What could your Houston injury case be worth?

The 90-day notice deadline is the first thing to deal with and the most common way a valid Houston claim is lost. The Texas Tort Claims Act sets a six-month notice period, but Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 101.101(b) permits a city to impose a shorter period by charter, and Houston’s charter requires notice within 90 days. Claims against Harris County, METRO, or the Harris County Flood Control District follow the statutory six months instead, so the deadline depends on which entity was involved rather than on where the crash happened.

Jurisdiction in Harris County is unusually fragmented. Houston Police cover city streets, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office covers unincorporated areas, the county constable precincts also respond to crashes, and DPS Highway Patrol handles state highways. Four types of agency can produce a report, all of which are filed into TxDOT’s CRIS system within ten days. CRIS releases reports only to parties named in Tex. Transp. Code § 550.065, so you have to identify your interest when requesting rather than simply paying the $6 fee.

Freeway geometry drives the injury pattern here. I-45, I-10, US 59 and I-69, Beltway 8, and Loop 610 carry a mixture of commuter traffic and port-bound freight, and the interchanges where they meet concentrate merge and sideswipe collisions. Beltway 8 adds its own pattern, because the speed differential between the tolled main lanes and the frontage roads produces collisions at transition points that do not occur on ordinary freeways.

Texas fault rules put a hard limit on partial-fault claims. Proportionate responsibility under Chapter 33 reduces recovery by your share of fault, but a claimant found more than 50 per cent responsible recovers nothing at all. That threshold is the single most important number in a contested Houston liability dispute, and it is why the crash report’s narrative and any independent witness matter more here than in a pure comparative state such as California.