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Texas personal injury law has a handful of rules that don't exist in the same form in other states — and that have outsized influence on what happens to your claim. If you're considering filing, these are the ones that matter most.
Under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code §16.003, most personal-injury lawsuits must be filed within two years of the date of injury. Miss this deadline and the claim is typically gone forever. Insurance adjusters know this and routinely drag negotiations past the two-year mark when victims don't have counsel.
Important shorter deadlines: claims against Texas government entities require notice within six months under the Texas Tort Claims Act, and the City of Houston requires notice in just 90 days. If your crash involved a METRO bus, a city vehicle, or a public hospital, the 90-day clock matters as much as the two-year one. Full deadlines guide.
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule. If you are 50% or less at fault for your own injury, you can recover damages — reduced by your percentage of fault. If you are 51% or more at fault, you recover nothing.
Insurance defense lawyers fight hard over fault percentages because of this cliff. Pushing the plaintiff from 49% to 51% can shift the entire case value to zero. How the 51% rule plays out in practice.
Before 2015, Texas law prohibited evidence about whether an injured person was wearing a seat belt. The Texas Supreme Court changed that in Nabors Well Services, Ltd. v. Romero, holding that seat belt non-use evidence can now be presented to reduce damages.
Practical impact: if you were unbelted and the crash made your injuries worse than they would have been with a belt, the defense will argue your damages should be reduced. Were you belted? Document it now — through dashcam, witness, EMS records, anywhere it's verifiable.
Unlike every other state, Texas allows employers to opt out of the workers' compensation system. Employers who opt out are called "non-subscribers," and the rules change significantly when an employee gets hurt at one of these workplaces.
Non-subscriber employers lose three key defenses: contributory negligence, assumption of the risk, and the fellow-servant rule. That means even if the worker was partially at fault, it does not reduce the recovery in a civil suit. Recoveries against non-subscribers can therefore be significantly larger than what workers' comp would have paid. Full non-subscriber guide.
Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code Chapter 2 lets victims of drunk-driver crashes sue the bar or restaurant that over-served the driver. The plaintiff must show the establishment served alcohol when the patron was visibly intoxicated and that the intoxication caused the harm.
Why this matters: drunk drivers often have minimum insurance limits — $30,000 per person under Texas's 30/60/25 minimum. Bar commercial general liability policies are often $1 million or more. Adding the bar to the case can transform recovery in a way the driver's policy alone cannot. Full dram shop guide.
Texas banned the use of photographic traffic-signal enforcement systems (red-light cameras) in 2019. This means in a typical Houston intersection crash, you cannot rely on automated camera tickets to prove the other driver ran a red light. You need witness testimony, dashcam footage, surveillance video from nearby businesses, or physical evidence to prove signal violations.
This puts a premium on fast evidence preservation — bar surveillance video can be overwritten in 30 days, business cameras in even less.
These rules create the framework for every Texas injury claim. They explain why insurance adjusters push fault onto you (51% bar), why they delay (waiting out the two-year clock), why they ask about your medical history (looking for arguable pre-existing conditions), and why they ask about seat belt use.
If you've been injured, the time to learn how these rules work is before you talk to any insurance company — not after.
This blog post is general information about Texas law, not legal advice for your specific case. Every case has different facts. For a free case-specific review, call (713) 842-9442 or start an online case review.
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