Common Questions / Catastrophic Injuries
What makes a catastrophic injury case different?
A catastrophic injury permanently changes how a person lives or works, a brain or spinal cord injury, amputation, severe burns, and the case changes with it: the largest damages are decades in the future, they must be proven by experts, and settling before the trajectory is known settles for a fraction.
When the future is the case
In an ordinary injury claim, the medical bills in the folder are most of the damages. In a catastrophic case, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord damage, amputation, severe burns, vision loss, the folder holds a down payment. The real losses are the next forty years: attendant care, replacement wheelchairs and prosthetics on a schedule, home and vehicle modification, future surgeries, medications, therapy, and the career that will never resume. Texas law allows recovery of all of it, but only what is proven to a reasonable probability, which means the future must be built into evidence, not asserted.
The experts who translate a life into numbers
Three disciplines carry these cases. A life care planner, typically a rehabilitation professional, works with the treating physicians to map every category of care the injury will require, item by item, year by year, at real prices. A vocational expert measures what work capacity remains against what existed, converting a lost trade into lost earning capacity. An economist projects both streams across a lifetime and reduces them to present value, the single number a jury can award today. Done rigorously, the plan is nearly unassailable; done casually, it is the first thing a defense economist shreds.
Where the money must come from
A seven-figure loss against a minimum auto policy is a tragedy twice over, which is why the coverage investigation in catastrophic cases is relentless: every defendant's policies, umbrella and excess layers, employer coverage and course-and-scope theories, product and premises defendants whose role a quick look would miss, and the family's own underinsured motorist coverage stacked on top. The other lever is trial readiness. Carriers reserve and pay catastrophic files based on what a jury could do, and they price that risk against the specific firm holding the case. This firm builds these cases as trial cases from the first week, because that is what moves seven-figure evaluations.
For the family holding this page
Catastrophic cases run on two clocks: the legal deadlines, and the family's exhaustion. The early lowball arrives when the bills are loudest and the future is foggiest, priced for exactly that moment. Do not evaluate it alone, and do not evaluate it before the life care picture exists. The consultation costs nothing, and in these cases especially, it is the difference between a settlement that survives the first five years and one that provides for the whole life ahead.
Injured in Arizona? Some rules on this page are Texas-specific. Arizona differs on points that change outcomes, including pure comparative fault and government-claim deadlines. See our Arizona answers or call (888) 508-6967.
Related: Catastrophic Injuries · Pain & Suffering in Texas · Submit Your Case · All Common Questions
This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes depend on facts; talk to a lawyer about yours.
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