When a University Team Van Meets a Deadly Crash on a Midland Highway
You are reading this at the worst hour of your life. Maybe you are in a hospital hallway in Midland, or maybe you are at a kitchen table that has a death notification on it and a phone that will not stop ringing. A university golf team — student athletes who left campus for a tournament and never came back — met a crash on a West Texas highway, and now the world is moving around you at a speed that makes no sense. The insurance adjuster has already called. The tow yard has your loved one’s vehicle. The police report is not finished yet. And everything that matters to proving what happened is on a clock you cannot see.
Here is the first thing you need to know: the evidence from this crash is dying right now, while you grieve. The vehicle’s black-box recorder — the device that wrote down the speed, the braking, the impact force in the seconds before collision — can legally erase itself if the airbags did not deploy. The skid marks on that highway are weathering away. The cameras at any nearby facility that might have caught the crash are recording over themselves on a loop that can be as short as a few weeks. And the insurance adjuster who sounds so sympathetic on the phone is building a file designed to pay your family as little as possible. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, and we handle exactly these cases. Not as a file number — as a fight for a family that was just destroyed on a road that should have been safe.
Midland sits in the heart of the Permian Basin, the most active oil field in the United States. The highways around this city carry a volume of commercial truck traffic that the roads were never engineered to handle — water haulers, frac sand transporters, crude oil tankers running on deadlines and fatigue alongside passenger vehicles and, on that day, a university van carrying student athletes. When a crash happens on one of these highways — a two-lane road with no median barrier, where the closing speed of two vehicles approaching each other can exceed 130 miles per hour — the physics are devastating and the legal fight that follows is not simple. We are going to walk you through all of it. Every piece of it. So you know what you are standing in, what the other side is already doing, and what the path forward looks like.
Who Can Be Held Responsible When Multiple Lives Are Lost in One Crash
The first question every family asks is simple: who did this, and who pays? The answer in a crash like this one is rarely a single person. A deadly highway crash can expose a stack of defendants, each with its own insurance and its own lawyers, and identifying every one of them is the difference between a recovery that covers a family’s future and a recovery that covers a funeral.
The at-fault driver is the starting point. If that driver crossed a center line, ran a stop sign, or drifted into oncoming traffic, their liability insurance is the first layer. But Texas only requires a driver to carry $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident in bodily injury coverage — and when a van carrying multiple people is struck, that $60,000 per-accident limit is shared among every injured person and every grieving family. Split that among several families and the number is gone before the hospital bills are. That is not a recovery. That is an insult.
This is where the investigation widens. If the at-fault driver was working at the time — driving for an employer, hauling for an oilfield company, making a delivery — the employer’s commercial insurance comes into play, and a federally regulated commercial carrier must carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage, with higher floors for hazardous materials. If the driver was fatigued, if the vehicle was poorly maintained, if the employer knew the driver had a bad record and put them behind the wheel anyway, the company’s own negligence — not just the driver’s — becomes a separate claim. If the vehicle had a defect — a tire that should have been recalled, a brake system that failed, a steering component that broke — the manufacturer is a separate defendant with a separate insurance tower.
Then there is the coverage your own family may carry that you do not yet know about. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage — UM/UIM — is the most important policy in a multi-victim crash, because it pays you when the at-fault driver’s insurance is not enough. In Texas, insurers must offer UM/UIM unless you reject it in writing, and many families have it without realizing it applies to this exact situation. A university vehicle may carry its own commercial policy. A personal umbrella or excess policy on a family member’s own insurance may stack on top. Finding every layer of coverage is something we do in the first weeks of a case, because the insurance company is certainly not going to volunteer it.
The wrongful death claim and the survival action are two separate legal claims that most families have never heard of, and the insurance company is happy to let that ignorance stand. The wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family — spouse, children, parents — and compensates them for what they lost: the financial support, the companionship, the guidance, the love. The survival action belongs to the estate of the person who died and carries the claim the decedent would have had — the pain and suffering they experienced between the crash and death, the medical bills, the funeral costs. These are two separate damages tracks, and leaving one on the table is a mistake the adjuster is counting on.
Texas Law: The Two-Year Deadline and the 51% Bar
Texas law gives you less time than you think. The statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death in Texas is two years from the date of the crash. That deadline is absolute — miss it and the case is over, no matter how strong the evidence is, no matter how clear the fault is. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing in a hospital, but it is not. Medical treatment takes months. Insurance negotiations take months. Expert preparation takes months. And the evidence is dying from day one.
Texas law requires that a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit be filed not later than two years after the date the cause of action accrues — and in a crash, that date is the day of the collision, not the day you discovered the harm.
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. What that means in plain English: if the at-fault party can convince a jury that your loved one was 51% or more responsible for the crash, your family recovers nothing. If your loved one was 50% or less at fault, the recovery is reduced by their percentage. This is the single most important number in the case, and the insurance adjuster is already working to pin percentage points on the victims. Every point of fault they assign is money subtracted from your family’s recovery. A student athlete who was a passenger in a van did nothing wrong — but the adjuster will still probe whether the van’s driver was speeding, whether the van was properly maintained, whether the team should have taken a different route. Every question is designed to move the fault needle.
Texas does not cap non-economic damages in motor vehicle crash cases. That is a critical advantage over medical malpractice cases, where Texas limits pain-and-suffering recovery. In a crash case, a jury can award the full measure of human loss — the grief, the pain, the loss of companionship, the life that was taken — without a statutory ceiling. Punitive damages are available in Texas when the defendant’s conduct was grossly negligent, though Texas does limit the amount. And the Stowers doctrine — a Texas-specific rule — requires an insurance company to settle a claim within policy limits when a reasonable settlement offer is made, which creates leverage the adjuster does not want you to know about.
The cross-border dimension matters here. The University of the Southwest is in Hobbs, New Mexico — roughly 45 minutes from the Midland area. The crash occurred in Texas. Texas law governs the crash because that is where the harm occurred, but the victims may be New Mexico residents, the at-fault driver may be from another state entirely, and the insurance policies may be issued in multiple jurisdictions. Choice of law and venue are decisions that should be made by a trial lawyer who has handled cross-border crashes, not by a family operating on the insurance company’s timeline.
The Evidence That Is Dying Right Now
Every crash case is a race against evidence destruction, and the race starts at the moment of impact. The records that prove what happened — how fast the vehicles were traveling, whether anyone braked, what the road conditions were, what the vehicles’ computers recorded — exist right now, but they will not exist for long. Here is what is out there, who holds it, and how fast it can legally disappear.
The Event Data Recorder (EDR) — the vehicle’s black box. Every modern vehicle carries an EDR that records critical crash data: vehicle speed in the seconds before impact, brake application, throttle position, seatbelt status, airbag deployment timing, and the change in velocity at impact. Federal regulation requires that when the airbags deploy, the EDR memory must be locked to prevent overwriting. But when the airbags do not deploy — and in some crash configurations they do not — the EDR data sits in a buffer that can be overwritten by the next significant event, which could be as simple as the vehicle being moved, towed, or started again. If the vehicle is sent to a salvage yard and crushed, the data is gone forever. The EDR data from both vehicles — the van and whatever struck it — must be imaged by a trained technician with the right forensic equipment before either vehicle is repaired, sold, or scrapped.
The crash scene itself. Skid marks, gouge marks in the pavement, debris field patterns, fluid spills, and the final resting positions of the vehicles all tell a reconstruction expert exactly what happened. But skid marks fade with traffic and weather. Gouge marks get paved over. Debris gets cleared. The scene must be documented with photographs, drone imagery, and measurements within days, not weeks. If law enforcement did not order a full reconstruction — and in many rural West Texas crashes, they do not — the scene evidence is gone before a family ever thinks to call a lawyer.
Surveillance and dashcam footage. Any business, residence, or traffic camera within sight of the crash may have captured the collision or the moments before it. This footage is typically overwritten on a rolling loop that can be as short as a few days or as long as a month. A preservation letter demanding that the footage be saved has to go out immediately, because once the loop cycles, the evidence is unrecoverable.
The police crash report. In Texas, the investigating agency — whether it is the Department of Public Safety, the Midland County Sheriff’s Office, or another agency — will produce a crash report, but it can take weeks to complete. That report is a starting point, not the final word. It may contain witness statements, road condition notes, and the officer’s initial assessment of fault, but it is not admissible at trial as proof of what happened, and it is frequently incomplete or inaccurate. The real investigation is the one your lawyer conducts.
The vehicles themselves. Both vehicles — the van and whatever struck it — are evidence. They must not be repaired, modified, or destroyed. A vehicle sitting in a tow yard is accruing storage fees, and the tow yard will eventually exercise its lien and sell or scrap the vehicle if no one claims it. A preservation letter to the tow yard, the insurance company, and the vehicle owner freezes the vehicle in place. The physical damage — the crush patterns, the intrusion into the passenger compartment, the seatbelt loading marks — tells a reconstruction expert the angle, force, and direction of impact in ways that no photograph can.
Commercial vehicle records (if applicable). If the at-fault vehicle was a commercial truck, federal regulations create a web of records that must be preserved — but each has its own destruction clock. Driver hours-of-service logs can be legally destroyed six months after receipt. The driver’s vehicle inspection reports can be destroyed in three months. Post-accident drug and alcohol test results have a five-year retention, but the test itself must be administered within hours of the crash, and if it was not done, the proof that it was skipped is gone almost immediately. The carrier’s accident register must be kept for three years. If the at-fault vehicle was an oilfield truck running the Permian Basin highways, these records are the spine of the fatigue case.
Medical records. The medical records being created right now — the EMS run sheet, the emergency department notes, the imaging reports, the surgical records — are the foundation of the damages case. These are being generated in real time, and they must be preserved and compiled from the first day. The initial Glasgow Coma Scale score, the first CT scan, the trauma surgeon’s operative notes — these contemporaneous records are the proof that defeats the defense’s later argument that the injuries were not as serious as claimed.
The preservation letter is the tool that freezes all of this. It goes to every party that holds evidence — the at-fault driver, their insurance company, the tow yard, any commercial carrier, the vehicle manufacturers, any business with surveillance cameras — and it puts them on legal notice that the evidence must be preserved. If they destroy evidence after receiving that letter, the court can instruct the jury to assume the destroyed evidence would have been unfavorable to them. That is powerful leverage, but only if the letter goes out before the evidence is gone.
The Medicine of a Highway-Speed Crash
A head-on collision on a rural West Texas highway is one of the most violent events the human body can endure. The physics are simple and brutal: when two vehicles approach each other on a two-lane road at 65 miles per hour, the closing speed is 130 miles per hour. The kinetic energy that must be absorbed in the fraction of a second of impact is enormous, and the human body inside the vehicle is subjected to deceleration forces that tear tissue, fracture bone, and destroy organs.
The change in velocity — what crash investigators call delta-V — is the single best predictor of injury severity. In a head-on crash, the delta-V for each vehicle is roughly its own pre-impact speed. A 65-mile-per-hour delta-V is a catastrophic event. The vehicle’s crumple zones absorb some of the energy, the seatbelt absorbs some, the airbag absorbs some — but what remains is transferred directly to the occupants. The body goes from 65 miles per hour to zero in milliseconds. The brain continues forward inside the skull and strikes the interior bone. The organs shift and compress against the spine. The chest hits the steering wheel or dashboard. The legs take the force of the engine compartment intruding into the passenger space.
The injuries that follow are the injuries we see in every high-speed crash case. Traumatic brain injury — from the brain slamming against the inside of the skull — can occur even when the head does not strike anything. A “mild” TBI, with a Glasgow Coma Scale score of 13 to 15, can come with a perfectly normal CT scan, because the damage is diffuse axonal injury — microscopic tearing of the brain’s nerve fibers that standard imaging cannot see. More than one in three people with a GCS score of 13, the top of the “mild” range, have potentially life-threatening bleeding in the brain. The defense will call a clean scan proof that the injury is not real. The medicine says the opposite.
Spinal cord injuries occur when the forces of the crash fracture or dislocate vertebrae and the bone fragments compress or sever the spinal cord. A cervical injury can mean paralysis from the neck down — tetraplegia — and a lifetime cost of care that runs into the millions. The national spinal cord injury registry puts the first year of care for a high-neck-level injury at roughly $1.4 million, and lifetime care for a young adult at more than $6 million — and that figure excludes every lost paycheck.
Internal organ injuries are the silent killers. The liver, spleen, and kidneys can rupture on impact, and the bleeding is internal — invisible to the people at the scene, sometimes invisible to the first ER assessment. A delayed diagnosis of an intra-abdominal bleed can turn a survivable injury into a fatal one within hours. The crash victim who “looks okay” at the scene may be bleeding internally in ways that only a trauma surgeon with a CT scanner can detect.
Severe fractures — particularly of the pelvis, femur, and spine — require surgical fixation, months of rehabilitation, and frequently leave permanent disability. Crush injuries to the extremities can lead to compartment syndrome, where swelling inside a sealed muscle compartment chokes off blood flow and kills the muscle within hours if a surgeon does not open the fascia to relieve the pressure. Miss that six-hour window and the limb may be lost.
In the Midland area, the trauma care pathway is a geographic problem. Midland Memorial Hospital can stabilize and evaluate, but it is not a Level I trauma center — the highest designation, with a full trauma surgery team on site 24 hours a day. The nearest Level I trauma centers are in Lubbock (roughly 120 miles) and El Paso (roughly 290 miles). Seriously injured crash victims are flown by helicopter, and in a multi-victim crash, the helicopter resources may be stretched. Every minute of delay in reaching definitive trauma care worsens the outcome — and those minutes become part of the damages story, because delayed care means worse injuries means higher medical costs and longer recovery.
For the families who lost someone in this crash, the medical evidence is the foundation of both the wrongful death and survival claims. The survival claim requires proof of what the decedent experienced between the crash and death — the pain, the fear, the consciousness of what was happening. The EMS records, the emergency department notes, the surgical reports — these contemporaneous documents are the proof. For the families of survivors, the medical evidence is the foundation of the lifetime care plan: what will this person need, for how many years, and what will it cost.
The Money: Insurance Towers, Coverage Gaps, and What a Life Is Worth
The first thing the insurance company wants you to believe is that the at-fault driver’s policy limit is the ceiling on what your family can recover. It almost never is. The second thing they want you to believe is that their first offer is fair. It almost never is. Here is how the money actually works in a crash involving multiple victims.
The at-fault driver’s liability coverage. Texas minimum is $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident for bodily injury, with $25,000 for property damage. That means if five people were injured or killed in the van, the most any one person can recover from the at-fault driver’s minimum policy is $30,000 — and the total available to all victims combined is $60,000. One night in a trauma ICU can exceed $30,000. A funeral can exceed $15,000. The minimum policy is a fraction of what a single seriously injured person needs, let alone multiple families. Many drivers carry more than the minimum — $100,000, $250,000, $500,000 — but you do not know the actual limit until the policy is produced in discovery, and the insurance company is not eager to volunteer it.
Commercial coverage (if applicable). If the at-fault driver was operating a commercial vehicle, the federal minimum for a non-hazardous interstate carrier is $750,000. For hazmat carriers, it rises to $1 million or $5 million depending on the cargo. If the at-fault vehicle was an oilfield truck operating in the Permian Basin — a water hauler, a sand truck, a crude tanker — the commercial policy is the primary target, and it is typically far larger than any personal auto policy.
UM/UIM coverage. This is the coverage that most families do not know they have. Texas insurers must offer uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage unless the policyholder rejected it in writing. UM pays when the at-fault driver has no insurance. UIM pays when the at-fault driver’s insurance is not enough to cover the harm. In a multi-victim crash where the at-fault driver’s $60,000 per-accident limit is split among several families, UIM is the difference between a pittance and a real recovery. The university’s own vehicle policy, the families’ personal auto policies, and any umbrella policies may all carry UM/UIM that applies here.
Umbrella and excess policies. A personal umbrella policy — typically $1 million or more — stacks on top of the underlying auto and UM/UIM coverage. Some families have umbrella coverage without realizing it, and it applies to wrongful death claims.
The damages categories. A full claim in a crash like this includes:
Economic damages — the money side, provable with records and expert math: past and future medical bills, past and future lost earnings, lost earning capacity (what the person would have earned over their career), funeral and burial costs, household services (the dollar value of the cooking, childcare, repairs, and management the person did for free), and for catastrophically injured survivors, a life-care plan that prices out every surgery, therapy, medication, wheelchair, and caregiver hour the person will need for the rest of their life. A forensic economist reduces these future costs to present value.
Non-economic damages — the human side, with no receipt: pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of companionship, loss of guidance, loss of the life the family no longer gets to live. In Texas, there is no statutory cap on non-economic damages in motor vehicle crash cases. A jury can award the full measure of human loss.
Punitive damages — available when the defendant’s conduct was grossly negligent. Texas limits the amount, but the availability of punitive damages is leverage in settlement negotiations even when they are not ultimately awarded.
How a real number is built. A life-care planner — a certified professional who builds a formal document to a published national standard — prices out, year by year, every medical and personal-care need a catastrophically injured survivor will have for the rest of their life. A forensic economist then reduces that cost stream to present value, accounts for inflation, and calculates the lost earning capacity using worklife expectancy tables built from federal labor data. For a young person — a student athlete with decades of earning potential ahead — the lost earning capacity alone can be substantial. The life-care plan for a high spinal cord injury can run into the millions. The wrongful death damages for a family that lost a child include not only the financial support that child would have provided over a full career but the immeasurable loss of the relationship itself.
The firm has recovered $50 million across its caseload, including a $5 million-plus brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement, and $2.5 million-plus in truck-crash recoveries. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but they tell you what is possible when the evidence is preserved, the experts are retained, and the insurance company is shown that the alternative to a fair settlement is a trial.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How to Beat Each Play
The insurance adjuster who called you is not your friend. They are a professional trained to minimize what the company pays, and they have a playbook that runs the same way in every multi-victim crash. Here are the plays, in the order you will see them, and the counter to each one.
Play 1: The “just checking in” recorded statement. Within days of the crash, someone friendly will call to check on your family and ask you to “just tell us what happened” on a recorded line. This call is engineered to get you to say things that can be quoted against you later — “I’m doing okay,” “I think the roads were just bad,” “I’m not sure whose fault it was.” Every one of those phrases will appear in the insurance company’s file as evidence that you are not badly hurt or that you blame the weather, not their driver. The counter is simple: do not give a recorded statement without a lawyer. You have no legal obligation to let them record you. Say: “I am not giving a statement at this time.” That is a complete sentence.
Play 2: The fast settlement check. A check may arrive quickly, sometimes before the medical results are in, with a release document attached. The release, once signed, settles the entire claim — forever, for every family member, for every injury known and unknown. If the MRI showing a brain injury has not been read yet, if the full extent of the spinal damage has not been declared yet, if the lifetime cost of care has not been calculated yet — signing that release means accepting a fraction of what the case is worth and giving up the right to seek more. The counter is absolute: do not sign anything from an insurance company without a lawyer reviewing it. A release signed in the first weeks of a case is almost always worth a fraction of the case’s true value.
Play 3: The “your driver was partly at fault” argument. The adjuster will probe whether the van’s driver was speeding, whether the van was maintained, whether the route was safe, whether the team should have been on the road at all. This is not investigation — it is the 51% bar at work. Every percentage point of fault they can pin on the victims is money subtracted from the recovery. In Texas, if the victims are assigned 51% or more of the fault, the recovery is zero. The counter is a thorough reconstruction that proves the crash was the at-fault driver’s doing — the EDR data, the scene evidence, the witness statements, the physical damage patterns — and a legal argument that holds the line on fault allocation.
Play 4: The blanket medical authorization. The adjuster will ask you to sign a medical authorization so they can “verify your injuries.” The form they send is usually a blanket authorization that lets them pull your entire medical history — not just the records from this crash. They are looking for pre-existing conditions they can blame for your symptoms: a prior concussion, a prior back complaint, a prior MRI. The counter is to never sign a blanket medical authorization. Provide the crash-related records directly, through your lawyer, and nothing more.
Play 5: The “we need more time” delay. The insurance company knows the two-year statute of limitations is running. Their strategy may be to drag negotiations past the deadline, knowing that once the SOL expires, you cannot file a lawsuit no matter how strong the case is. The counter is a lawyer who tracks the deadline, files suit before it expires, and uses the Stowers doctrine — the Texas rule that requires an insurer to settle within policy limits when a reasonable offer is made — to create leverage that forces resolution.
There is a video on our channel about what not to say to an insurance adjuster that walks through these plays in detail. The short version: everything you say to the insurance company before you have a lawyer is being used to reduce what they pay you. Everything.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a crash case is built, from the day you call to the day the case resolves. This is not a summary — it is the actual sequence.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. It goes to the at-fault driver, their insurance company, the tow yard holding the vehicles, any commercial carrier involved, any business with cameras near the scene, and the vehicle manufacturers. It freezes the evidence. The vehicles are inspected — both of them — by a crash reconstruction expert who photographs every crush pattern, every seatbelt mark, every intrusion into the passenger compartment. The EDR from both vehicles is downloaded with forensic equipment. The scene is visited and documented: skid marks measured, sight lines photographed, road conditions recorded.
Weeks two through four. The police crash report is obtained and analyzed. Witness statements are taken while memories are fresh. Medical records are compiled from every treating facility — the EMS run sheet, the emergency department notes, the imaging, the surgical reports. The first round of expert retention begins: a crash reconstructionist, a biomechanics expert, a life-care planner if the injuries are catastrophic. The insurance policies are identified and demanded: the at-fault driver’s declarations page, any commercial policy, the UM/UIM policies, umbrella layers.
Months one through six. If the case cannot be settled pre-suit — and multi-victim crashes involving serious injuries or deaths rarely can — a lawsuit is filed before the two-year statute of limitations expires. The complaint names every responsible defendant. Discovery begins: written interrogatories, document requests, depositions of the at-fault driver, the employer, the safety director if a commercial carrier is involved, the investigating officers, the witnesses. The defense hires its own experts, who will examine the same evidence and produce reports that minimize the defendant’s fault and the plaintiffs’ injuries. The defense medical examination — where the insurance company’s doctor examines the survivor — is scheduled, and the survivor’s own treating physicians are deposed.
Months six through twelve and beyond. Expert reports are exchanged. Mediation is typically ordered by the court. The life-care plan and the forensic economist’s report are presented. The Stowers demand — an offer to settle within policy limits — may be made to create leverage. If the insurance company refuses to settle for a reasonable amount, the case proceeds to trial. A trial in Midland County would be heard by a jury drawn from the community — people who know these highways, who know the oilfield traffic, who understand what it means to lose a family member on a Permian Basin road.
The number at the end is built from all of this — every record, every expert opinion, every deposition, every piece of physical evidence. It is not invented. It is not a demand pulled from the air. It is the arithmetic of what was taken and what it will cost to live with it.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What to Refuse
The first 72 hours after a deadly crash are when the evidence is most fragile and the insurance company is most aggressive. Here is the hour-by-hour, day-by-day roadmap.
Hour 1 through 24. Medical care comes first. If you are injured, every symptom must be documented — not for the lawsuit, but for your health. Symptoms lie: adrenaline masks pain, a “mild” concussion can have a normal scan, internal bleeding may not declare itself for hours. If you were in the crash and have not been examined by a doctor, go. Do not refuse medical care because you “feel okay.” The second priority is family notification — and if the adjuster calls before you have even notified all family members, that tells you everything about their priorities. Say nothing about the crash to the adjuster. Say: “I am not ready to discuss this. Do not call me again.” That is your right.
Hour 24 through 48. Call a car accident lawyer. The preservation letter needs to go out now, not next week. The vehicles need to be held. The scene needs to be documented. Do not speak to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Do not post anything about the crash on social media — no photos, no statements, no tributes that the insurance company’s surveillance team can twist into evidence that you are “not really grieving.” Set every social media account to private. Tell family members to do the same.
Hour 48 through 72. The preservation letters are going out. The vehicle inspection is being scheduled. The EDR download is being arranged. The medical records are being compiled. The insurance companies — yours and theirs — are being notified that you are represented. From this point forward, every communication from the insurance company goes through your lawyer. You do not take their calls. You do not return their messages. You do not sign their forms.
What to refuse. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not sign a medical authorization. Do not sign a release. Do not accept a settlement check. Do not discuss fault with anyone. Do not post on social media. Do not let the tow yard scrap the vehicle. Do not let the insurance company “inspect” the vehicle before your expert does. Do not assume the police report is accurate or complete. Do not assume the insurance company is being fair. Do not wait.
Here is a video on what to do after a car accident that covers these steps in more detail. The short version: protect the evidence, protect your medical record, and call a lawyer before you say a word to the insurance company.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a lawsuit after a deadly crash in Texas?
Texas law gives you two years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit. This deadline is set by the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code and it is absolute — if you miss it, the case is over, no matter how strong the evidence is. But the evidence that proves your case — the black-box data, the skid marks, the surveillance footage — can disappear in days or weeks, long before the two-year deadline approaches. The deadline is the back wall. The evidence clock is the front wall, and it is much closer.
What if the at-fault driver was also killed in the crash?
A deceased at-fault driver does not extinguish the claim. The claim survives against the driver’s estate and their liability insurance, which remains in effect. The insurance company will still investigate, still adjust the claim, and still be responsible for paying up to the policy limits. The estate’s personal representative is the party you deal with, and the insurance company stands behind the estate. The coverage does not die with the driver.
Can we sue if our loved one was a passenger in the van?
Yes. A passenger is, in almost every scenario, a victim who bears no fault for the crash. The passenger’s claim runs against whoever caused the collision — the at-fault driver, their employer if they were working, the vehicle manufacturer if a defect contributed. The passenger may also have a claim against the van driver’s insurance if the van driver contributed to the crash, and against the university’s vehicle policy if the university owned or insured the van. Passengers have the strongest comparative-fault position because they were not in control of either vehicle.
How does insurance work when multiple people were injured or killed in the same crash?
This is one of the cruelest realities in a multi-victim crash. The at-fault driver’s insurance has a per-accident limit — often $60,000 at the Texas minimum — that is shared among every person injured or killed in the crash. If five families are claiming against a $60,000 per-accident policy, the math is brutal. This is why identifying every available coverage source is critical: UM/UIM from the victims’ own policies, commercial coverage if the at-fault vehicle was a work vehicle, umbrella and excess policies, and the university’s own vehicle insurance. The first offer from the insurance company will assume you do not know about these other sources. The correct response is to find all of them.
What if the crash was partly the van driver’s fault?
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. If the van driver was partly at fault — speeding, for example, or following too closely — their percentage of fault reduces the recovery of everyone in the van. But a passenger’s recovery would only be reduced by the passengers’ own share of fault, which in almost every case is zero. The at-fault driver and the van driver’s fault percentages are separate, and the at-fault driver’s insurance cannot use the van driver’s fault to bar a passenger’s claim — it can only reduce it proportionally. The adjuster will try to use the van driver’s conduct to reduce everyone’s recovery. The counter is a careful reconstruction that assigns fault accurately.
How much is a wrongful death case worth?
There is no fixed number. A wrongful death case is valued on the specific losses the family suffered: the financial support the decedent would have provided over their expected career, the value of the services they performed at home, the loss of companionship, guidance, and the relationship itself, the pain and suffering the decedent experienced before death, the medical and funeral costs, and in cases involving gross negligence, punitive damages. For a young person — a student athlete with a full career and decades of earning potential ahead — the economic loss alone can be substantial. The non-economic loss — the loss of a child, a teammate, a friend — is something no formula can capture and no cap limits in a Texas MVA case. The honest answer is that the value is built from the evidence, the expert analysis, and the specific facts of the family’s loss, and it is different in every case.
What if the at-fault driver had no insurance or very little insurance?
This is what uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is for. In Texas, every auto insurer must offer UM/UIM coverage unless the policyholder rejects it in writing. If the at-fault driver had no insurance, UM coverage pays your claim as if your insurer were the at-fault driver’s insurer. If the at-fault driver’s insurance was not enough, UIM coverage pays the difference up to your policy limit. UM/UIM from the victims’ personal policies, the university’s vehicle policy, and any umbrella policies may all apply. Finding every source of UM/UIM coverage is one of the first things we do.
Should we talk to the insurance company?
No. Not without a lawyer. The insurance adjuster who calls you is a professional whose job is to reduce what the company pays. Everything you say can be used to reduce your claim. The friendly “just checking in” call is a recorded statement designed to get you to minimize your injuries or admit fault. The fast settlement offer is designed to close the file before the full extent of the harm is known. The medical authorization is designed to give them access to your entire medical history. Say: “I am represented by counsel. Contact my attorney.” Then call us.
Can the university be held responsible?
The university’s role depends on the specific facts — who owned the van, who insured it, who maintained it, who selected the driver, and whether the university’s policies or decisions contributed to the crash. The university is not at fault simply because its students were involved, but if the university owned and maintained the van, its insurance may be a source of coverage for the victims. This is a question that requires a careful review of the vehicle ownership, insurance, and maintenance records, and it should be evaluated by a lawyer, not assumed.
How long does a case like this take?
A straightforward crash case with clear liability and modest injuries can resolve in a few months. A multi-victim crash involving deaths, catastrophic injuries, multiple insurance carriers, commercial defendants, and cross-border issues can take a year or more. The statute of limitations requires that a lawsuit be filed within two years, but the case does not have to be resolved within two years — it has to be filed within two years. Once filed, the discovery process, expert preparation, mediation, and trial preparation take additional time. The insurance company knows that time is on their side and that grieving families want resolution. The counter is a lawyer who moves fast on the evidence, builds the case methodically, and is prepared to try the case if the insurance company will not settle fairly.
Why This Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — 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 is the managing partner of this firm and the lead voice on every case we take. Read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He knows how the claim valuation software works. He knows how the IME doctor is selected. He knows the delay tactics and the lowball formulas. He now sits on your side of the table, using that inside knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Read more about Lupe here.
We work on contingency. That means: free consultation, no fee unless we win your case. If we take your case, we advance the costs — the expert fees, the filing fees, the reconstruction costs — and we are paid a percentage of the recovery. 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing for our time. The consultation is free, confidential, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You will talk to a live person, not an answering service.
We handle cases in Midland, throughout the Permian Basin, and across Texas. We are based in Houston with offices in Austin and Beaumont, and we take catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases statewide. When the case is in Midland County, we work with local counsel and are prepared to try the case in the courthouse where the jury will be drawn from the community that knows these roads.
Hablamos Español. Lupe conducts full consultations in Spanish. If your family prays in Spanish, we will speak to you in Spanish.
The call is free. The consultation is free. The cost of waiting is not. The evidence from this crash is dying — the black-box data, the scene marks, the surveillance footage, the witness memories. The insurance adjuster is building their file right now. The preservation letter that freezes the evidence goes out the day you call. Not the day you decide. Not the day you feel ready. The day you call.
1-888-ATTY-911. 24 hours. 7 days. A live person. Not an answering service.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.