Drunk Driving Accidents
The driver, and often the bar or restaurant that served them. Texas dram shop law reaches a licensed seller that kept serving someone already obviously intoxicated, and its commercial policy is usually far larger than the driver’s minimum limits. Drunk driving is also one of the few categories where Texas allows exemplary damages on top of your actual losses.
Texas has a Dram Shop Act. Under Tex. Alco. Bev. Code § 2.02, a business licensed to sell alcohol can be liable when it serves someone who is already obviously intoxicated to the point of being a clear danger to themselves and others, and that intoxication causes the harm.
This matters for a practical reason rather than a moral one. A drunk driver often carries minimum limits, which in Texas is $30,000 per person. A bar or restaurant carries commercial liquor liability coverage that is frequently ten times that. On a serious injury, whether the dram shop claim exists is often the difference between a claim that covers the medical bills and one that does not.
Proving it requires evidence that disappears fast: point-of-sale records, surveillance video, server statements, and the tab itself. Most of that is overwritten or discarded within weeks.
The criminal case and your claim are separate. You do not need a conviction, and you do not need to wait for one. The criminal burden is proof beyond a reasonable doubt; a civil claim is decided on a preponderance of the evidence, which is a lower bar.
That said, a conviction is useful. It can support a negligence per se argument — that violating a safety statute is itself evidence of unreasonable conduct — and it removes the argument about whether the driver was impaired at all.
Where the criminal case does matter is restitution and timing. Restitution ordered in the criminal case does not bar or replace a civil claim, and a pending prosecution is not a reason to sit on a civil deadline.
Most injury claims recover compensatory damages only: medical care, lost earnings, and the human cost of the injury. Drunk driving is one of the categories where Texas also allows exemplary damages, under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 41, on clear and convincing evidence of gross negligence.
Chapter 41 caps them, and the cap is a formula rather than a flat number. The practical significance is less the amount than the leverage: an exposure to punitive damages changes how an insurer values the file.
The deadline for a Texas injury claim is two years from the date of the crash under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003. Wrongful death runs two years from the date of death.
The deadline is rarely what loses a case. Bar surveillance is typically overwritten in days to weeks. Vehicles get repaired or sold for salvage, taking the crash data recorder with them. Servers change jobs. A preservation letter sent in week one holds evidence that is simply gone by month three.
Get treatment and keep every appointment. Gaps in treatment are the first thing an adjuster points at, and they are read as evidence you were not badly hurt.
Get the crash report number, and photograph everything while it exists: the vehicles, the scene, your injuries as they develop.
Say where the driver had been drinking, if you know or if the report says. That single fact is what opens the dram shop investigation, and it has to happen immediately to be worth anything.
Do not give the other insurer a recorded statement before you have advice. You are not required to, and it exists to find something to use against you.
Sometimes. Under the Texas Dram Shop Act, a licensed seller can be liable if it served someone already obviously intoxicated to the point of being a clear danger. It turns on evidence — receipts, video, server accounts — which is why it has to be investigated within weeks, not months.
No, and waiting can cost you. The civil claim is separate, uses a lower standard of proof, and runs on its own two-year deadline.
That is common, and it is why the other sources matter: your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, and a possible dram shop claim against the bar. Most people do not know their UM/UIM coverage exists.
Texas allows exemplary damages for gross negligence on clear and convincing evidence, and drunk driving is one of the clearer routes to it. Chapter 41 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code sets the limits.
Two years from the crash in most cases; two years from the date of death in a wrongful death claim. Claims against a governmental unit carry much shorter formal notice deadlines, sometimes six months or less.
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