If you were hurt in an Austin car crash, you generally have two years to file a lawsuit, you can sue the driver and often an employer or other company whose negligence contributed, and your recovery can be reduced or barred by your own share of fault. Austin car accident lawsuits in Travis County follow Texas rules that cap certain claims, require written notice when a government entity is involved, and limit uninsured motorist coverage in specific ways that often surprise people after the fact.
The scale of what’s possible is on display in the civil cases coming out of the March 13, 2025 I-35 pileup in north Austin, where a tractor-trailer struck roughly 15 vehicles in a work-zone bottleneck, killing five people and injuring at least eleven others. Those suits now seek well over $250 million combined. A separate 2024 case against St. David’s North Austin Medical Center, after a car crashed through the ER lobby doors, shows how the same crash facts can turn into a very different fight over which law applies.1
Who You Can Sue After an Austin Crash
The at-fault driver is the obvious defendant, but they are rarely the only one with assets or insurance worth pursuing. Austin cases filed over the past two years illustrate the main categories.
The driver’s employer. Crash survivor Nathan Jonard sued Amazon Logistics and ZBN Transport along with the truck driver in Travis County, seeking more than $100 million. His 25-page petition alleges the companies were negligent in hiring, training, supervising, and retaining the driver, and that they knew or should have known about his history of hours-of-service and hazardous moving violations in commercial vehicles. The complaint also pleads a “joint venture” theory, asserting Amazon retained contractual control over how the delivery truck was operated.
Multiple corporate defendants together. Other I-35 plaintiffs, including Bell County residents Francisco Villalobos and Priscilla Davila, sued the driver, ZBN Transport, Amazon, and Pulice Construction, the firm managing the work zone under a $606 million contract with the Texas Department of Transportation. That complaint alleges the lane-reduction design created a high-risk bottleneck, that merge distances were inadequate, and that work-zone signage was improperly spaced. Attorneys said each of those plaintiffs is seeking more than $100 million.
Property owners. After a drunk driver drove through the emergency room lobby doors at St. David’s North Austin Medical Center on February 13, 2024, injuring five people, the Bernard family sued the hospital for more than $1 million. Their complaint alleged gross negligence, pointing to the absence of bollards at the ER entrance despite their installation at other St. David’s locations and published warnings from the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety about vehicle-intrusion risks. The hospital installed a dozen bollards at that entrance after the crash and the case settled confidentially in December 2025.
These examples share a pattern worth keeping in mind: strong car accident cases often turn on what a company knew about risk and chose not to fix, not only on what happened in the seconds before impact.
How Long You Have to File
Under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003, you have two years to file both personal injury and wrongful death claims. For wrongful death, the two years run from the date of death, not the date of the accident. If the injured person was a minor, the deadline doesn’t start until they turn 18. There is also an exception for people who were mentally incapacitated at the time of injury.
Miss the deadline and the claim is almost always gone, no matter how strong it would otherwise have been.
How Your Own Fault Affects Recovery
Texas uses modified comparative negligence, sometimes called the 51% bar rule. If a jury finds you were 51 percent or more at fault for the crash, you recover nothing. Below that threshold, your award is reduced by your share of fault. A plaintiff found 30 percent responsible for a crash with $100,000 in damages collects $70,000.
That math changes settlement strategy on both sides. Defendants have an incentive to push your share of fault toward the bar; plaintiffs have an incentive to document the other side’s conduct in detail from the start.
Damage Caps You Need to Know About
Claims Against Government Entities
The Texas Tort Claims Act caps damages at $250,000 per person and $500,000 per incident for claims against cities and state agencies. Claims against counties and school districts are capped lower, at $100,000 per person and $300,000 per incident. You also have to provide written notice of your claim within 180 days of the accident, a deadline that runs separately from and well before the two-year filing deadline.
The Medical Liability Cap Problem
The St. David’s case shows how a defendant can try to pull an ordinary negligence claim into a different statute with a much lower cap. Because Nadia Bernard had received a CT scan at the hospital earlier that day, St. David’s argued she was a “patient” and that the failure to install bollards amounted to a “health care liability claim” under the Texas Medical Liability Act. That 2003 law caps non-economic damages like pain and suffering at $250,000. Attorney Kay Van Wey, reviewing the filings independently, called the strategy an “absurd” loophole and a “complete perversion of the law,” saying a vehicle crashing through a lobby has nothing to do with the provision of health care. The case settled confidentially before a court ruled on the argument; St. David’s denied negligence in a court filing the same day.
If you were a patient, visitor, or even recent patient of a facility that owns the property where you were hurt, expect this argument.
Hit-and-Run and Uninsured Drivers
When the at-fault driver flees, the criminal case and your civil recovery go on separate tracks. Under Texas Transportation Code Section 550.021, leaving the scene of an accident involving serious bodily injury is a third-degree felony; if someone dies it becomes a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Property-damage-only hit-and-runs can be charged as misdemeanors.
On the civil side, if the driver is never identified, you typically have to turn to your own uninsured motorist (UM) coverage. Texas insurers must offer UM coverage with every auto policy, but policyholders can decline it in writing. One limitation catches many people off guard: for UM property-damage claims, Texas courts generally require physical contact between your vehicle and the fleeing vehicle. Being run off the road without contact, or hitting debris that fell from another vehicle, usually isn’t enough to trigger coverage.
UM coverage matters more in Texas than many drivers realize. About 12 percent of registered vehicles in the state, more than 2.4 million, aren’t matched to an insurance policy.
Filing in Travis County
Travis County Civil District Courts handle civil cases involving $200 or more in damages. You file through the Travis County District Clerk’s office at 1700 Guadalupe Street in Austin. Attorneys must e-file all documents electronically. People representing themselves can file electronically, in person, or by mail. As of January 2026, the base filing fee for a new civil case is $350, split between local and state consolidated fees.
Plaintiffs in large commercial-vehicle cases often file where a corporate defendant is based rather than where the crash happened. Several of the I-35 lawsuits were filed in Dallas County, where ZBN Transport was headquartered, instead of Travis County. If more than one venue is available, that choice is worth discussing with a lawyer before anything is filed.