When the driver who hit you is arrested for DWI, it feels like the legal system is finally holding someone accountable. And it is, but not on your behalf. The criminal case is prosecuted by the State of Texas to punish the driver. A conviction can mean jail time, fines, and a suspended license. It sends no money to you, pays none of your medical bills, and does nothing to replace lost income. The compensation you’re owed comes from a separate civil claim with its own rules, its own deadlines, and its own potential to recover far more than most victims realize.
At Paradowski Law, our lead attorney holds Board Certification in Personal Injury Trial Law from the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a credential earned by fewer than seven percent of Texas attorneys. The breakdown below reflects the actual statutory framework Texas courts apply to these cases.
Two Separate Cases: The DWI Charge & Your Civil Claim
A DWI prosecution and a civil personal injury claim run on parallel tracks. The Brazos County District Attorney’s office handles the criminal side; you and your attorney drive the civil side. Your civil claim can proceed regardless of what happens in criminal court. If the driver is never charged, pleads to a lesser offense, or is acquitted, none of that prevents you from pursuing compensation. The civil standard only requires proof by a preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not), which is a much lower threshold than the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard used in criminal trials.
What does have a firm deadline is the two-year statute of limitations under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 16.003. That clock runs from the date of the crash. Miss it, and the civil claim is gone regardless of how strong the evidence is. If the case involves a fatality, the same two-year window applies to wrongful death claims. Civil injury lawsuits from a crash in Brazos County are filed with the Brazos County District Clerk at the Brazos County Courthouse, 300 E. 26th Street, Bryan, Texas, where District Courts hold jurisdiction over civil cases exceeding $500.
What Compensation Covers: Economic & Non-Economic Damages
Texas personal injury law divides recoverable damages into two broad categories. Understanding both matters because they compensate for very different kinds of harm, and insurers routinely try to minimize one or the other.
Economic Damages
Economic damages cover documented financial losses provable with records: medical bills, pay stubs, receipts, and expert testimony about costs you haven’t incurred yet but will. Common categories include past and future medical expenses, lost wages, diminished future earning capacity if the injury permanently limits what you can do professionally, and vehicle repair or replacement. Future damages (years of physical therapy or anticipated surgeries) require expert witnesses to quantify but are fully recoverable when properly documented.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages compensate for losses that don’t come with a receipt: physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, physical impairment, and loss of enjoyment of life. Unlike medical malpractice claims in Texas, where non-economic damages against a physician are capped at $250,000, drunk driving injury cases against a private driver carry no statutory cap on these damages. Serious injuries, chronic pain, or permanent disability can produce non-economic awards that exceed economic damages by a wide margin, which is why these categories deserve careful attention from the start.
When Exemplary Damages Apply & What They’re Capped At
Exemplary damages, sometimes called punitive damages, are intended to punish conduct so reckless that basic compensation doesn’t adequately address it. They require a higher standard of proof than compensatory damages: clear and convincing evidence that the driver acted with gross negligence, fraud, or malice. Gross negligence means the driver was aware of an extreme risk to others and consciously chose to disregard it. Texas courts have consistently treated driving while intoxicated as a textbook example of gross negligence.
Under Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 41.008, exemplary damages in Texas are capped at the greater of $200,000 or two times economic damages plus non-economic damages up to $750,000. In a case with $150,000 in economic damages and $300,000 in non-economic damages, the formula allows up to $600,000 in exemplary damages ($150,000 × 2 + $300,000). The cap isn’t a ceiling on justice; it’s a statutory formula, and understanding it helps set realistic expectations for what a case can produce.
Other Parties & Rules That Can Shape Your Recovery
The drunk driver isn’t always the only party with legal exposure. Two areas of Texas law (dram shop liability and uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage) can significantly expand or protect your recovery when the driver’s own policy falls short.
Dram Shop Liability Under Texas Law
The Texas Dram Shop Act, codified at Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code section 2.02, allows a crash victim to pursue a bar, restaurant, or other licensed alcohol provider if it served alcohol to someone who was obviously intoxicated to the point of presenting a clear danger, and that intoxication caused the crash. This can be a critical source of additional compensation when the driver carries only minimum limits or no coverage at all.
One important development: on April 11, 2025, the Texas Supreme Court decided Raoger Corporation v. Barrie Myers, holding that circumstantial evidence (including BAC results and expert testimony) must be directly linked to other probative evidence of how the patron appeared at the time of service to support a dram shop claim. Stacking inferences to reconstruct a patron’s apparent intoxication at the moment of service isn’t enough on its own. This raises the evidentiary bar. A server who noticed slurred speech or unsteady movement and kept pouring can still create liability, but a BAC number on a toxicology report is no longer sufficient by itself. Documented witness accounts, surveillance footage, and server testimony become even more important after this ruling.
Establishments that comply with TABC server training programs can raise a Safe Harbor defense, which can limit liability when staff followed responsible service protocols. Whether that defense applies depends heavily on the specific facts, including what training actually occurred and what the server observed.
Uninsured & Underinsured Motorist Coverage
Texas only requires drivers to carry $30,000 per person, $60,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage in liability coverage. A serious injury (hospital stay, surgery, months of rehabilitation) can cost ten times that minimum. When the at-fault driver’s policy isn’t large enough to cover your actual losses, your own uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage (UM/UIM) fills the gap up to your policy limits. In drunk driving cases, where at-fault drivers disproportionately carry only the legal minimum, this coverage is frequently the most important financial protection a victim has. If you don’t know whether your policy includes it, reviewing your declarations page now is worth doing.
Comparative Fault & How Insurers Use It Against You
Under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter 33, Texas uses a modified comparative fault system. Your total damages are reduced by your percentage of fault, and if you’re found more than 50% at fault, your recovery is barred entirely. Even in a clear DWI case, insurers will sometimes claim the victim was speeding, failed to yield, or was otherwise partially responsible. We investigate the full record (police reports, witness statements, and traffic camera footage) to counter those arguments before they take hold in negotiations.
For Fatal Crashes: Wrongful Death & Survival Claims
When a drunk driving crash kills someone, Texas law creates two distinct legal pathways with different purposes, different eligible plaintiffs, and different damages. Running them together in a single filing is both common and important.
Wrongful Death Claims
Under Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 71.004, only the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the deceased may bring a wrongful death claim. This claim compensates family members for their own losses, not the deceased’s. Recoverable damages include loss of financial support the deceased would have provided, loss of companionship and society, and the mental anguish the family has suffered.
Survival Actions
A survival action under section 71.021 belongs to the deceased’s estate, not to the family directly. It recovers what the deceased personally endured between the crash and death: conscious pain and suffering, pre-death medical expenses, and funeral costs. The two claims address different time periods and different harms, which is why Texas law keeps them separate. When both are available, pursuing both is almost always the right approach. Exemplary damages remain available in fatal cases under the Texas Constitution when a death is caused by a willful act or gross negligence, subject to the same section 41.008 cap described above.
What Comes Next
The two-year deadline is the one fact that shouldn’t wait. Evidence fades, witnesses become harder to locate, and surveillance footage is routinely overwritten within days or weeks. The earlier a claim is evaluated, the more complete the evidentiary record we can build.
Reach out to Paradowski Law at (855) 524-2976. The initial consultation is free, and there’s no fee unless we recover for you.