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Trucking companies and their insurers do not pay full value because they should. They pay full value when the lawyer across the table has a track record that makes a trial expensive to lose. For 40 years, Houston truck accident attorney Greg Baumgartner has been that lawyer. Since opening Baumgartner Law Firm in 1985, he has remained undefeated in 18-wheeler and commercial-vehicle accident lawsuits, and has recovered millions for severely injured Texans and grieving families. The results below are part of the reason carriers settle our cases for what they are actually worth.
A representative selection of recoveries our Texas truck accident lawyers have obtained:
Several of our largest recoveries are subject to confidentiality clauses imposed by the trucking-company defendants, who preferred the numbers not become public. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes, but they do tell you what kind of lawyer the insurance industry takes seriously.
The phrase gets used loosely in legal marketing. In our case, it means something specific: in four decades of representing 18-wheeler and commercial-vehicle accident victims, our firm has not lost a truck accident case. Most resolve through full-value settlements — precisely because the carriers know we will try the case if they refuse to pay. The cases that went all the way produced verdicts; the cases that settled produced numbers our clients lived on for the rest of their lives.
That record is also why we receive a steady stream of referrals from defense attorneys — the same lawyers we have faced in courtrooms across Texas — when their own friends and family members are hurt in a truck wreck. They know who they would hire.
Truck accident cases are not oversized car wrecks. They are litigated under Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations and defended by specialist insurance carriers and corporate defense firms. The result a victim recovers depends almost entirely on how the case is built in the first ninety days and how credible the threat of trial is at the end. We do four things differently from the typical personal-injury practice.
Electronic logging device (ELD) data and event-recorder downloads can be lost within days. Our quick-response team deploys to crash scenes immediately to preserve black-box data, photograph the scene, and secure witness statements before the trucking company’s own investigators rewrite the story.
Most truck wrecks involve multiple liable parties — the driver, the trucking company, the cargo loader, the maintenance contractor, and sometimes a parts manufacturer. Spreading liability across defendants enlarges the available insurance and verdict pool. Our Houston truck accident lawyers handle that workup as a matter of routine.
The largest commercial-vehicle carriers know our firm. They know we will spend the money to prepare a case for a jury. That knowledge alone is worth several digits on the settlement number, which is the entire point of being known by truck insurers.
Drunk truck drivers, falsified logbooks, knowingly out-of-service vehicles — these are the cases where Texas exemplary (punitive) damages can multiply a recovery. We do not leave that money on the table.
We do not run a volume practice. We accept truck accident and commercial-vehicle cases involving serious injuries or fatal crashes — and we limit how many we take, so each one gets the time and resources it needs. That is part of how a small firm produces results that compete with the biggest plaintiff’s firms in Texas.
The case types where our results have been strongest include tanker truck crashes, jackknife wrecks, underride collisions, dump truck accidents, FedEx and large-fleet delivery cases, and the high-volume I-45 and Interstate 10 corridors. We also accept Houston car accident cases involving commercial vehicles and statewide Texas personal injury claims arising from trucking negligence. Beyond Houston, our results have included matters near Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin.
A win is not just a check. For our clients, it means a recovery that actually covers what was lost: lifetime medical care, lost earning capacity, the cost of adapting to a permanent injury, and — in wrongful-death cases — the financial security a surviving family needs. We are also proud of the relationships that outlast the case files. A former client dropping by for coffee twenty years later is the same metric to us as a verdict. (See what our clients say.)
Every truck accident case our firm accepts is handled on a contingency fee basis. You pay no fees or expenses unless we put money in your pocket. We advance the costs of investigation, experts, depositions, and litigation. If we do not recover, you owe us nothing.
There is no useful “average” — settlement values depend on injury severity, available insurance, and disputed liability. Minor-injury cases settle in the low five figures. Catastrophic injuries and wrongful-death cases routinely recover in the seven and eight-figure range when properly worked up. The verdicts and settlements listed above are representative of the serious injury and wrongful death range.
No. Since 1985, our firm has remained undefeated in truck accident lawsuits.
Federal regulations require commercial truck operators to carry minimum coverage of $750,000 to $5 million, depending on cargo, and many carriers buy substantially more. Tanker, hazmat, and oilfield operators often carry $5 million to $25 million in primary and excess coverage. That is one reason an experienced truck accident lawyer matters — those policies are defended aggressively.
Most serious-injury truck cases resolve in 12 to 24 months. Cases that go to a verdict take longer. Texas has a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death, so the clock starts the day of the crash, regardless of when treatment ends.
No. We come to you for the initial meeting when injuries make travel difficult, and we accept cases throughout Texas.
If you were seriously injured — or lost a loved one — in a Texas truck accident, the results are what determine whether your family is whole again. Call (281) 893-0760 or toll-free 1-866-758-4529 to speak with our team. Consultation is free, the line is answered 24/7, and you pay nothing unless we win. You can also contact us online, or read more about why injured Texans hire our firm.
