What Wrongful Death Looks Like in Dallas
The trucks come first. Dallas sits at the crossing of three major interstates, and the freight boom in the southern part of the county has filled them with commercial traffic. Dallas County trails only Harris County in total traffic deaths statewide, and measured per resident, its roads rank among the deadliest of any large county in Texas. Fatal 18-wheeler cases here follow a pattern we know well: a carrier that put an unqualified or exhausted driver behind the wheel, and a paper trail — driver qualification files, electronic logs, dispatch records — that proves the company knew better.
Construction is second. The cranes over Uptown and Frisco and the warehouse pipeline down south run on layered subcontracting, where the developer blames the general, the general blames the sub, and the sub carries minimal insurance. Falls, electrocutions, trench collapses, and struck-by deaths dominate. The legal work is untangling who actually controlled the jobsite, because that is who answers for it.
And then there are the industrial and workplace deaths that never make the news: a maintenance worker crushed in an unguarded machine at a plant in Garland or Mesquite, a warehouse worker killed by a forklift on an overnight shift. These cases are winnable, but only if someone moves fast enough to preserve the evidence.
The Law: Who Can Bring a Texas Wrongful Death Claim
Chapter 71 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code governs every wrongful death case in Dallas County, and its rules are strict.
The wrongful death claim belongs to exactly three groups: the surviving spouse, the children, and the parents of the person who died. No one else — not siblings, not grandparents — has standing. Any eligible family member may file for the benefit of all of them, and if no one has filed within three months, the executor or administrator of the estate must bring the claim unless the family asks otherwise. The damages are the family’s own: lost financial support, lost companionship, lost guidance for the children, and mental anguish.
The estate holds a second, separate claim under the same chapter, the survival claim. It preserves what the person who died could have recovered themselves: conscious pain and suffering before death, medical expenses, funeral costs. Pursuing it requires an estate representative, which is why a Dallas wrongful death case usually involves the probate courts as well as the civil courts.
Chapter 16 of the Code sets the limitations period at two years from the date of death. Chapter 41 governs exemplary damages, available when the death resulted from gross negligence, meaning the company knew of an extreme risk and proceeded anyway. Chapter 41 caps exemplary damages in most cases, but the caps do not apply when the death was caused by certain felony conduct, including intoxication manslaughter — a provision that matters in drunk driving death cases more often than people realize.
One more statute does heavy lifting in construction and industrial deaths: Chapter 95, which addresses when a property owner is liable for the death of a contractor’s employee working on the owner’s improvements. It sets out two things to prove — that the owner exercised or retained some control over the work, and that the owner actually knew of the danger. Owners document both constantly, in the site rules they issue, the safety orientations they require, the inspections they conduct, and the incident reports in their files. Our job is to get those documents before they can be explained away, and to build the Chapter 95 case affirmatively from the owner’s own records.
What These Cases Can Become
A wrongful death case is measured against what the family lost, and against what the evidence proves the company did. Two of this firm’s trucking results show the range.
A $10 Million Result for the family of a two-year-old boy killed by an oilfield trucking company. The driver had a revoked commercial license, three felony convictions, and cocaine in his system, and the company’s logs had been falsified. Nothing about that crash was an accident; every fact in that sentence was a decision someone at the company made.
An $8.5 Million Result for a father rear-ended by an 18-wheeler in a crash that killed one of his children and injured another, after which the trucking company tried to blame him. Companies do this routinely. The answer is not outrage; it is evidence, assembled until the blame-the-victim story collapses.
In industrial death cases, firm partner Vuk Vujasinovic tried a rigger’s death case to verdict in September 2018: $44,370,000 against B&G Crane Service, for a death during a refinery turnaround in Jefferson County, in a case where the pre-trial offer had been $500,000. He also won a $17.7 million verdict for the family of an ironworker killed on the job. Those verdicts are the reason defendants take this firm’s cases seriously long before trial.
How We Prepare Your Case
1. Your lawyer leads your case.
The lawyer you hire is the lawyer who leads your case, an experienced trial lawyer, supported by a Board Certified partner, and you can talk to your lawyer directly. Not a case manager.
2. We find the evidence.
In a Dallas wrongful death case that means OSHA investigation files, general contractor and subcontractor safety manuals, subcontract agreements that reveal who controlled the site, crane and trench inspection records, driver qualification files and electronic logging data, 911 audio, police crash reports and scene photographs, yard and dashcam video before it is overwritten, and corporate safety policies.
3. We build it for court.
We retain the accident reconstructionists, safety engineers, and economists the case requires, and we take the depositions that pin the company to its story. We prepare every case for trial so that any settlement is a serious one. Most cases resolve within one to two years.
4. You decide.
We advise, candidly, including when an offer is worth taking. You alone decide whether to accept a settlement or go to trial.
Where Dallas Wrongful Death Cases Are Filed
Most Dallas wrongful death cases are filed in the Dallas County district courts at the George L. Allen Sr. Courts Building on Commerce Street downtown. The survival claim generally requires opening an estate, which is handled in Dallas County’s statutory probate courts, and the two proceedings have to be coordinated from the start. Cases with federal jurisdiction may be filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas. Venue is a strategic decision with real consequences, and we make it deliberately, not by default.
VB Attorneys is a Houston firm, with one office, at 1220 Augusta Dr, Suite 240, Houston, TX 77057. We handle cases in Dallas County the way trial lawyers have always handled cases across Texas: we file where the case belongs, we travel to you, and we try the case in the courthouse where it is set.
