Dallas rear end collision attorneys at J. Alexander Law Firm
Home Practice Areas Car Accidents Rear End Accidents

Texas rear end collision lawyer.

Reviewed by Josh Alexander, Founder & Managing Attorney · Updated July 2026

If I get rear ended who pays? That driver’s own auto liability policy is what pays you, once we prove what they did wrong. Texas hands you nothing automatically for being hit from behind, so we build the proof while you get treated. If that policy runs out, your own coverage is the next stop.

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Reflects total client recoveries across hundreds of resolved matters. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

The first letter you get

The defense opens by blaming you.

Dallas rear end claims

Our rear end collision attorneys work the crash data, the following distance, and the medical record as one file, because that is the combination that turns a denial into a number.

Further Legal Reading: (Tex. Transp. Code Sec. 545.062) and (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Sec. 33.001)

Rear end collision on a Dallas, Texas road
1 The letter

The sentence you will read

The exact sentence carriers use to pin the stop on you.

Carriers word it differently, but it reads about like this: “Our insured reports that your vehicle stopped abruptly and without warning, and our review reflects shared responsibility for this loss.”

That sentence is doing two jobs at once. It moves the cause from the driver behind you onto you, and it plants a percentage that comes straight out of whatever you recover. The fight is about proof from that moment on, and we start collecting it from the first call.

2 The definition

What counts as a rear end

The definition, the common causes, and who is usually at fault.

What counts as a rear end in an accident? Any crash where the front of the car behind strikes the back of the car ahead, whether you were stopped, slowing, or rolling with traffic. Most of them here trace to a gap too tight for the speed, eyes on a phone, or both. Who is most often at fault in a rear end collision? The driver in back, because the assured distance duty rode with them. Each common cause is a duty with a statute behind it, so naming the cause of a rear end collision is most of naming the negligence. Most often is not always, and the letters blaming you exist because insurers know the difference.

3 The Texas rule

We tie the crash to a specific failure

The Texas rule, the proof we collect, and the fact file we build.

Here is the part that surprises people. Texas courts have held that a rear end crash on its own is not negligence as a matter of law.

It can be some evidence of negligence, and a jury weighs it against everything else it hears. You still have to name what the driver behind you did wrong and show that it caused the harm. The Fort Worth Court of Appeals put it in those terms in Roberts v. Staples in 2022. Read that the way we do. The crash gets you through the door. The facts win the case.

5 The fact file we build
The speed the other driver carriedThe gap that driver leftThe phone in the handStopped traffic visible a hundred yards outYour own brake pedal’s record

So we build the answer fact by fact. When the accusation escalates to a brake check, it has become a claim about your brake pedal, and your brake pedal left a record we can pull.

Evidence is where this one gets won, and the clock is already running. The steps that protect any claim still apply, so follow the first moves after any Texas crash while your memory is fresh. A rear end case adds one more. The data inside both cars can be hauled off and sold with the wreck, so we move on it before that happens.

In Texas, you usually have just 2 years to file.

The recorder in the car that hit you can be gone in weeks once the wreck sells for salvage. The sooner the preservation letter goes out, the stronger your claim.

Check my deadline

We have already settled a rear end crash in Texas traffic.

$15M
18 wheeler, wrongful death

Recovered for a family after a fatal collision with a commercial truck.

$2.55M
18 wheeler crash

Resolved for a client seriously hurt in a wreck with a tractor trailer.

$1M
18 wheeler crash

Recovered after a heavy truck caused a high impact highway collision.

$750K
18 wheeler crash

Settlement for injuries from a commercial truck collision.

$716K
Motor vehicle accident

Recovered for a driver injured by another motorist’s negligence.

$350K
Motor vehicle accident

Settlement for a client rear ended in Texas traffic.

Sample results from past cases. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome; every case is different.

The defense angles

We take apart the angles the defense uses to blame you.

1 Sudden stop

We answer the sudden stop story with your own brake data

“You stopped without warning and I had no way to avoid it.”

Texas measures the gap by conditions, not by feel. Section 545.062(a) required the driver behind you to keep an assured clear distance for the speed of the vehicles, the traffic, and the conditions of the highway. Traffic that stops is an ordinary condition on a Dallas highway. A driver who couldn’t stop without hitting you was too close for what the road was doing, and the recorder in your car logs your speed and your brake switch in the seconds before impact.

Speed in the last secondsBrake switch record545.062(a) duty

A normal stop reads like a normal stop once somebody pulls the numbers.

2 Brake check

We make the brake check accusation prove itself

“You brake checked me on purpose and I could not react.”

Is brake checking illegal in Texas? In effect, yes. No statute uses the phrase, but a punitive stop fits reckless driving under Section 545.401(a), driving “in wilful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property.” So it isn’t a legal move here. It also isn’t a free accusation. Whoever makes it has to prove it, and a module that recorded a steady slowdown rather than a jab at the pedal makes that very hard to do.

Deceleration curveDashcam footageHis own approach speed

Name calling loses its grip the moment the pedal has a record.

3 The car that swerved

We measure the room he was holding, not the car that swerved

“A car swerved clear, revealed a stopped car, and I had no time.”

Maybe a car did swerve away. That doesn’t change how much space he was carrying. A driver holding enough room for the road can stop when the view opens up. If one lane change put him into your bumper, the space was already too small for the traffic he was in. His recorder shows when he came off the throttle and when he reached the brake, and the time between those two numbers is the whole argument.

Throttle release timingBrake application timingLane positions

A car that got out of the way did not put him in your bumper.

4 Dark brake lamps

We settle the brake lamp question before your car gets repaired

“I never saw a brake light come on before I reached you.”

This one has a physical answer. Section 547.323 requires at least two stoplamps that display when the service brake is applied and stay visible in normal sunlight from 300 feet behind. Either your lamps worked or they didn’t. Bulbs, wiring, and the switch can all be inspected while your car still sits at the storage yard, and the module in your car logs the service brake as on. So we ask for that inspection first.

Stoplamp inspectionBulb and switch checkPhotos before repair

Bulbs answer this question, and they answer it early or not at all.

5 The lane change

We timestamp your lane change instead of arguing about it

“You moved in front of me and braked with no room left.”

Lane changes leave marks. Where both cars came to rest, where the debris landed, and whether the damage sits square across your bumper or off in one corner all speak to how you were sitting in the lane. Your speed samples show whether you were settled and rolling with traffic or still moving over. And a dashcam ends the conversation in about four seconds.

Impact geometryWhere the cars stoppedDebris field

Damage squared across the middle of your bumper doesn’t describe a car that just merged.

6 Pushed from behind

We follow the impact back to the car that started the chain

“Someone hit me from behind and pushed me into your car.”

Sometimes that’s true, and it doesn’t end your claim. It moves it. Every car in the line carries its own recorder, and each one stamps its own impact with a time, so the order can be reconstructed instead of debated. Damage on both ends of the middle car tells the same story. We work out who set it off and put the bill on that policy. Our chain reaction page covers when the car behind you was pushed into you.

Damage front and rearEvent timestampsOfficer’s sequence

The blame slides down the line, and your claim goes right along with it.

7 The phantom car

We ask for proof the phantom car was ever there

“An unidentified vehicle cut across and I could not avoid it.”

A driver nobody can name and nobody can place is a claim, not a fact. We go looking for support on purpose. The officer’s narrative, the drivers who pulled over, and the cameras on the buildings around the scene either back him up or leave him alone with the story. Either way, the space he owed you never depended on anyone else’s driving.

Crash report narrativeBuilding camerasDrivers who pulled over

Vanishing cars are easy to describe and hard to prove.

8 Fault shaving

We fight every point of blame they try to hang on you

“We accept some liability. We put your share at 20 percent.”

This is the quiet angle, and it costs the most. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 33.001 says a claimant “may not recover damages if his percentage of responsibility is greater than 50 percent.” Section 33.012(a) then cuts what you do recover by your own share. A jury that puts you at 50 percent still pays you, cut in half. At 51 percent the case is over. So 10 or 20 percent hung on your name isn’t a compromise. It’s money the carrier keeps.

Named acts of negligenceRecorder dataIndependent witnesses

Every percentage point they float is a number we make them earn.

Most of these angles land in the first month, before you have hired anyone. That timing is deliberate. A rear end collision attorney who reads the letter early can go get the recorder, the lamps, and the camera footage while all three still exist.

The module in the other car

We go after the black box in the car that hit you.

1 What the module holds

We know what the module kept before we ever see the car

The five data fields, the sampling rates, and the belt flag.

It does not tape your conversation and it does not run all day. It keeps a handful of seconds around the crash, and those seconds are the part the driver behind you cannot talk his way around.

A federal rule, 49 CFR Part 563, sets the fields a recorder has to capture, so the request we send names them one by one.

For the cars on the road today, that pre crash window runs about five seconds, sampled twice a second. Newer vehicles hold more. A 2024 federal rule widens the window to twenty seconds at ten samples a second, phasing in from September 1, 2028 through September 1, 2031.

Recorded fieldHow often
Vehicle indicated speed The speed the car itself reported, not a figure worked backward from skid marksTwice a second
Service brake, on or off Whether the pedal was down in each of those secondsTwice a second
Engine throttle How much of full throttle the driver was still holdingTwice a second
Driver belt status Buckled or not, one second before the eventOne sample
Longitudinal delta V How much the car’s speed changed through the impact itself100 times a second
Only if equippedBuilt 2012 or later8,500 pounds or lessAbout 5 seconds today20 seconds phasing in 2028 to 2031Ignition cycleAirbag deployment

Fields and sampling rates come from Table I to 49 CFR Section 563.7. Part 563 reaches passenger vehicles built on or after September 1, 2012, and only where that vehicle carries a recorder. The rule standardizes recorders. It does not require a carmaker to install one, so whether a specific car holds readable data is a question we answer by checking.

If the driver who ran into you tells the adjuster you threw in a brake check, your own module can answer with a normal stop instead of a stab at the pedal, second by second. We ask for both when both are readable.

2 Who owns the data

Texas hands the data to the car’s owner, so we ask in writing

Who legally controls the recorder and the four ways to get it.

Under Texas Transportation Code Section 547.615, the information a recorder stores belongs to the vehicle’s owner, so nobody pulls it out of that car on a hunch.

The statute names the owner as the person holding legal title, a buyer entitled to possession under a security agreement, or someone leasing the car under a written lease of at least three months.

Anyone else may retrieve what the device recorded in four situations only:

  • under a court order
  • with the owner’s consent for diagnosis, service, or repair
  • for safety research that leaves the owner and driver unnamed
  • to respond to a collision so emergency medical care can be arranged

That is the whole menu. For the vehicle that struck you, it leaves two doors, the owner agreeing or a judge ordering it, and both take time we would rather spend early than late.

The same statute makes the manufacturer disclose the recorder in the owner’s manual for cars sold or leased in Texas. So the box is not a secret. It is simply property, and property has rules.

3 The preservation letter

We send the preservation letter while the car is still findable

The salvage path a totaled car takes and the four step sequence.

The module rides inside a car that is already moving toward an auction, so our letter goes out the same week the file opens.

Once the insurer calls the vehicle a total loss, it gets branded salvage or nonrepairable under the Texas title rules, moved into storage, and sold. The data travels wherever the car travels. A letter written after the sale is a letter about a car nobody can put a finger on.

Where the other driver’s car goes while your claim is still young

The crashTow yardTotal loss callSalvage or nonrepairable brandStorageAuction lane
  1. We find the car. The crash report gives us the plate, the insurer, and usually the yard that towed it, which is enough to say where the module is sitting today.
  2. The preservation letter goes out. It tells the owner and the carrier to hold the vehicle and the recorder, and it puts the request on a dated page instead of in a phone call nobody logged.
  3. We take the consent door or the court door. Section 547.615 gives us two lawful routes to the other car’s data, and we open the faster one first.
  4. A retrieval technician images the module. Trained crash data retrieval technicians connect the manufacturer’s tool to the recorder or the diagnostic port, copy what is stored, and print a report. We read that report next to the crash report and your account of the stop.

Texas ties consequences to a duty that somebody triggered. In Brookshire Brothers, Ltd. v. Aldridge, the Texas Supreme Court framed spoliation, the legal name for evidence a party let disappear, around a party that had a duty to reasonably preserve evidence and then breached it, with the burden on whoever raises the issue, and it called a spoliation jury instruction a harsh remedy generally saved for a party that set out to conceal. So a letter is not an automatic sanction. What it does is make the duty concrete and dated, which is the whole reason a rear end accident attorney sends it in week one rather than week ten.

Ask a rear end collision lawyer to start the preservation letter today, at no cost to you.

When a carrier tells me my client stopped for no reason, I stop trading opinions and go get the module. More than once the yard had already tagged the car for the auction lane, so the letter went out that week and a technician imaged it before it moved. The download is never dramatic. It is a few lines of speed and brake status, twice a second, for the seconds before the hit. What it changes is what the two sides are allowed to argue about.
Matthew Graham, Managing Litigation Attorney at J. Alexander Law Firm, who handles recorder requests in rear end cases Matthew GrahamManaging Litigation Attorney
Former insurance defense attorney

Our process

We run your rear end case in seven moves.

1

We lock down the scene file

Where the proof still lives, and how fast the road forgets it.

How we lock it down

Photos of both cars, the lane you were stopped in, and the traffic ahead that made you stop. We pull the officer’s crash report and look for a camera aimed at that stretch of road. Debris and tire marks are gone within days.

2

We send the data letter

Why the data in his car runs on a deadline of its own.

How the letter works

Most modern cars carry an event data recorder, and the one in his car holds the seconds before impact. In Texas that data belongs to the vehicle owner, so we ask for consent and go to a judge for an order when consent never comes. The letter goes out while the car still exists.

3

We get you seen that week

What week one buys you that week ten cannot.

Why the first week

A gap between the crash and the first appointment is the first thing an adjuster circles. Feeling fine at the curb is ordinary, and the soreness often waits until you are back at work. If you are not sure whether what you feel needs a doctor, see which crash symptoms need a doctor.

4

We build the fault file

How a pile of loose facts turns into something a carrier has to answer.

What goes in the file

Witness names while the memory is fresh, the damage pattern on both bumpers, his phone records when distraction is in play, and the recorder data once we have it. A Texas rear end claim turns on named acts of negligence, so we name them.

5

We put a demand on his policy

What goes in the package, and who has to read it.

What the demand carries

The claim goes to the at fault driver’s personal auto insurer with the records, the bills, the wage loss, and the proof of what he did wrong. The adjuster gets a number and the reasons standing behind it.

6

We check his limits, then yours

The two policies that can pay you, and the order they pay in.

Where the limits sit

His policy has a hard cap on it, and the declarations page, the coverage summary at the front of every auto policy, is where we find it. When your injuries are worth more than that cap, we open the underinsured motorist claim on your own policy so the second layer is already moving.

7

We sue before the clock stops us

The one date every other date on this page bends around.

How the deadline drives it

If the carrier will not pay what the file is worth, we file suit and let a jury weigh the evidence. Suit has to be filed inside the two year window, so we work backward from that date instead of toward it.

Every file gets all seven moves

Our rear end accident lawyers run all seven moves on every file, whether the case settles in four months or ends up in front of a Dallas jury. The order is what keeps the late steps from depending on evidence nobody saved.

Minor damage, major injury

We answer the minor damage argument with the module, not the photos.

2 Two numbers, two different questions
The repair estimate Parts, labor, and paint to put the car back the way it wasDollars
Delta V from the module What the impact did to the car’s motion, taken straight off the recorderMiles per hour

Delta V is a recorded field under Table I to 49 CFR Section 563.7. An estimate is a quote for bodywork. Neither one is a diagnosis, and we do not hang an injury threshold on either.

1 The bumper rule

The federal bumper standard was written about bumpers

What the federal bumper rule was actually written to protect.

The rule that governs car bumpers states its own purpose in its own text, and the purpose is property damage.

Under 49 CFR Section 581.2, “The purpose of this standard is to reduce physical damage to the front and rear ends of a passenger motor vehicle from low speed collisions.” Compliance gets checked with pendulum strikes at 1.5 and 2.5 miles per hour and a barrier at 2.5 miles per hour.

Read that back slowly. The bar the bumper was built to clear is a test about sheet metal at walking speed. A bumper that shrugged off the hit tells you the bumper did its job. It says nothing at all about the neck of the person sitting in front of it.

2 The photo

We do not let a damage photo stand in for a biomechanics opinion

Why a photo of a bumper cannot answer a medical question.

So when a carrier leads with a photograph of a scuffed bumper cover, we lead with the figure the module wrote down. That figure comes off the same event data recorder our preservation letter locks down in the black box work above. A rear end collision injury lawyer should be arguing the same quantity the defense is arguing, and a photograph is not that quantity.

A damage photo shows how a panel behaved. It does not show how a head and neck moved inside the cabin, and it carries no signature from anyone qualified to say.

We do not answer it by swinging just as wide in the other direction. Numbers float around online promising that injury begins at some exact change in speed, and those numbers get pulled apart the moment a defense expert touches them. The ground that holds is narrower than that, and it is enough: the recorder measured force, the estimate priced bodywork, and one of them was never asked about you.

3 The claims rule

We name the minor impact rule for what it is, a filing category

Where the low impact denial comes from, and where it gives way.

The low impact denial usually comes out of a claims handling rule, not a medical opinion about you.

Peer reviewed work describes a minor impact soft tissue practice auto insurers adopted in the mid 1990s: injury claims from crashes with repair costs at or below a set dollar figure get routed for minimal payment.

The researchers who studied that practice reported only a limited link between crash severity and injury claims, one that did not hold across severities. We keep the point that size, because that is what survives cross examination: a dollar threshold is a rule the carrier wrote for itself, not a finding about your spine.

What moves the number after force

The module answers the force question. Your medical file answers everything after it, and that is the part that moves the number. Our rear end soft tissue page walks through the full record that answers the low impact argument.

The injury pattern

We document what the impact did to your neck.

We do not rebuild the valuation math on this page. Our whiplash page walks through how a whiplash claim is valued in Texas.

The same motion can also herniate a disc in your neck or lower back, which shows up on an MRI rather than on an X ray.

6 What we see most after a rear end hit
Neck strainShoulder and upper back painHeadachesDisc injuryConcussionKnee into the dash

Our rear end collision injury lawyers read the whole chart instead of the summary, because the chart is what the adjuster reads before writing a number.

! The timeline

Waking up sore on day three is the ordinary pattern

Why symptoms start late and what that means for the record.

Whiplash symptoms commonly appear 24 to 72 hours after the collision rather than at the scene, and in some people later still.

Adrenaline at impact holds the pain down, and the inflammation in strained tissue builds over the days that follow. So walking away feeling fine and then losing the ability to turn your head is the usual sequence, not a suspicious one. That gap in the record is exactly what the low impact denial leans on, which is why same week care protects the claim as much as the neck. Tell the doctor about every symptom at the first visit, including the ones you expect to pass on their own.

Who pays

We put your claim on the policy that pays first.

$30KTexas minimum per injured person

You will not see his limits on day one. Coverage surfaces when we make a formal demand, and the declarations page tells us the ceiling. That ceiling matters more than people expect, because a Texas policy can legally carry as little as $30,000 for one injured person and $60,000 for everyone hurt in the crash.

1 The adjuster

The adjuster is working a number, not your story

How the adjuster builds a number, and what we hand over.

The person on the other end has a file, a set of internal rules, and a target. Our insurance page explains how adjusters build their number. What we hand over is a file where the cheap answers are already closed off: care that started the same week, a documented reason the other driver is answerable for this wreck, and a wage loss with paper under it.

A rear end collision attorney also checks the coverage you already own before that first call, because two of those layers pay you while the fault fight is still open.

2 The call

When their adjuster calls

What not to say, and why a guessed number costs you money.

What should you not tell the other driver’s insurance company? Do not give a recorded statement, do not guess your speed or the gap, and do not agree to a version of events on a phone call.

A guessed number turns into a percentage of fault, and every percentage comes off the recovery under the greater than 50 percent bar. We take those calls from the first week, and statement prep is part of the intake for exactly this reason.

4 The layers

The four layers that can pay you

Liability, PIP, MedPay, and UIM, and which one pays first.

His liability coverage. The main source in a car claim. It covers your medical bills, your lost income, and your pain once fault is resolved.

Your PIP, personal injury protection. Pays medical bills and part of your lost income whoever caused the wreck. A Texas insurer has to offer it, so you carry it unless you turned it down in writing.

Your MedPay. Does the same job for medical bills alone, if that is the one you bought.

Your UIM, the underinsured motorist layer. Sits behind his coverage as excess and pays the gap when his limits run out before your damages do.

When the car behind you never stopped

A rear end hit from a driver who then drives off is not a liability claim at all, because there is no policy to bill.

It moves to the uninsured motorist coverage on your own policy, and it carries proof requirements an ordinary claim never faces. See how we work it when the driver who hit you took off.

Find your crash

We handle three rear end crashes on other pages.

1 Truck defendant

A commercial truck hit you

Carrier defendants, federal logs, and where that claim runs.

A loaded tractor trailer that strikes you from behind brings a motor carrier, a safety file, and federal rules a family sedan never touches. The defendant there is a company, not a neighbor. That claim runs on our page for being hit from behind by a commercial truck.

2 Middle car

You were pushed into the car ahead

The middle car problem and how impact order gets proven.

Who is at fault in a 3 car rear end collision in Texas? Usually the driver who set the chain moving. The car out front, stopped in traffic, rarely owns any of it. A hit from behind that shoves you into the bumper ahead makes you the middle car, hurt and blamed in the same wreck. Which impact landed first decides your share, and it gets settled with the damage pattern and the recorder data.

3 Driver gone

The driver behind you left

The uninsured motorist branch when the car that hit you is gone.

If the car that rear ended you sped off before you had a plate, your claim leaves the liability track and runs through your own uninsured motorist coverage instead. The coverage section above sets out that branch and points you to the page that handles it.

The two year clock

We file before the two year deadline ends the case.

The full rules, including the narrow situations that move the date, sit on our page covering how long you have to file in Texas.

Image goes here Portrait, roughly 900×1100px
! The evidence clock

Why the early call matters

Why the evidence clock runs out long before the legal one.

Two years sounds like plenty of room. The evidence does not last that long. A totaled car goes to auction with its recorder still bolted inside, camera footage writes over itself in days, and a witness who saw the whole thing stops being sure which lane you were in.

If you are looking for a lawyer for rear end collision claims in Dallas, the earlier the call comes, the more of that file still exists.

Ask us what your deadline is and what your file still needs. There is no fee unless we recover for you.

Common questions

We answer the rear end questions clients ask first.

If I get rear ended who pays?
The driver who hit you pays through their liability policy, and your own personal injury protection can start covering bills while fault is still being argued. Texas Insurance Code Sec. 1952.152 requires every auto policy issued here to include personal injury protection unless a named insured rejected it in writing, and it pays reasonable and necessary medical expenses and part of your lost income no matter who caused the wreck. If the driver who hit you carries minimum limits and your injuries do not fit inside them, your own underinsured motorist coverage becomes the next source under Sec. 1952.101. We open every layer that can pay you instead of waiting on one.
How much is a rear end accident worth?
There is no set price for a rear end case; the number comes from your medical bills, your lost income, how long the injury lasts, and the share of fault the other side manages to pin on you. Texas reduces what you recover by your own percentage of responsibility under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Sec. 33.012(a), so every point the carrier shifts onto you is money it keeps. Our valuation page breaks down how Texas car accident claims get valued, injury by injury. We price your case from your file, not from a table.
How long does a rear end collision settlement take?
A rear end collision settlement moves at the speed of your treatment, so we time the demand to the point where your doctors can say what the injury will cost you. Sending a number before then is guessing, and a signed release cannot be reopened when the pain comes back. Once the demand goes out, the carrier’s answer and any fight over fault set the rest of the pace. If your case has to be filed, we tell you that when we see it coming, not at the deadline.
What is the average settlement for a rear end accident?
An average is not a valuation, but for context our rear end crash page puts typical soft tissue recoveries in the $10,000 to $50,000 range. That band describes neck and back strains that settle down, and it says nothing about a case with a disc injury, surgery, or months away from work. Read what a rear end soft tissue claim is worth in Texas for the full breakdown. Your number comes from your records, not from someone else’s average.
Can they blame me for stopping suddenly?
They can argue it, and they usually do, but arguing it is not the same as proving it. Texas has no rule that automatically puts fault on the driver behind you, so what a jury weighs is that driver’s speed, distance, and attention. Texas Transportation Code Sec. 545.062(a) required an assured clear distance for the speed, the traffic, and the conditions of the road, and traffic that stops is an ordinary Dallas condition rather than an exotic one. If either car is equipped with an event data recorder, the brake and speed readings usually show a normal stop instead of the brake check the adjuster is describing.
What if the impact herniated a disc?
A herniated disc is a different case from a neck strain, because it is a structural injury the imaging can document. Tell us early if the pain runs down an arm or a leg, since that is the detail that shapes what your doctors order next. Our disc page covers when the impact herniates a disc and what the claim needs from you. We build the medical record around what your treating doctors find, never around the adjuster’s photos of a bumper.
Is it worth getting a lawyer after being rear ended?
It is worth a call any time you were hurt, any time fault is being argued, and any time an offer lands before you finish treating. A rear end collision lawyer earns the fee by proving the failure that caused the impact and by holding your fault share down, since Texas cuts your recovery by your own percentage under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Sec. 33.012(a). People also ask whether a lawyer for rear end collision claims differs from a rear end collision attorney; those two titles describe the same job in Texas, so weigh the person handling your file instead of the word on the door. The call costs nothing and we work on contingency, so you owe us nothing unless we recover.
I rear ended someone who stopped suddenly.
That sentence is what the driver who hit you tells their insurer, and it is the first line of the case built against you. If you were the one hit, expect the claim file to say you stopped without warning and that your stop, not their following distance, caused the wreck. The evidence answers it: a recorder logs vehicle speed and service brake status in the seconds before impact, and the crash report, the dashcam, and the witnesses show what traffic around you was doing. We collect that record early, before the story hardens into the adjuster’s fault decision.
How soon should you get a lawyer after being rear ended?
The same week if you can, before any recorded statement and before either car disappears. The black box rides to the salvage yard with the wreck, and the preservation letter has to get there first. Lawyer first, then the claim: it costs nothing extra, and the paperwork starts clean.
What should you not tell your own attorney?
Nothing. Privilege covers what you tell us, and a case is only hurt by what your lawyer learns late. Bring up the old neck problem and the prior claim in the first meeting. The defense will find both, and the difference between a hurdle and a disaster is whether we knew first.
Do injections increase your settlement?
Only as documented treatment your doctors actually ordered. Needed care enters the demand with its records attached, and that is how it should move the number. Chasing procedures to pad a claim collapses under cross examination, and we will tell you so plainly.
How much compensation for anxiety after a car accident?
Texas lets mental anguish damages travel with a physical injury, and no schedule sets the figure. What moves it is the record: a diagnosis, treatment notes, and a plain account of how the crash changed your driving and your sleep. We build that file alongside the medical one.
How much will I get from a $50,000 settlement?
What reaches you is the settlement minus the attorney fee, case costs, and medical liens, and the closing statement shows all three before you sign. We negotiate the liens down as part of the work, which is often where the net number moves most. For the arithmetic across Texas cases, see how the math works on a Texas settlement.
Will my insurance go up if someone rear ends me?
Surcharges follow fault, so a crash we pin on the other driver in writing should not raise your rate the way an at fault crash would. If your UIM or PIP steps in because their limits ran out, you are using coverage you already paid for. Carriers differ at renewal, so ask yours how it treats not at fault claims.

Want your own question answered? Put your crash in front of a rear end accident lawyer and get a straight read on it, at no charge.

Call 469-807-7480

Your legal team

We put a trial lawyer and a former defense litigator on your rear end case.

Josh Alexander, Founder and Managing Attorney at J. Alexander Law Firm

Josh Alexander

Founder & Managing Attorney

Marine Corps veteran and Texas trial lawyer, with millions recovered for injured clients in Texas and Oklahoma. On a rear end case he owns the fault file, which means pinning the impact to a specific failure and lining up the proof for each piece of it. He reads the defense script early too, so the sudden stop version of your crash gets answered before an adjuster writes it into the record.

Meet Josh Alexander
Matthew Graham, Managing Litigation Attorney at J. Alexander Law Firm

Matthew Graham

Managing Litigation Attorney

Ten plus years on the insurance defense side, directing litigation across a ten state region for one of the largest auto carriers in the country. On a rear end case he gets the black box preservation letter out while the other car is still in the carrier’s hands, and he sits with you before the recorded statement so nothing you say gets turned into a fault argument. He knows what the adjuster is fishing for, because he used to write the questions.

Meet Matthew Graham
Laura Rivas, Senior Associate Attorney at J. Alexander Law Firm

Laura Rivas

Senior Associate Attorney

Nine years representing injured people in motor vehicle, 18-wheeler, catastrophic injury, and wrongful death claims, in English and Spanish. On a rear end case she keeps the medical record moving, tying every symptom you report to the treatment your doctors order, so the low impact argument meets a chart it cannot explain away. Texas Bar No. 24096510.

Meet Laura Rivas

Client reviews

We let our clients say how we work.

★★★★★
“They took the time to answer all of my questions and made me feel confident in them. The whole staff has been friendly and professional.”
Cecilia G.Google review
★★★★★
“After speaking with them, we were put at ease right away. They made sure my physical therapy was covered and have been invaluable to us.”
Kelly H.Google review
★★★★★
“Excelente servicio al cliente, son muy atentos con sus clientes. La comunicacion es muy buena; te ayudan a cualquier hora.”
Salvador T.Google review

Reviews from actual clients. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Six offices. The same standard of care.

From DFW to the Gulf Coast to South Texas, an attorney is never far. Find your nearest office and the services we handle there. And if you cannot come to us, we come to you.

Headquarters
12801 N Central Expy, Suite 1100
Dallas, TX 75243
(469) 807-7480
Dallas County · Open 24 hours
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2100 N Main St., #222
Fort Worth, TX 76164
(817) 330-2744
Tarrant County · Open 24 hours
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700 Milam St., Ste 1300
Houston, TX 77002
(713) 804-4774
Harris County · Open 24 hours
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12621 Silicon Dr., Suite 112
San Antonio, TX 78249
(210) 901-6192
Bexar County · Open 24 hours
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1023 S. Trade Days Blvd., Ste 113
Canton, TX 75103
(903) 385-8500
Van Zandt County · Open 24 hours
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801 W Road to Six Flags St, Ste 141J
Arlington, TX 76012
(817) 856-0580
Tarrant County · Open 24 hours
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Rear ended anywhere in Texas? Every office sends the same preservation letter and works the same crash data.

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What a rear end collision lawyer costs: nothing until we recover.

The fee is a share of the result, set in writing before we start, and we advance the case costs. When the money arrives, the closing statement shows the fee, the costs, and the medical liens before you sign anything.

Call 469-807-7480
~1/3 if it settles~40% in litigation$0 upfront$0 if no recovery