Suing a city, county or state agency in Texas after a crash

Immunity, and the narrow door through it

A governmental unit cannot normally be sued at all. The Texas Tort Claims Act opens a narrow door, and a crash is one of the few things that fits through it: injury caused by an employee’s operation or use of a motor-driven vehicle, where that employee would personally be liable.

Everything about this claim is stricter than an ordinary one. The notice comes first, the money is capped, and the door closes fast.

The notice, and what it must say

Written notice must reach the entity within six months, and it has to reasonably describe three things: the damage or injury claimed, the time and place of the incident, and the incident itself. A phone call to a claims line is not notice. An insurance claim is not notice.

The catch is that a city, county or hospital district may have its own charter or ordinance setting a shorter period, and Texas enforces it. Forty-five and ninety days both appear in Texas city charters. Assume you are on the shortest clock until someone reads the actual charter.

Formal notice is excused only where the entity already had actual subjective awareness of its fault, which is a much higher bar than “the police came”.

What is capped

Recovery against the state is limited to $250,000 per person and $500,000 per occurrence for bodily injury, with $100,000 for property damage. Municipalities and other units carry their own limits under the same chapter. No amount of injury changes the cap, and no amount of insurance the entity carries changes it either.

Which vehicles this reaches

Police cruisers and fire apparatus. Public transit buses and school buses. Municipal garbage trucks and street maintenance vehicles. State agency fleet cars. University vehicles. A public hospital’s transport van.

Anything with a seal, a city logo or a fleet number on the door should be treated as a government claim from the first day, not the first month.

Do this in the first week

Photograph the vehicle including its unit number, get the responding officer’s report number, and write down which entity actually owns the vehicle, since transit authorities and school districts are separate bodies from the city they sit in.

Then get it in front of an attorney licensed in Texas immediately. This is the one crash type where waiting a month to “see how the insurance goes” can end the claim outright.