Someone else made a mistake and you are the one paying for it, in bills, in missed work, and in phone calls from an adjuster who is being very friendly. Jose Robles Jr is an Air Force combat veteran and a Richardson personal injury lawyer who takes that weight off you, from an office on Coit Road.
A Richardson personal injury lawyer helps injured people recover medical costs, lost income, and compensation for pain and lasting limits after someone else's carelessness. In Texas you generally have two years to file, and you can still recover as long as you were not more than half to blame. Free consultation, and no fee unless we win.
Three things, in order: show that someone else was responsible, prove what it actually cost you, and stop the other side from paying less than that.
Most people picture a courtroom. In practice it is closer to an investigation running against a clock. The proof sits with other people and it does not wait. Shop and traffic camera footage is recorded over. A commercial vehicle goes back into service and its electronic data gets overwritten. Witnesses move house. What gets done in the first fortnight usually decides what the claim is worth a year later.
The second job is quieter and often worth more money. Insurers rarely argue that you were not hurt. They argue about how much it cost, whether you needed all that treatment, whether an old problem explains it, and whether you will make a full recovery. Answering that takes complete records, and sometimes doctors and care planners rather than argument.
The third job is the one people never see coming. At the end, hospitals and health insurance companies can claim part of your settlement. Two firms can settle the identical case for the identical number and hand you very different cheques, depending on how hard they worked that stage.
This is where experience shows. Attorneys who have run this process hundreds of times know which records an insurer will use against a client, and they always gather the other kind first. It is not expertise in the abstract; it is knowing what the file needs before anyone asks for it.
The advice you have read online is aimed at the wrong person. Be careful with the other driver's insurance adjuster. Be completely open with your own lawyer.
This gets confused constantly, and it costs people money in both directions. Some hold back from their own lawyer and get ambushed later. Others talk freely to an adjuster who is politely building a case that the crash was partly their fault.
The rule is not "say nothing". It is "say everything to one side and very little to the other".
Your own lawyer
Tell them everything, including the parts you think hurt you: a prior injury, a ticket, a gap in treatment, a text you sent while driving. Your conversations are confidential, and a problem your lawyer knows about early can be handled. The same problem discovered by the other side at a deposition cannot.
The other driver's insurer
Give your name and the basic facts of when and where. You are not required to give a recorded statement, guess at your speed, estimate distances, say how you feel today, or accept any characterisation of fault. "I am still treating and I am not discussing my injuries yet" is a complete answer.
If you have already given a recorded statement, the claim is not ruined. It just means the file starts with the other side's version on the record, and the work now is to put the physical evidence next to it. We would still recommend saying nothing further until we have read what you gave them.
Vehicle collisions make up most of the work here, which follows directly from how people move around this city.
Car Accidents →
Crashes on US-75, the Bush Turnpike and Belt Line Road, including uninsured and hit-and-run drivers.
Truck Accidents →
Delivery fleets and 18-wheelers, where the company can erase the driver logs after six months.
Motorcycle Accidents →
Riders on Central Expressway and the Bush Turnpike, and the blame they face before evidence is reviewed.
Wrongful Death →
Claims for a surviving spouse, children or parents, plus the estate's separate claim.
Unsafe Property →
Falls, poor security and hazards a property owner knew about and left alone.
Dog Bites →
Attacks across Richardson, usually paid by a home or renter insurance policy.
Aviation Accidents →
Plane and helicopter crashes, where the official report cannot be used as evidence.
VA Disability Appeals →
Denied claims and low ratings, handled by a veteran who served nearly 15 years.
Vehicle collisions make up the largest share of the work, though the list above describes the most common claims rather than the limits of what carelessness can cover. If your situation is not there, it is still worth a call.
Because a small city carries a very large amount of through traffic. US-75 runs straight down the middle of it, the President George Bush Turnpike crosses the top, and Belt Line Road funnels everything in between.
Richardson is a commuter city in both directions. The Telecom Corridor brings tens of thousands of workers in every morning from Plano, Garland, Dallas and further out, and sends them home again at five. That produces the pattern we see most: heavy, repetitive congestion at the same interchanges, then sudden gaps where drivers accelerate.
The specific trouble spots follow from the layout. The US-75 service roads, where drivers cross several lanes to reach an exit. The Bush Turnpike ramps, where speeds change abruptly. The long signalled stretches of Belt Line, Campbell, Arapaho and Coit, where left turns across traffic are constant. Add four DART stations and a university, and you get pedestrians and cyclists mixed into all of it.
It helps to map the city onto its roads. Richardson straddles a county line, too. Most of the city sits in Dallas County, but part of it reaches into Collin County, and which side of that line your crash happened on decides where a case would be filed. That is worth sorting out early rather than late.
Two years is the outside limit for most claims. The deadlines that actually end cases arrive much sooner, and one of them can hit within months.
If a city vehicle, a public agency, a school district or a transit authority is involved, formal written notice is usually required long before the two years are up, sometimes within a few months. Miss it and a strong case can be over before it starts. Given how much public transport and municipal traffic moves through Richardson, that is not a rare situation here.
Then there is the evidence itself. Camera systems at shops and businesses record over themselves on a cycle measured in days or weeks. Commercial vehicles return to service and their electronic records get overwritten. Nobody is required to keep any of it just because you were hurt, unless they have been told in writing to preserve it.
Deadlines change with the facts of a case. Confirm yours with a lawyer rather than counting from a web page.
You talk to the lawyer handling your case, not a rotating queue of case managers. That is the whole model of this firm, and it is why it stayed small on purpose.
Jose Robles Jr is a decorated Air Force combat veteran with a 95% success rate, $5M+ recovered, 1,000+ cases handled, and a 4.9 star Google rating.
Before becoming a personal injury lawyer, Jose "Joe" Robles Jr served nearly 15 years as an Air Force Military Police officer, including four combat tours in the Middle East, and competed on the All-Air Force Boxing Team. He earned his law degree from Texas A&M University School of Law, then spent four years at Bailey & Galyen, rising to Managing Attorney of the Pre-Litigation Personal Injury Department, before founding this firm.
That last detail matters more than it sounds. Running pre-litigation at a high volume firm means having watched, from the inside, exactly how insurers put a value on a file in the first two weeks and what makes them move. He built a smaller practice deliberately, so the person deciding what to do about your case is the person who picks up the phone.
The firm works in English and Spanish, and the first conversation costs nothing whether or not you hire us. If you do not need a lawyer, we will tell you that.
Texas injury lawyers work on contingency, meaning they take a percentage of what they recover and nothing at all if they lose. The percentage is not fixed by law and commonly falls somewhere around a third, often rising if a lawsuit has to be filed or the case is tried. The agreement has to be in writing and has to say exactly how the fee is worked out. Ask separately about case expenses, which are things like medical records and expert fees, because those are handled apart from the fee.
Nothing, honestly. The caution you have read about applies to the other driver's insurance adjuster, not to your own lawyer. Hiding a prior back injury, an old claim, a traffic ticket or a gap in treatment does not make those things disappear; it just means your lawyer finds out about them at the worst possible moment, from the other side. Every one of those facts can be dealt with if it is known early. Tell your lawyer the version that makes you look bad, because that is the version the defence will look for.
Most claims never become a lawsuit. They settle, and filing suit is a step you take when the insurer will not pay what the claim is worth. Whether it is worth pursuing at all comes down to two things: whether someone else was clearly responsible, and whether there is insurance available to pay. A serious injury caused by a driver with no coverage and no assets is a hard case no matter how sympathetic it is. A documented injury caused by an insured driver or a business usually is worth pursuing.
The odds depend far more on evidence and insurance than on sympathy. Cases where fault is documented, treatment is consistent and the records line up resolve predictably. Cases that rest on competing accounts of what happened, or where the injured person stopped treating for months, are much harder. Since the large majority of claims settle rather than go to a jury, the practical question is not whether you would win a trial but whether the file you build makes the insurer decide it does not want one.
Usually two years from the day you were hurt, and for a death, two years from the date of the death. Claims against a city, a school district or another public body can require formal written notice far sooner, sometimes within months, and missing that notice can end a case that still had a year to run. Evidence has its own shorter clock: camera footage is often recorded over within weeks.
In Texas you can still recover as long as you were not more than half to blame. Below that line your compensation is reduced by your share rather than wiped out, so being found twenty percent responsible on a claim worth a hundred thousand dollars means recovering eighty. Above half, you recover nothing. That single rule explains most of what an adjuster does in the first two weeks, including the friendly questions about how fast you were going.
Usually yes, and this is where a lot of the real money is won or lost. Health insurers, government programs and hospitals can all claim a piece of what you recover. In Texas a hospital can attach a claim to your case if you were admitted within about three days of the accident. Those balances are frequently negotiable, so identifying them early and arguing them down is part of the work rather than an afterthought at the end.
Yes. The firm works in English and Spanish. You will not be asked to bring a family member to translate, and you will not be handed to someone outside the case to interpret for you.
No fee unless we win. Call us now or schedule your free consultation online.