybe you got the call at dawn, or the knock at the door, and since that moment nothing has been the same. You are reading this at an hour when most people are asleep, trying to understand how a person stops being alive on a road they were just driving on.
We are going to tell you what we know about what happened on May 22, 2024, on I-35 in Bell County. We are going to tell you what the law allows your family to do about it. And we are going to tell you what the company and its insurers are already doing — right now, while you are reading — to protect themselves from what this crash is going to cost them.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle 18-wheeler accident and wrongful death cases in Texas. This page is not a brochure. It is the full picture of what a case like this looks like — the law, the evidence, the money, the timeline, and the fight — written by the senior trial attorney who would build it. If after reading it you want to talk, the call is free and the number is 1-888-ATTY-911. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
What Happened on I-35 in Bell County
On May 22, 2024, at approximately 4:45 in the morning, a motorist ran out of gas on Interstate 35 in Bell County, Texas. The vehicle became stalled in the travel lane. These things happen on every interstate in America — a fuel gauge misreads, a driver pushes one exit too far, the engine sputters and the car rolls to a stop. A stalled vehicle on a highway is not a freak occurrence. It is a foreseeable, routine condition that every professional truck driver is trained to handle through proper lookout, adequate following distance, and the simple act of watching the road ahead.
What happened next was not routine.
A commercial tractor-trailer — an 80,000-pound combination vehicle operated by a driver working for J.B. Hunt Transport Services, one of the largest trucking companies in North America — collided with the rear of the stalled car. The impact was catastrophic. The motorist did not survive.
Then the investigation began. And what it found turned this from a tragic accident into something else entirely.
The Driver Was on a Dating App — and the Company Already Knew He Was Dangerous
The post-crash investigation pulled the driver’s cell phone records and the truck’s own driver-facing camera footage. Here is what they showed:
At 4:44 a.m. — one minute before the 4:45 a.m. crash — the driver was on a phone call and actively using the Facebook dating application on his mobile device. He took a screenshot of a photograph of himself and a friend on motorcycles. His eyes were on his phone screen. His eyes were not on the road. The driver-facing camera confirmed what the phone records proved: he was not looking at the roadway at the moment of collision.
No driver shall use a handheld mobile telephone while driving a commercial motor vehicle.
— 49 CFR 392.82, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations
This was not a momentary glance. This was sustained, active engagement with a dating application while piloting a fully loaded commercial vehicle at highway speed in the pre-dawn dark on one of the busiest freight corridors in the United States. The driver was simultaneously on a phone call, scrolling a dating app, and taking a screenshot — three separate cognitive and manual tasks layered on top of the already demanding task of operating an 80,000-pound truck in traffic.
But the evidence gets worse — not just for the driver, but for the company that put him behind the wheel.
Records established that J.B. Hunt had counseled this same driver for dangerous distracted-driving behavior at least twice in the six weeks before the fatal crash. Six weeks before the wreck, the carrier’s own in-cab camera system flagged him for eating while driving — and steering with his elbow and knee. Three weeks before the crash, that same camera documented him taking his eyes off the road for five full seconds. The company also confirmed the driver had been educated on the dangers of distracted driving multiple times before the fatal wreck.
J.B. Hunt’s own cameras told them this man was a danger on the road. Not once, but repeatedly. And the company’s response was to counsel him — and then leave him in the driver’s seat of an 80,000-pound commercial vehicle on I-35.
This is the difference between an accident and a choice. An accident is when something unforeseeable happens despite reasonable care. A choice is when a company is told twice in six weeks that one of its drivers is not watching the road, and it decides that keeping him driving is less costly than pulling him off the road. The family of the person who died on I-35 that morning is living with the cost of that calculation.
Who Is Legally Responsible: The Driver and the Carrier
When a commercial truck kills someone on a Texas highway, the law does not limit accountability to the person behind the wheel. Two defendants sit in this case, and each is responsible in a different way.
The Driver — Direct Negligence and Regulatory Violations
The driver who was operating the tractor-trailer is directly liable for the death he caused. His negligence is not abstract — it is documented in his own phone records and on his employer’s own camera system. He was using a dating application, engaged in a phone call, and screenshotting a photograph in the final minute before he rear-ended a stopped vehicle at highway speed. He was not looking at the road. He violated federal regulations that expressly prohibit texting and handheld mobile phone use by commercial drivers. He failed to maintain proper lookout. He failed to maintain adequate following distance. And he did all of this after being repeatedly educated on the dangers of distracted driving.
J.B. Hunt Transport Services — Vicarious and Direct Liability
J.B. Hunt is liable on two separate tracks. The first is vicarious: when a truck driver is acting within the course and scope of his employment for a motor carrier, the carrier is responsible for the damage the driver causes. This is the ancient legal principle called respondeat superior — “let the master answer.” The driver was working for J.B. Hunt, driving a J.B. Hunt vehicle, on a J.B. Hunt route, when he killed someone. J.B. Hunt answers for that.
The second track is more dangerous for the carrier, and it is where this case separates itself from an ordinary rear-end collision. J.B. Hunt is directly liable for its own corporate negligence — specifically, negligent retention and negligent supervision. The carrier’s own in-cab camera monitoring system flagged this driver for dangerous in-cab behavior at least twice in the six weeks before the fatal crash. The company had actual, documented knowledge that this specific driver was not watching the road while operating an 80,000-pound vehicle. And it took no meaningful action to remove him from behind the wheel.
This is not a company that should have known. This is a company that did know — because its own cameras told it — and chose to keep this driver on the road anyway.
J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (DOT No. 218451) is headquartered in Lowell, Arkansas, and is one of the largest surface transportation and logistics companies in North America. It is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker JBHT, with annual operating revenues exceeding $12 billion and a fleet of approximately 12,000 power units and over 100,000 trailers and intermodal containers. The company operates multiple business segments — Intermodal, Dedicated Contract Services, Highway Services, and Final Mile — meaning the specific operating division and applicable insurance program must be identified early in any case. J.B. Hunt maintains substantial self-insured retention layers paired with commercial excess and umbrella coverage. As an interstate motor carrier operating in Texas, its policies carry MCS-90 endorsements guaranteeing minimum financial responsibility for the transportation of property in interstate commerce. The actual coverage towers for a carrier of this size are typically in the tens of millions. If you are searching for a Bell County, Texas truck accident lawyer for a crash on this corridor, understanding the defendant’s corporate structure and coverage is where the case begins.
The Federal Rules the Driver Broke
Commercial truck drivers do not operate under the same rules as the rest of us. They are professionals licensed and regulated by the federal government, and the rules they must follow exist because 80,000-pound trucks kill people when those rules are broken.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations — Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 390 through 399 — directly govern this collision:
49 CFR 392.80 prohibits texting while operating a commercial motor vehicle. The driver’s use of a dating application — scrolling, viewing, and screenshotting — is texting under the regulatory definition. This is a clear-cut violation.
49 CFR 392.82 restricts all handheld mobile phone use by commercial motor vehicle drivers. The rule prohibits holding a mobile device to dial, text, or interact with any application while driving a CMV. The driver was holding his phone, on a call, and interacting with the Facebook dating app at the moment of impact. This is another clear-cut violation.
49 CFR 390.11 imposes direct responsibility on the employer — J.B. Hunt — for ensuring its drivers comply with these provisions. The carrier cannot shrug and say the driver broke the rules on his own. Federal law makes the company responsible for its drivers’ compliance, and the company’s own monitoring system documented this driver’s noncompliance weeks before the fatal crash.
These regulatory violations are not technicalities. In Texas, a violation of a safety statute or regulation designed to protect the public is evidence of negligence — and in a case like this, where the violation is documented by the carrier’s own cameras and the driver’s own phone records, it is the foundation of the liability case. The violations also feed directly into the gross-negligence analysis that unlocks exemplary damages, because they demonstrate an extreme degree of risk and actual awareness of that risk — followed by voluntary indifference.
Texas Wrongful Death Law: What Your Family Can Recover
Texas law recognizes two separate causes of action when a person is killed by someone else’s negligence. They are distinct claims with different beneficiaries and different damage categories, and a complete case pursues both.
The Wrongful Death Action
The Texas Wrongful Death Act allows certain surviving family members — a surviving spouse, surviving children, or surviving parents — to bring a claim for the losses they personally suffered because of the death. These damages include the mental anguish and emotional pain of losing their family member, the loss of the companionship, society, and counsel that person would have provided, the loss of the financial support and inheritance the decedent would have contributed, and the loss of the care, maintenance, and services the decedent provided to the family.
The Survival Action
The survival action is brought by the estate of the decedent and captures the claim the decedent would have had if they had survived — the pain, suffering, and mental anguish experienced between the moment of injury and the moment of death, plus any medical expenses incurred during that interval. In a high-speed rear-end collision involving an 80,000-pound commercial truck, the forensic and medical analysis must establish the temporal window of consciousness between impact and death. Even a brief period of awareness can materially increase the survival damages, because the law compensates the person’s own experience of what was done to them.
Exemplary Damages — The Gross Negligence Engine
This is where the dating-app evidence and the carrier’s ignored prior warnings become the most powerful facts in the case. Texas allows exemplary damages — also called punitive damages — when a plaintiff proves by clear and convincing evidence that the harm resulted from gross negligence. Under Texas law, gross negligence has two components: (1) an extreme degree of risk — a hazard so serious that it amounts to an extreme risk of harm — and (2) actual awareness of that risk followed by voluntary indifference to it.
Both components are present here, and both are provable with the carrier’s own records:
- The extreme degree of risk: Operating an 80,000-pound commercial truck at highway speed on a public interstate while actively using a dating application on a handheld phone is an extreme risk. The FMCSA wrote rules against it precisely because it kills people.
- Actual awareness and voluntary indifference: J.B. Hunt’s own in-cab camera system flagged this driver for dangerous distracted-driving behavior at least twice in the six weeks before the crash. The company counseled him. The company educated him on the dangers. And then the company left him in the cab of a truck on I-35. That is not negligence. That is conscious indifference — a company that knew, that was warned by its own technology, and that chose not to act.
Texas does not impose statutory caps on non-economic or exemplary damages in non-medical-malpractice personal injury or wrongful death cases. The exemplary damages in a case with this fact pattern — against a publicly traded, multi-billion-dollar carrier with documented, repeated inaction despite its own safety alerts — are the primary driver of case value above the economic and non-economic baseline.
The Stalled-Vehicle Defense — and Why It Does Not Bar Your Case
The defense in this case has one real card to play, and they will play it hard. The decedent ran out of gas and stalled in the travel lane of an interstate. Defense counsel will argue that this created a hazardous condition and that the decedent bears comparative responsibility for what happened.
Here is the honest answer: Texas follows a modified comparative-negligence rule with a 51% bar. A plaintiff is barred from recovery only if found more than 50% at fault. If the plaintiff is found 50% or less at fault, their recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault but is not eliminated.
The defense will press the comparative-fault argument. But it is unlikely to bar recovery, for three reasons:
First, Texas rear-end collision doctrine. Rear-end collisions in Texas carry a strong presumption that the following driver — the truck driver — was negligent. A professional commercial driver is trained to maintain proper lookout and adequate following distance. A stalled vehicle on a highway is a foreseeable condition. The failure to see a stationary vehicle in the travel lane and stop before hitting it is the definition of negligent driving.
Second, the distraction evidence overwhelms the comparative-fault narrative. The driver was on a dating app. He was not looking at the road. His own employer’s camera proved it. When a jury learns that a truck driver was screenshotting his dating profile in the final minute before he killed someone, the question of whether the car in front was stalled becomes secondary. The car was there. The driver could have seen it. He chose to look at his phone instead. That is not the stalled car’s fault.
Third, the prior-warning evidence transforms the comparative-fault argument. When a jury learns that the carrier was warned twice in six weeks that this specific driver was not watching the road — and did nothing — the narrative shifts from “the stalled car created the hazard” to “the company created the hazard by leaving a documented distracted driver behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck.”
The comparative-fault argument is real. It will be pressed. But the overwhelming distraction evidence and Texas rear-end doctrine make it a defense tactic, not a bar to recovery. Even partial comparative fault would reduce the recovery — it would not eliminate it.
Evidence That Is Disappearing Right Now
This is the section that matters most if you are reading this in the days or weeks after the crash. Because the evidence that wins this case is on a clock, and some of it is already gone.
The Truck’s Engine Data — Critical and Volatile
The tractor’s Engine Control Module (ECM) and Electronic Logging Device (ELD) record vehicle speed, brake application, throttle position, and cruise-control status in the seconds before impact. In this case, ECM data is expected to show that the truck never decelerated before the rear-end collision — because the driver was looking at his phone, not the road, and never touched the brakes. This is corroborating evidence of the distraction, and it is devastating to the defense.
But ECM and ELD data can be overwritten by continued vehicle operation. If the tractor has been returned to service or repaired, the pre-crash data may already be gone. The tractor must be impounded and its data imaged immediately — before the equipment goes back on the road.
Driver-Facing and Forward-Facing In-Cab Camera Footage
The crash-event footage from the driver-facing camera confirms eyes-off-road at impact. This evidence is likely already preserved by the carrier, because crash-event footage is typically locked and saved automatically. But the prior-event footage — the clips showing the driver eating and steering with his elbow and knee, the five-second eyes-off-road alert — is the evidentiary backbone of the negligent-retention and gross-negligence claims against J.B. Hunt. In-cab camera systems typically retain flagged events on carrier servers for 30 to 90 days. The crash event has probably been preserved, but all prior-event clips for this driver must be specifically demanded before routine data-retention purge cycles delete them.
The Driver’s Complete Cell Phone Records
Phone records showing the screenshot at 4:44 a.m. while on a call and using the Facebook dating app have been obtained. But complete records — call logs, data usage, app activity, and screenshot timestamps for the full 24-hour period surrounding the crash — lock the temporal sequence and may reveal a longer pattern of distraction on this drive. App-level data — Facebook dating-app session logs and server-side timestamps — should be preserved by subpoena to Meta to corroborate device-side evidence and defeat any authentication challenge the defense might raise.
J.B. Hunt’s Internal Safety-Monitoring Records
This is the evidence that builds the gross-negligence case. Every camera-generated alert for this driver, every counseling memo, every disciplinary record, every training record, and every safety-meeting attendance log must be demanded. Personnel and safety records are subject to routine purging under the carrier’s document-retention schedule. A litigation hold and targeted discovery demands must issue immediately to prevent destruction.
Post-Crash Drug and Alcohol Testing
FMCSA regulations require post-accident drug and alcohol testing for fatal commercial vehicle crashes. The results — whether positive or negative — are part of the standard crash investigation file. If testing was performed, the results are already in the record. If testing was not performed, that non-compliance is itself an aggravating factor.
Scene Evidence and Physical Vehicles
The crash report, scene photographs, and physical evidence documentation from Bell County law enforcement and Texas DPS are likely complete. But the physical vehicles — both the truck and the decedent’s car — should be inspected and photographed before repair or salvage. The absence of skid marks would corroborate that the truck never braked. The debris field and point of impact tell the reconstruction story. Once these vehicles are repaired or scrapped, that physical evidence is gone.
The preservation letter that freezes these records goes out the day you call. Not the month you call. The day. Because the fastest-dying evidence — the prior camera clips, the ECM data, the internal safety records — is the evidence that transforms this from a standard wrongful death into a case with punitive exposure.
The Physics of What Happened: 80,000 Pounds at Highway Speed
A fully loaded tractor-trailer weighs up to 80,000 pounds. A passenger car weighs roughly 4,000 pounds. That is a 20-to-1 weight differential. When a truck of that mass strikes a stationary car at highway speed, the energy transfer is not a collision — it is a demolition.
The kinetic energy of a moving vehicle scales with the square of its speed — KE = ½mv². A truck traveling at 65 miles per hour carries roughly four times the destructive energy of the same truck at 32 miles per hour. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has published that a fully loaded tractor-trailer traveling at 65 miles per hour requires approximately 525 feet to come to a complete stop under ideal conditions — roughly the length of two football fields. A passenger car needs roughly 316 feet to stop from the same speed.
If the driver was not looking at the road — if he was on a dating app, on a phone call, screenshotting a photograph — then he never initiated the braking sequence. The truck struck the stalled car at full highway speed. No deceleration. No evasive maneuver. No brake lights. The entire kinetic energy of an 80,000-pound vehicle traveling at 65-plus miles per hour was transferred directly into the rear of a stationary passenger car.
In fatal large-truck crashes, approximately two out of every three people killed are not in the truck — they are in the other vehicle. The physics explain why. The truck driver walked away from this collision. The person in the car did not.
An accident reconstructionist will establish the speed at impact, the absence of braking, and the reaction-time impossibility given the documented distraction. A human-factors expert will quantify the perceptual and cognitive impairment from dating-app interaction during highway driving. These experts take the phone records and the camera footage and translate them into physics — proving that the driver could not have avoided the collision because he was not even attempting to.
What This Case Is Worth
We will not tell you a specific dollar figure for this case on this page, because case value depends on facts we do not yet have — the decedent’s earning capacity, the statutory beneficiaries, the survival-period evidence, and the Bell County jury composition. What we can tell you is the framework and the range.
Based on the forensic dossier assembled from the known facts, the case value range for a fact pattern of this nature — a fatal distracted-driving truck crash with documented carrier knowledge of prior warnings and gross-negligence exposure — falls in a range from approximately $5,000,000 on the low end to $35,000,000 or more on the high end.
The low end reflects comparative-fault reduction, a conservative Bell County jury, and a negotiated pre-verdict resolution that discounts punitive exposure.
The high end reflects a decedent with meaningful earning capacity and statutory beneficiaries, a jury in a plaintiff-receptive Bell County venue, and a resolution — whether through a Stowers-driven policy-limits settlement or a post-verdict resolution — that accounts for the carrier’s documented failure to intervene.
The principal value escalator is gross-negligence and punitive exposure. An 80,000-pound truck driven by a man scrolling a dating app — after his employer’s own cameras flagged him twice in six weeks for dangerous in-cab behavior — is a textbook conscious-indifference narrative. Uncapped exemplary exposure against a publicly traded, multi-billion-dollar carrier is what drives this case above the economic and non-economic baseline.
Texas’s Stowers doctrine creates additional leverage. Under Stowers, a liability insurer has a duty to accept reasonable settlement offers within policy limits when the claimant’s damages are clear and exceed or approach those limits. When liability and damages are as strong as they are here — with near-absolute proof of distraction and documented carrier inaction — a Stowers demand timed after the full evidence is developed creates maximum pressure on the carrier’s insurer. If the insurer refuses a reasonable settlement offer within limits and the verdict exceeds those limits, the insurer can be exposed to the full verdict amount regardless of the coverage caps.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is different. What we can tell you is that the liability picture here is extraordinarily strong, and the framework for valuing it is the one we have just laid out.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How We Counter It
The adjuster assigned to this case works for the carrier or its insurer — not for your family. Here are the plays that are already being run, and here is what we do about each one.
Play 1: The Friendly “Just Checking In” Call
Within days of the crash, someone will call the family. The voice will be warm, concerned, sympathetic. They will say they just want to “check on you” and ask you to “tell us what happened” — on a recording that was engineered from the first second to be quoted against you in court. Every word you say is being transcribed. Every answer is being measured for a sentence they can pull out of context and show a jury later.
The counter: Do not give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurance company. Not now, not ever. You are not required to. Anything you say will be used to minimize the claim — not to understand it. If they call, you say: “I am not giving a statement. I am represented by counsel.” Then you call us.
Play 2: The Fast Check With a Release Attached
A settlement check may arrive quickly — sometimes before the funeral, sometimes before the medical records are complete. Attached to that check, in fine print or on a separate page, is a release. If you cash that check, you may be releasing the carrier and its insurer from all further claims related to the death — including the gross-negligence and exemplary-damages claims that are the real value of this case.
The counter: Never sign a release from an insurance company without having a lawyer read it first. The first offer is designed to close the case before you understand what it is worth. In a case with documented distracted driving and carrier inaction, the first offer is a fraction of the true value. Lupe Peña 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 people exactly like you. He knows what that check is worth and what it is designed to buy. Now he sits on your side of the table.
Play 3: The Comparative-Fault Argument
The adjuster will build a file documenting that the decedent ran out of gas and stalled on the interstate. They will frame this as the primary cause of the crash. They will assign a percentage of fault to the decedent and use it to justify a lower settlement offer.
The counter: Texas rear-end collision doctrine, the overwhelming distraction evidence, and the carrier’s documented prior warnings all answer this argument. A professional truck driver is trained to handle stopped vehicles on highways. This driver was on a dating app. His employer knew he was distracted. The comparative-fault argument is a negotiation tactic, not a bar to recovery — and we know how to neutralize it because we have seen it from the inside.
Play 4: The Delay
The adjuster will ask for “more time” — to investigate, to review records, to “get back to you.” The purpose of delay is to run the clock. Evidence disappears. Witnesses forget. The statute of limitations approaches. The family, exhausted and grieving, gives up or accepts less.
The counter: The statute of limitations for wrongful death and survival actions in Texas is two years from the date of death. That clock is running. But the evidence clock is shorter than the legal clock — the carrier’s camera footage, the ECM data, and the internal safety records can legally disappear in months, not years. We move fast because the evidence moves faster.
How a Case Like This Is Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a case like this is actually built — from the day a family calls to the day the number is on the table.
Week one: The preservation letter goes out to J.B. Hunt — ordering the carrier to freeze every piece of evidence: the ECM and ELD data from the tractor, every camera-generated alert ever recorded for this driver, every counseling memo and disciplinary record, the driver’s complete personnel and safety file, and the physical vehicles. A separate preservation demand goes to the camera system vendor if one is identified. The tractor is located and its data is imaged before it goes back on the road.
Weeks two through four: The complete crash investigation file is obtained from Texas DPS and Bell County law enforcement — the crash report, scene photographs, skid-mark or absence-of-skid-mark measurements, debris-field documentation, and the point-of-impact analysis. The decedent’s vehicle is inspected and photographed before it is repaired or salvaged. The truck’s physical condition is documented. Post-crash drug and alcohol testing results are obtained from the FMCSA clearinghouse.
Months one through three: The driver’s complete cell phone records are obtained and analyzed — call logs, data usage, app activity, and screenshot timestamps for the full 24-hour period surrounding the crash. A subpoena to Meta preserves the Facebook dating-app session logs and server-side timestamps that corroborate the device-side evidence. Expert retention begins: a board-certified accident reconstructionist to establish speed, braking absence, and reaction-time impossibility; a human-factors expert to quantify the cognitive impairment from dating-app use during highway driving; and a trucking-safety expert to opine that J.B. Hunt’s monitoring-detected violations and non-response fell below industry standard and constituted gross negligence.
Months three through six: Discovery opens the carrier’s entire safety-monitoring and disciplinary apparatus — every camera alert ever generated for this driver, the carrier’s written policies on distracted-driving enforcement, the disciplinary matrix showing what consequences attach to camera-flagged events, and the personnel files of the safety managers who reviewed this driver’s alerts and chose not to act. The depositions begin: the driver, the J.B. Hunt safety manager who reviewed his alerts, and any corporate designee on disciplinary policy. These depositions are where the gross-negligence evidence is locked in under oath.
Months six through twelve: The full distraction-and-prior-warnings evidence is developed. The life-care planner and forensic economist build the damages model — the decedent’s lost earning capacity, the funeral and burial expenses, the loss of inheritance, the non-economic losses to the statutory beneficiaries, and the survival damages for the decedent’s pre-death conscious pain and suffering. A Stowers demand is timed after the evidence is developed but before trial — creating maximum pressure on the carrier’s insurer to resolve within policy limits, because a failure to accept a reasonable settlement offer within limits exposes the insurer to the full verdict amount.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
If you are reading this in the first days after the crash, here is the practical roadmap.
Do not give a recorded statement to the trucking company’s insurance adjuster. They will call. They will be friendly. They will say they just want to understand what happened. Everything you say will be recorded and used to minimize your claim. You are not required to give a statement. Say: “I am represented by counsel. Please contact my attorney.”
Do not sign anything from the insurance company. A release, a medical authorization, a settlement agreement — any document the insurance company puts in front of you is designed to limit what they have to pay. Do not sign it. Have a lawyer read it first.
Do not post about the crash on social media. Insurance investigators monitor social media. A photograph, a comment, a check-in — anything you post can be taken out of context and used to undermine your claim. Grief is private. Keep it private online.
Do not let the vehicles be repaired or scrapped. The physical evidence — the truck and the car — must be inspected and photographed before they are touched. Once they are repaired or sent to a salvage yard, the physical proof is gone.
Do secure the decedent’s personal records. Employment records, tax returns, pay stubs, benefit statements, medical records, and any documentation of the decedent’s earning capacity and family relationships. These records build the damages case — what was lost, in dollars and in human terms.
Do call a lawyer. The preservation letter that freezes the evidence goes out the day you call. Not the week. Not the month. The day. Because the evidence that wins this case — the prior camera clips, the ECM data, the internal safety records — is on a clock that is shorter than you think.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week — you will speak to a live person, not an answering service. And we do not get paid unless we win your case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we sue the trucking company if the driver was the one distracted?
Yes. Under the legal principle of respondeat superior, a motor carrier is responsible for the negligence of its driver when the driver is acting within the course and scope of employment. The driver was working for J.B. Hunt, driving a J.B. Hunt vehicle, on a J.B. Hunt route. The carrier is liable for the damage the driver caused. Beyond that, J.B. Hunt is directly liable for its own negligence — the company’s own cameras flagged this driver for distracted driving twice in six weeks, and the company failed to take meaningful action. That is negligent retention and supervision, and it is a separate claim from the driver’s negligence.
The person who died ran out of gas on the interstate. Does that mean we cannot recover?
No. Texas follows a modified comparative-negligence rule with a 51% bar — you are barred from recovery only if the decedent is found more than 50% at fault. Even if a jury assigns some percentage of fault to the decedent for stalling on the interstate, the recovery is reduced by that percentage but is not eliminated, as long as the fault is 50% or less. More importantly, Texas rear-end collision doctrine creates a strong presumption that the following driver was negligent, and the overwhelming distraction evidence — a truck driver on a dating app who never braked — makes it unlikely a jury would assign majority fault to a stalled vehicle. A stalled car on a highway is a foreseeable condition that every professional truck driver is trained to handle through proper lookout and following distance.
How long do we have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Texas?
The statute of limitations for wrongful death and survival actions in Texas is two years from the date of death. That means the deadline to file a lawsuit is two years from May 22, 2024. But the legal deadline and the evidence deadline are different clocks. The evidence that wins this case — the carrier’s prior camera clips, the ECM data, the internal safety records — can legally disappear in months, not years. The two-year statute of limitations is the legal deadline. The preservation letter is the evidence deadline, and it runs in days.
What are exemplary damages, and does this case qualify?
Exemplary damages — also called punitive damages — are damages awarded above and beyond compensation for the actual loss, designed to punish the wrongdoer and deter similar conduct. In Texas, exemplary damages require clear and convincing proof of gross negligence, which means (1) an extreme degree of risk and (2) actual awareness of that risk followed by voluntary indifference. This case qualifies on both elements. Operating an 80,000-pound truck at highway speed while using a dating app is an extreme risk. J.B. Hunt’s own cameras documented this driver’s dangerous behavior twice in six weeks before the crash — that is actual awareness. The company’s failure to remove him from the wheel is voluntary indifference. Texas does not cap exemplary damages in non-medical-malpractice wrongful death cases.
What if J.B. Hunt says the driver was an independent contractor, not an employee?
Federal leasing regulations under 49 CFR 376.12 provide that when a carrier leases a vehicle and driver, the authorized carrier has exclusive possession, control, and use of the equipment for the duration of the lease and assumes complete responsibility for the operation of the equipment. The law puts the carrier in control and makes it responsible for the truck on the road. Whether the driver is labeled an independent contractor or an employee, the carrier’s responsibility for the operation of the vehicle — and for monitoring the driver’s safety — does not disappear. The in-cab camera system that flagged this driver was J.B. Hunt’s system. The counseling that followed was J.B. Hunt’s counseling. The decision to leave him in the driver’s seat was J.B. Hunt’s decision.
How much is this case worth?
We cannot give you a specific dollar figure without knowing the decedent’s earning capacity, the statutory beneficiaries, the survival-period evidence, and the Bell County jury composition. Based on the known facts — a fatal distracted-driving truck crash with documented carrier knowledge of prior warnings and gross-negligence exposure — the case value range is approximately $5,000,000 on the low end to $35,000,000 or more on the high end. The gross-negligence and exemplary-damages exposure against a publicly traded, multi-billion-dollar carrier is the principal value escalator. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What happens to the evidence if we wait to call a lawyer?
The evidence that wins this case is on a clock. The truck’s engine control module data can be overwritten when the tractor goes back into service. The in-cab camera footage of the prior distracted-driving events — the clips that prove the carrier knew this driver was dangerous — is typically retained on carrier servers for 30 to 90 days before routine purge cycles delete it. The driver’s personnel and safety records are subject to the carrier’s own document-retention schedule. A preservation letter — sent the day you call a lawyer — legally orders the carrier to freeze all of this evidence. Without that letter, the evidence can legally disappear. This is why the day you call matters more than the month you file.
How do fees work?
We work on contingency. That means we do not charge an hourly rate and we do not bill you for our time. We are paid a percentage of the recovery — 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. If we do not recover anything, you do not owe us a fee. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The call is free. You will speak to a live person, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Why This Firm
Ralph P. Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, as the managing partner of this firm. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he knows how to find the story the other side does not want told, and how to tell it to a jury in language they cannot forget. He is Texas Bar #24007597, admitted November 6, 1998, and admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas. When Ralph takes a trucking case, the first thing he does is send the letter that freezes the evidence — because he knows that the company is already working to make it disappear. Read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña is the reason this firm knows what the insurance company is going to do before they do it. Lupe spent years as an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like the families who call us. He knows how claims are valued, how reserves are set, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is deployed, and how delay tactics are engineered. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is Texas Bar #24084332, a former insurance-defense insider, and fluent in Spanish — he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Read more about Lupe here.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We have recovered $50,000,000+ for our clients. We handle commercial-vehicle, catastrophic-injury, and wrongful-death cases in Texas. We have offices in Houston and Austin, and we take cases in Bell County and across this state. The hotline is 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We are available 24/7. And we do not get paid unless we win your case.
If your family has been destroyed by a distracted truck driver on I-35 — or on any road in Texas — call us. The evidence is disappearing. The clock is running. The company has already started building its defense. You need someone building your case.
Hablamos Español.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win.