Legal Question in Personal Injury in Texas
My son was injured in a motorcycle accident in August. The man that hit him was cited for failure to yield the right of way causing serious bodily injury and was taken to jail for suspended/expired drivers license. Later we found out the car he was driving belonged to his sister and was not insured. My son almost died, he had to be flown to the trauma center and had emergency surgery to control the bleeding. He has a long list of injuries. He has had multiple surgeries, spent a month in the hospital and is having more surgery this month. This happened five days after his 31st birthday. He has two rods, two plates and twenty seven screws holding him together. The only part of his body that did not have a broken bone was his left leg and is still in severe pain.
We are being told that since there was no insurance on the car and this is Texas there is nothing we can do. This guy deserves more than a $200. ticket.
Do we have any options?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Due to homestead laws, its hard to collect a judgment against the average individual who has no insurance. He would have to have substantial cash or assets to collect against, otherwise he may very well file bankruptcy and render any personal judgment worthless. Odds are, if he had money to protect, he would have been insured.
You should check to see if your son had any under insured motorist policies that covered him. Sometimes an under insured policy on another vehicle from the same household will provide coverage.
If there is no insurance coverage available, you will have a problem. Personal injury attorneys who work on a contingency fee are not likely to take a case where there is no coverage nor assets to collect against. Its just not a good investment of time or money when there is no realistic expectation of getting it back.
You could hire an attorney by the hour to pursue a judgment. But, if there is no expectation of recovery it wouldn't make alot of sense to spend that kind of money just to mess up someones credit.
Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule and I have not seen the file. You should have at least two attorneys look at the file and check to see if there is any insurance or assets to go after.
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