Someone was careless, you got hurt, and now you are trying to work out whether the law will do anything about it. Suing for negligence in Texas comes down to four things you have to prove and one number you cannot exceed.
The four elements are duty, breach, causation, and damages. The number is 50%, because Texas bars recovery entirely if your own share of responsibility for the incident is greater than that.
This page walks through each element, what evidence satisfies it, and the rules that decide how much a Texas jury can award you.
Have a situation you want reviewed? George Salinas Injury Lawyers looks at these for free. Call (210) 225-0909, and there is no fee unless we win.
Resources On This Page
- Can You Sue for Negligence in Texas?
- What Are the Four Elements of a Negligence Claim?
- How Does Texas Comparative Fault Affect Your Case?
- What Is Negligence Per Se?
- When Is Conduct Gross Negligence Instead of Ordinary Negligence?
- Who Can Be Sued for Negligence in Texas?
- How Long Do You Have to File a Negligence Lawsuit in Texas?
- What Happens Once a Negligence Suit Is Filed?
- Texas Negligence Questions, Answered
- Four Elements, One Conversation
Can You Sue for Negligence in Texas?
Yes, if someone’s carelessness caused you a real, measurable harm and you can prove all four elements. Missing any one of them ends the claim, no matter how sympathetic the facts are.
The standard of proof is a preponderance of the evidence, which means more likely than not. That is a lower bar than the criminal standard, and it is why a driver acquitted of a traffic offense can still be found liable in a civil suit.
What Are the Four Elements of a Negligence Claim?
Every Texas negligence case is built on the same four pieces, in this order.
| Element | The question it answers | Common proof |
|---|---|---|
| Duty | Did the defendant owe you a legal obligation to be careful? | Statutes, the relationship between the parties, ordinary care standards |
| Breach | Did they fall short of that obligation? | Testimony, video, records, expert witness opinion on the standard of care |
| Causation | Did that failure actually cause your injury? | Medical records, treating physicians, reconstruction |
| Damages | Did you suffer a loss the law recognizes? | Bills, wage records, imaging, testimony about daily life |
The chain matters as much as the pieces. A defendant can be careless in a way that harms nobody, and a person can be badly injured by someone who owed them nothing. Only when all four connect does a claim exist.
Our page on the prima facie case of negligence covers what it means to establish these elements at the threshold level.
What is a duty of care?
A legal obligation to act with reasonable care toward others. Where it comes from depends on the relationship.
Drivers owe every other road user a duty to operate a vehicle with ordinary care. Property owners owe visitors a duty that varies by why the visitor is there. Employers owe workers a reasonably safe workplace. Doctors owe patients the care standard of a similarly trained practitioner. Trucking companies owe the public compliance with federal safety regulations.
Duty is usually the least contested element in a crash case and one of the most contested in a premises or professional case.
What counts as a breach?
Doing something a reasonably careful person would not have done, or failing to do something a reasonably careful person would have.
Running a red light. Texting behind the wheel. Leaving a spill unmarked for two hours. Sending a driver out on a truck with worn brakes. Ignoring a documented hazard on a job site.
Breach is proven with the boring things: timestamps, maintenance logs, inspection sheets, camera footage, dispatch records, and the testimony of people who saw it.
How do you prove causation?
Texas requires two layers, and defendants attack both.
Cause in fact asks whether the injury would have happened without the defendant’s conduct. Proximate cause asks whether this kind of harm was a foreseeable result of that conduct.
Causation is where most serious cases are actually won or lost. The standard defense is not “we did nothing wrong,” it is “that injury came from somewhere else,” usually a prior condition or a degenerative finding on an MRI. Consistent medical treatment with no gaps is the most effective answer to that argument, and a gap in care is the first thing an adjuster looks for.
What damages can you recover?
Two categories, and Texas does not cap either in an ordinary injury case.
Economic damages are the losses with receipts: emergency care, surgery, imaging, therapy, medication, assistive equipment, projected future medical care, lost wages, and lost earning capacity when the injury changes what work you can do.
Non-economic damages cover physical pain, mental anguish, physical impairment, and disfigurement, both what you have already lived through and what the evidence shows lies ahead.
Not sure how to value what you have lost? Call (210) 225-0909 for a free review.
How Does Texas Comparative Fault Affect Your Case?
It reduces your recovery by your percentage of blame, and eliminates it above 50%.
Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 33.001 states that a claimant may not recover damages if their percentage of responsibility is greater than 50 percent. At exactly 50%, you still recover. At 51%, you recover nothing.
Below that threshold, Section 33.012 requires the court to reduce your damages by whatever percentage the jury assigns you.
| Your share of fault | $500,000 in damages becomes |
|---|---|
| 0% | $500,000 |
| 20% | $400,000 |
| 50% | $250,000 |
| 51% | $0 |
This rule is why insurance adjusters lead with a fault theory. Every percentage point they can assign to you is a percentage point off the check, and 51% is a complete defense. It costs an adjuster nothing to argue you were speeding, distracted, or should have seen it coming.
What Is Negligence Per Se?
A shortcut that replaces the breach question with a statute. When a defendant violates a safety law designed to protect people like you from the kind of harm you suffered, the violation itself can establish breach.
A driver who ran a stop sign violated a traffic statute meant to prevent exactly the collision that happened. That is the classic case. Our explanation of negligence per se covers how it differs from ordinary negligence and when courts apply it.
It does not remove your burden on causation and damages. It narrows the fight to those two.
When Is Conduct Gross Negligence Instead of Ordinary Negligence?
When it goes past carelessness into conscious indifference to an extreme risk. That distinction unlocks exemplary damages, which ordinary negligence does not.
Texas requires clear and convincing evidence of fraud, malice, or gross negligence before exemplary damages are available. When that standard is met, Section 41.008 caps them at the greater of:
- Two times economic damages, plus non-economic damages up to $750,000, or
- $200,000
A trucking company that kept a driver on the road after failed drug tests, or a property owner who documented a hazard and left it for months, is the kind of fact pattern that reaches this standard.
Who Can Be Sued for Negligence in Texas?
Often more parties than the obvious one, and finding them is frequently what makes a case viable.
- The individual whose conduct caused the harm
- Their employer, when the conduct occurred within the scope of employment
- A business that hired, trained, or supervised the person negligently
- A property owner or manager, in premises cases
- A contractor or subcontractor sharing control of a work site
- A manufacturer, when a defective product contributed
- A government body, subject to immunity rules and much shorter deadlines
That last category changes the entire calendar. Claims against governmental units generally require written notice within six months under the Texas Tort Claims Act, and damages are capped by statute.
Sorting out third-party liability claims matters most where the obvious defendant has limited coverage. A minimum-limits driver and a well-insured employer produce very different outcomes from identical facts.
How Long Do You Have to File a Negligence Lawsuit in Texas?
Two years from the day the cause of action accrues, under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003. For a claim arising from a death, the two years runs from the date of death rather than the date of the injury.
A handful of situations shift the clock, including claims by minors and cases where the injury could not reasonably have been discovered. Government claims run on the much shorter notice deadline described above. None of these are things to rely on without advice.
The practical deadline is earlier than the legal one. Video is overwritten, vehicles are repaired or scrapped, witnesses move, and electronic records cycle out on schedules measured in weeks.
What Happens Once a Negligence Suit Is Filed?
A predictable sequence, though the timeline varies widely.
Pleadings open the case. Discovery follows, with written questions, document production, and depositions, and it is usually the longest phase. Expert witnesses are designated and challenged. Mediation happens in most cases, often successfully. If it does not resolve, the case is set for trial before a jury.
Most negligence claims settle. The ones that settle well are the ones prepared as though they will not.
Texas Negligence Questions, Answered
What if the person who hurt me was never charged or ticketed?
It does not matter to your civil case. Criminal charges and civil liability are separate systems with different standards of proof. A jury can find someone liable for damages even where prosecutors filed nothing at all.
Can I bring a claim if I signed a waiver?
Sometimes. Texas courts enforce liability waivers only when they meet strict requirements for conspicuousness and clear language, and a waiver generally cannot cover gross negligence. Bring the document to a lawyer rather than assuming it closes the door.
What if more than one person was careless?
Texas assigns a percentage of responsibility to each party, including you. Whether a defendant pays only its share or the whole judgment depends on its percentage and on the joint liability rules in Chapter 33.
Do I have a claim if I was hurt but nothing was broken?
Possibly. Soft tissue injuries, disc injuries, and concussions are real, compensable harms and frequently the ones insurers discount hardest. Documented treatment is what makes them provable.
How much does it cost to have a negligence claim evaluated?
Nothing. Consultations are free and we work on contingency, so there is no fee unless we win.
Meet Our Top-Rated San Antonio Injury Attorneys
Four Elements, One Conversation
Reading about duty and proximate cause is not the same as knowing whether your situation adds up to a case. That takes someone looking at the actual facts, the actual records, and the actual coverage.
George Salinas began his career representing insurance companies before he started suing them, which is how he learned what a defense file looks like from the inside. He is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates, a group that requires a genuine record of jury trials, and he prepares every case for the courtroom whether or not it ends there.
Call George Salinas Injury Lawyers at (210) 225-0909 in San Antonio or (512) 851-1004 in Austin. The consultation is free and we will tell you honestly what your four elements look like.