Wrongful Death vs. Survival Action in Texas:
What Every East Texas Family Must Know
Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code §71.002 and §71.021 · Serving Tyler, Nacogdoches, Lufkin, Longview, Marshall, Henderson & All of East Texas
LEGAL DISCLAIMER
This article is written for general informational purposes and does not create an attorney-client relationship or constitute legal advice. Every wrongful death case is different. If your family has lost someone due to another person’s negligence anywhere in East Texas, please contact a licensed Texas wrongful death attorney as soon as possible — time limits are strict and evidence disappears fast.
When the Phone Call No East Texas Family Ever Wants Comes
Picture this: it’s a Tuesday afternoon on US-59 south of Nacogdoches. Your daughter is on her way home from work when a loaded logging truck — driver exhausted, logbook falsified — crosses the center line and hits her head-on. She’s alive when the paramedics get there. Barely. She’s airlifted to Christus Mother Frances in Tyler. And eight days later, surrounded by family in an ICU room, she’s gone.
What happens next? The trucking company’s insurance adjuster calls — before the funeral. He’s polite, sympathetic even. He talks about a quick settlement. He doesn’t mention that under Texas law, your family may have the right to file two separate legal claims — each attacking different damages, each potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — and that the moment you sign his paperwork, both are gone forever.
That’s what this article is about. Not legalese. Not law school theory. A straight answer to a question grieving East Texas families ask us all the time: what exactly are my rights when someone’s negligence kills a person I love?
Texas gives you two distinct legal tools: the wrongful death claim under §71.002 of the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code, and the survival action under §71.021. They sound like they overlap. They don’t — not really. And understanding the difference between them is, without exaggeration, the difference between your family receiving everything the law entitles you to or walking away with far less than you deserve.
This guide was written specifically for families in Smith, Gregg, Nacogdoches, Cherokee, Angelina, Panola, Harrison, Rusk, Anderson, and every other county that calls itself East Texas. In plain language. No fluff.
Two Laws. Two Purposes. One Case.
Texas §71.002 — Wrongful Death: The Family’s Claim
The wrongful death statute has been on the books in Texas for well over a century, and its purpose has never changed. It exists because the law recognized something that plain common sense already knew: when negligence kills someone, the harm doesn’t stop with the victim. It ripples outward — to a spouse who’s now raising kids alone, to children who’ll grow up without a parent, to parents who’ve outlived their child. Those people deserve compensation for what they’ve lost.
Under §71.002, if a person’s death is caused by the wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, or default of another person or entity, then the surviving family members — not the estate, the family — can sue for damages. Their damages. The loss of love and companionship. The loss of income. The mental anguish of carrying that grief forward for the rest of their lives.
The wrongful death claim is, at its core, the survivors’ story. It asks: what did these living people lose when their person was killed?
Texas §71.021 — Survival Action: The Deceased’s Claim
Now here’s the part most people have never heard of — and the part that can make an enormous financial difference for your family.
The survival action under §71.021 doesn’t ask what you lost. It asks what your loved one suffered. From the moment they were injured to the moment they died, every physical pain they endured, every dollar of medical bills that piled up, every hour of wages they never earned — that’s what the survival action is designed to recover, on behalf of the deceased’s estate.
Before §71.021 existed, the law had a brutal rule: a personal injury lawsuit died with the plaintiff. If someone was hurt, sued, and then died before the case was resolved — the claim simply evaporated. The survival statute fixed that. It says the claim doesn’t die just because the person did.
Think about what that means practically. Your loved one was alive for eight days in that Tyler ICU. Eight days of surgeries, ventilators, fear, and pain that no one should ever have to endure. Under the survival statute, suffering has a legal value. The estate can sue for it — and recover it.
Why Both Statutes Matter — The Essential Distinction
§71.002 Wrongful Death answers: “What did the surviving family lose because their loved one was killed?”
§71.021 Survival Action answers: “What did the deceased person suffer and lose between the injury and the death?”
The Side-by-Side Breakdown
Rather than wade through both statutes word by word, here’s what actually matters to East Texas families:
| WRONGFUL DEATH — §71.002 | SURVIVAL ACTION — §71.021 |
| Who files it: Surviving spouse, children, or parents of the deceased | Who files it: Personal representative of the deceased’s estate |
| What it compensates: The living family’s own losses going forward | What it compensates: What the deceased experienced before dying |
| Whose suffering: The survivors’ — grief, financial loss, loss of companionship | Whose suffering: The deceased person’s own — from injury to death |
| Estate required to file: No — family members sue directly | Estate required to file: Yes — probate may need to be opened first |
| Mental anguish of survivors: Yes, fully compensable | Deceased’s pain & suffering before death: Yes, fully compensable |
| Loss of financial support: Yes | Pre-death medical bills: Yes |
| Loss of consortium / companionship: Yes | Lost wages from injury date to death: Yes |
| Loss of parental guidance for children: Yes | Physical impairment and disfigurement: Yes |
| Loss of inheritance the deceased would have left: Yes | Mental anguish of the deceased before death: Yes |
| Punitive / exemplary damages: No — not available under this statute | Punitive / exemplary damages: Yes — available where gross negligence is proven |
| Time limit to file: 2 years from the date of death | Time limit to file: 2 years from the original injury date (not death) |
| Who receives the money: The eligible beneficiaries directly | Who receives the money: Goes into the estate, distributed per will or intestacy |
Why This Distinction Is Worth Real Money to Your Family
Let’s be direct about something. The single biggest mistake we see in East Texas wrongful death cases isn’t missing a statute of limitations deadline, though that happens too. The biggest mistake is a grieving family — sometimes advised by a well-meaning but inexperienced attorney — filing only the wrongful death claim and never pursuing the survival action at all.
That’s not a technicality. That’s leaving real damages on the table. Sometimes enormous damages.
A Concrete East Texas Example
ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO — Composite, Not a Real Case
Roberto, 47, works in the oilfields west of Longview in Gregg County. One morning, defective equipment — a pressure relief valve that the manufacturer knew was prone to failure — ruptures and causes an explosion. Roberto survives the initial blast. He’s transported to a Longview hospital with third-degree burns over 60 percent of his body.
He lives for 19 days. Those 19 days involve multiple skin grafting surgeries, a medically induced coma, and periods of consciousness during which — according to the nurses who cared for him — he was clearly in tremendous pain.
Roberto leaves behind a wife and two teenagers. He earned $78,000 a year.
A wrongful death claim (§71.002) compensates Roberto’s wife and children for their collective loss of his income, loss of his companionship and parental role model, and the personal mental anguish of losing a husband and father.
A separate survival action (§71.021) operates separately to compensate Roberto’s estate for: 19 days of catastrophic physical pain and suffering, $340,000 in emergency medical bills, and lost wages from the injury date to his death.
Because the manufacturer acted with gross negligence — knowingly selling defective equipment — the survival action may also support a punitive damages claim that could exceed compensatory damages several times over.
File only the wrongful death claim? You get the family’s losses. File both? You also get Roberto’s 19 days of suffering, the medical bills, the lost wages, and potentially a punitive damages award that sends a message to the manufacturer. The difference in total recovery could be a million dollars or more — on the same set of facts.
Who Gets to File — and Who Doesn’t
Wrongful Death Beneficiaries Under §71.004
Texas law is specific here, and it surprises a lot of people. Not every grieving family member has the legal right to bring a wrongful death claim. Only three categories qualify:
- The surviving spouse
- The deceased’s children — biological and legally adopted
- The deceased’s parents
That’s it. Siblings can’t file. Grandparents can’t file. Aunts, uncles, cousins — none of them, regardless of how close the relationship was or how financially dependent they were on the person who died. Texas draws the line at spouse, children, and parents.
One more wrinkle worth noting: if none of the eligible beneficiaries file a wrongful death claim within three months of the death, the personal representative of the estate may file on their behalf. The exception is if the beneficiaries put in writing that they don’t want the representative to do so. This rarely comes up, but it’s a safeguard that ensures the claim doesn’t fall through the cracks during a family’s most difficult months.
Who Files the Survival Action
The survival action is filed by the personal representative of the deceased’s estate — whoever is named as executor in the will, or whoever the probate court appoints if there’s no will. This means your family may need to open a probate proceeding in your East Texas county court before the survival action can move forward. That’s one more reason not to wait.
An experienced East Texas wrongful death attorney will handle this process for you. But it takes time, and the clock is already running from the day of the injury.
The Accidents That Bring East Texas Families to Our Door
Car Accidents on East Texas Roads
Loop 323 in Tyler. US-69 between Jacksonville and Lufkin. Farm Road 69 cuts through Henderson County. State Highway 31 runs through Kilgore. These roads see fatal wrecks year after year — distracted drivers, drunk drivers, people running stop signs on two-lane county roads where there’s nobody else around for miles.
Car accident wrongful death cases are straightforward in one sense: the negligence analysis is often clear from the police report, the skid marks, and the witnesses. But don’t mistake straightforward for simple. Insurance companies defending car accident death claims have seen thousands of these cases and know exactly how to minimize them. They’ll question the deceased’s speed. They’ll bring up an old DUI on their record. They’ll suggest a pre-existing medical condition contributed to the death.
Both §71.002 and §71.021 claims apply any time the deceased survived the crash itself but died later — even hours later at a hospital. That in-between period of survival is exactly what §71.021 was built for.
18-Wheeler and Commercial Trucking Deaths
East Texas is trucking country. I-20 through Gregg and Harrison Counties. US-59/I-69 through Nacogdoches, San Augustine, and down toward Houston. The paper mills, the oilfields, the poultry processors — all of them feed massive commercial truck traffic through towns and county roads that weren’t originally built for it.
When a semi-truck kills someone in East Texas, the legal landscape is genuinely different from a regular car accident case. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations apply. Hours-of-service logs are evidence. Electronic logging device data — the black box record of every mile, every speed, every hard brake — can be subpoenaed. And the liable parties may include not only the driver but also the trucking company (under respondeat superior liability), the company that loaded the freight, the manufacturer of defective brakes or tires, and the maintenance contractor who last serviced the truck.
File fast. That ELD data is overwritten on a rolling cycle. Surveillance footage from truck stops along the route disappears. The trucking company’s lawyers are already working the case before your family gets home from the hospital.
Commercial and Oilfield Vehicle Accidents
East Texas has a deep relationship with the oil and gas industry, and the timber and poultry industries that built the region. With that comes a steady stream of commercial vehicle accidents — oilfield service trucks loaded with equipment, logging trucks on narrow Forest Service roads in Angelina and Sabine Counties, company vans shuttling poultry workers across rural Cherokee County.
When these vehicles cause fatal accidents, the defendants are usually corporations with in-house legal teams and commercial liability policies. Texas Transportation Code violations and FMCSA regulations create potential negligence per se arguments — meaning a violation of the regulation is itself evidence of negligence. An experienced East Texas attorney knows how to use those arguments.
Medical Malpractice and Hospital Deaths
Medical wrongful death cases are among the most emotionally complicated cases we handle, because families are trusting a hospital or doctor to save their person — and instead the negligence of that institution contributes to the death. Misdiagnosis. A surgical error. The wrong medication in the wrong dose at the wrong time. An infection that spread because staff didn’t follow protocol.
These cases are also the most procedurally demanding under Texas law. The Texas Medical Liability Act requires plaintiffs to serve an expert report within 120 days of filing — a detailed opinion from a qualified medical expert establishing that the standard of care was breached and caused the death. Miss that deadline and the case is dismissed, with the possibility the plaintiff pays the defendant’s attorney fees. There’s no grace period. No extensions for grief.
The survival action is often particularly valuable in medical malpractice deaths, because the deceased typically survived for days, weeks, or even months — accumulating pain, suffering, and medical bills throughout a failed course of treatment. Those damages belong to the estate.
Workplace Deaths in East Texas
The industries that power East Texas — oil and gas production, timber harvesting, construction, and poultry processing — also account for a disproportionate share of the state’s workplace fatalities. Falls from height. Crushing injuries. Explosions. Equipment failures.
Texas is the only state in the country that allows private employers to opt out of workers’ compensation coverage entirely. A surprising number of small East Texas employers do exactly that — they’re called non-subscribers. When a non-subscribing employer’s negligence causes a worker’s death, the family can bring a wrongful death lawsuit directly, and critically, the employer cannot raise the common-law defenses (contributory negligence, fellow servant rule, assumption of risk) that would otherwise be available.
Even when the employer does carry workers’ comp, there may be third-party claims available against equipment manufacturers, property owners, subcontractors, and others whose negligence contributed to the death. Both §71.002 and §71.021 may run concurrently with workers’ compensation benefits in certain circumstances in which both statutes apply.
Defective Product Deaths
Product liability-based wrongful death cases usually arise in East Texas from defective vehicles, unsafe industrial equipment, pharmaceutical drugs that were never safe to begin with, and consumer products that failed catastrophically. The analysis runs on three tracks: manufacturing defect (this specific product was built wrong), design defect (the entire product line is inherently unsafe), and failure to warn (the manufacturer knew of the danger and said nothing).
Companies facing product liability lawsuits more often than not wage significant legal battles to protect themselves from plaintiff product liability claims. Fortunately, these companies usually have filing cabinets and servers full of material they’d prefer to keep quiet. Examples include engineering memos, safety test results, customer complaint records from people who were hurt, and internal back-and-forths where employees genuinely wrestled with whether something was too dangerous to keep selling. Once plaintiff’s counsel gains access to that material through discovery, the whole character of the case can shift dramatically. A claim that started out focused purely on compensating the victim suddenly has the ingredients for punitive damages. That’s not a coincidence — the exemplary damages provision in survival actions exists precisely because sometimes companies see the warning signs, weigh the costs, and ship the product anyway.
Assault, Violence, and Negligent Security
Civil wrongful death claims don’t require a criminal conviction — or even a criminal prosecution. If your family member was killed in an assault, a shooting, a robbery, or any other intentional act of violence in East Texas, you may have the right to bring both a wrongful death claim and a survival action against the perpetrator. The burden of proof in a civil case is preponderance of the evidence — meaning “more likely than not” — which is a far lower bar than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required for a criminal conviction.
And the perpetrator may not be the only defendant. If the assault occurred at a bar, a parking lot, a hotel, a nightclub, or any property where the owner had reason to know violence was likely — and failed to provide adequate security — that property owner may be independently liable. These negligent security claims can be brought under both §71.002 and §71.021.
Drowning Deaths at East Texas Lakes and Rivers
Toledo Bend. Sam Rayburn Reservoir. Lake Palestine. Lake Fork. The Sabine River. The Neches. East Texas is lake country, and with that comes drowning deaths — some of which are genuine accidents, and some of which involve negligence that a family has every right to pursue legally.
Negligent supervision at a campground or waterpark. A marina that failed to provide adequate life-saving equipment. A boat operator who was drinking before getting behind the wheel — BUI is a criminal offense in Texas for the same reason DUI is. A defective life jacket that failed at the worst possible moment. All of these can support both a wrongful death claim by the family and a survival action for any period of suffering before the victim’s death.
Dram Shop Liability — When the Bar Is Responsible
Texas’s Dram Shop Act — codified at Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code §2.02 — is a powerful tool that East Texas wrongful death families often don’t know about. It says that a bar, restaurant, or alcohol retailer can be held liable if they served alcohol to a person who was obviously intoxicated and that person then went out and caused a fatal accident.
In rural East Texas, this happens with painful regularity. Someone closes down a county bar off State Highway 64 or Highway 79. They’re visibly drunk — slurring, stumbling, making a scene. The bartender keeps serving them. They get in their truck, cross the center line on a dark two-lane road, and kill someone.
The bar knew. And under the Dram Shop Act, the bar can be held accountable.
Dram shop claims can run simultaneously with wrongful death and survival action claims against the drunk driver. And because of the egregious nature of continuing to serve an obviously intoxicated patron — the bar made a conscious, repeated choice to do it — these cases frequently support punitive damages claims through the survival action.
What Can Actually Be Recovered — A Damages Breakdown
Wrongful Death Damages (§71.002) — What the Living Family Can Claim
- Pecuniary loss — the income, benefits, and financial support the deceased would have provided over a lifetime
- Loss of consortium — the loss of love, affection, care, companionship, and emotional support
- Loss of household services — the real dollar value of domestic labor, childcare, and household management that the deceased provided
- Loss of parental guidance — especially significant when young children lose a parent.
- Loss of inheritance — what the deceased would have reasonably accumulated and passed on
- Mental anguish — the documented psychological suffering, grief, and emotional trauma of the survivors
- Funeral and burial expenses, if covered by the family
Survival Action Damages (§71.021) — What the Estate Can Claim
- Physical pain and suffering of the deceased — every moment from injury to death
- Mental anguish experienced by the deceased before death.
- Physical impairment and disfigurement
- Medical expenses incurred between the injury and the death
- Lost wages and earning capacity from the date of injury to the date of death
- Exemplary (punitive) damages — where the defendant acted with gross negligence, fraud, or malice
THE PUNITIVE DAMAGES ISSUE — READ THIS CAREFULLY
Texas wrongful death claims under §71.002 do not allow punitive damages. That door is simply closed.
The survival action under §71.021 does allow exemplary damages — under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code §41.003 — where the plaintiff proves by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with malice, fraud, or gross negligence.
In a catastrophic East Texas case involving a drunk driver, a trucking company that falsified safety records, a manufacturer that hid known defects, or a hospital that systematically cut corners on patient safety — the survival action’s punitive damages provision can mean the difference between a seven-figure recovery and an eight-figure one. It is the single most financially significant reason to always plead both claims.
The Deadline You Cannot Miss
Two years. That’s how long you have to file a wrongful death claim under §71.002 in Texas — measured from the date of death. The survival action has a similar two-year window, but it runs from the date of the original injury, not the death date. In cases where someone survived for weeks or months after an injury, the survival action clock may actually expire before the wrongful death clock.
Texas courts apply the statute of limitations hard. Grieving families who miss the deadline by a week, or a month, have had cases dismissed. Courts aren’t unsympathetic — but they follow the law, and the law says two years.
LIMITED EXCEPTIONS — When the Clock May Pause
Texas law recognizes a small number of situations where the limitations period may be tolled (paused). These include:
- The discovery rule — if the family had no reasonable way to know that negligence caused the death, the clock may not start until they discovered (or should have discovered) the negligence
- Fraudulent concealment — if the defendant actively hid the cause of death or their role in it
- Claims involving minors — special tolling rules may apply in some survival action contexts
- Claims against government entities — these actually have SHORTER deadlines, sometimes as little as six months for the required notice, and failing to provide that notice may bar the claim entirely
Do not rely on these exceptions. Consult an attorney immediately. The exceptions are narrow and unpredictable. The safest course is always to file before the deadline.
How a Wrongful Death Case Actually Works in East Texas
People have a lot of misconceptions about what a wrongful death lawsuit looks like from the inside. Here’s the real sequence, stripped of the TV version:
- Days 1 through 30 — Preserve Everything. The most critical phase of any East Texas wrongful death case is also the one families are least prepared for, because it coincides with the worst week of their lives. Crash scene photos, surveillance footage from nearby businesses, ELD data from the truck that caused the wreck, social media posts from the at-fault driver — all of this can disappear within days. Trucking companies have legal teams that dispatch to accident scenes immediately. Your family needs an attorney in the field just as fast.
- Months 1 through 3 — Investigation and Expert Retention. Your attorney builds the factual record: accident reconstruction, medical expert review, economic analysis of lost wages and future earning capacity, investigation of the defendant’s history of violations or complaints.
- Opening the Estate, if Necessary. If a survival action will be filed, your attorney will either work with an existing estate proceeding or initiate one in the appropriate East Texas county court. This takes time, which is one more reason to start early.
- Filing the Petition. Both the wrongful death and survival action claims are filed in the appropriate district court — typically in the county where the death occurred. Defendants are served. The formal litigation begins.
- Discovery. Both sides exchange records, take depositions, retain and depose expert witnesses. In truck accident cases, this phase includes FMCSA safety audit records, the driver’s employment history across carriers, the company’s Hours of Service compliance record, and the truck’s maintenance logs.
- Mediation. The overwhelming majority of East Texas wrongful death cases settle before trial — often at a mediation where both sides present their positions to a neutral mediator. A good settlement gets your family what they deserve without the additional trauma of a trial. But a bad settlement — one rushed, one accepted before all the damages are understood — can leave your family shortchanged for life.
- Trial. When settlement fails or the defendant won’t offer fair value, the case goes to an East Texas jury. Juries in this region understand hard work, family, and accountability. They’ve heard the arguments trucking company lawyers make, and they take their responsibility seriously.
Why East Texas Cases Are Different From Dallas or Houston Cases
This isn’t a marketing claim. There are genuine, practical differences between litigating a wrongful death case in East Texas and litigating one in a major metro — and families should understand them.
Distance to Trauma Care
When a fatal accident happens on Farm Road 1087 in Panola County or on State Highway 21 west of Nacogdoches, the nearest Level I trauma center might be 90 minutes away. That response time gap means victims often suffer longer before receiving critical care — and it means the survival action’s pain and suffering component can be substantial, even in cases where death ultimately occurs within a day or two.
Rural Road Hazards
A lot of East Texas wrongful death cases involve factors that are specific to rural road conditions: no shoulders, poor lighting, wildlife, unfenced livestock, roads that flood without warning. Attorneys who practice here know how to investigate these factors and incorporate them into liability arguments.
Corporate Defendants With Local Employees
East Texas wrongful death cases regularly pit grieving local families against major national corporations — big trucking companies with headquarters in Dallas or Atlanta, oil companies with offices in Houston, hospital systems that operate regionally. Those corporations have institutional experience managing litigation. The families don’t. The gap in preparation is real, and closing it requires local attorneys who know these corporate defendants, their insurance carriers, and the judges and juries who will hear the case.
Industry Knowledge Matters
An attorney who doesn’t know the difference between a company man, a roughneck, and a drilling contractor isn’t going to be effective in an oilfield wrongful death case in Rusk County. An attorney who doesn’t understand log truck operations can’t properly cross-examine a logging company’s safety supervisor in Angelina County. East Texas has specific industries, specific hazards, and specific communities — and effective wrongful death representation requires understanding all of it.
The Questions Families Ask Us Most
Can we file both the wrongful death and survival action at the same time?
Yes — and in almost every case where both apply, you should. Texas law expressly permits both claims to be filed in the same petition. Experienced East Texas wrongful death attorneys plead both causes of action together whenever the facts support it, because failure to plead the survival action when it applies can permanently waive those damages. There’s no procedural penalty for asserting both.
The person who caused the death was also killed in the accident. Does that mean we can’t sue?
No. Under §71.021, the survival action survives against the tortfeasor’s estate. Texas doesn’t let negligent parties escape liability by dying. If the at-fault driver died in the same crash, the lawsuit names the driver’s estate as a defendant — and the driver’s liability insurance is still available to pay a judgment.
My loved one was partially at fault. Does that eliminate our claim?
Texas follows the 51 percent rule under modified comparative fault. If the deceased was 50 percent or less at fault for their own death, the family’s recovery is reduced proportionally — but not eliminated. Was the deceased 20 percent at fault? The family’s damages are reduced by 20 percent, but the claim survives. Only if the deceased was more than 50 percent responsible does the claim fail entirely.
Insurance adjusters working against your family will argue for the highest fault percentage they can justify. Sometimes they’ll argue for percentages that aren’t supported by the evidence. That’s where having an experienced advocate matters.
The insurance company called and offered a settlement. Should we take it?
Almost certainly not — at least not without consulting an attorney first. Insurance adjusters who call grieving families within days of a death are following a calculated strategy. Early settlement offers are designed to close cases before families understand the full extent of their damages. They do not include the survival action damages your family may be entitled to. Signing a release permanently and irrevocably closes both claims. There is almost no situation in which a family’s long-term interest is served by accepting a fast offer without independent legal counsel.
The deceased had a will. Does that affect who gets the wrongful death money?
A lot of people assume that if someone had a will, it controls everything after they die. In wrongful death cases, that’s not actually how it works. The money recovered under §71.002 bypasses the estate entirely — it goes straight to the surviving spouse, kids, or parents, depending on the situation, and neither the will nor any outstanding creditors can touch it. The survival action is a different story. Those proceeds do pass through the estate, which means the will governs how they’re divided, or intestacy laws step in if there wasn’t one. Why does this matter? Because if the deceased left behind significant debt or had a complicated estate plan, the distinction between these two pots of money becomes very real, very fast — and it can completely change how beneficiaries think about the case.
How much is a wrongful death case worth in East Texas?
There’s no honest answer to that without knowing the facts of your specific case. The variables that matter most are: the deceased’s age and remaining life expectancy, their income and earning trajectory, the number and ages of surviving dependents, the strength of the evidence of negligence, the nature and duration of pre-death suffering, and the financial resources of the defendant. Cases involving large commercial defendants, clear gross negligence, and substantial pre-death suffering — filed by a competent attorney who pursues both §71.002 and §71.021 — can produce recoveries in the millions.
Two Claims. One Goal.
Texas §71.002 and §71.021 aren’t just statutory numbers. They’re the law’s acknowledgment of a truth and an important principle: when negligence takes a life, it causes two distinct categories of harm. It takes something from the people left behind. And it inflicts something on the person who was killed before they died. The law says both categories of harm are real, compensable, and deserving of pursuit.
For families in Tyler and Nacogdoches, in Longview and Lufkin, in Marshall and Henderson and every small town and county road between them — the path forward after a wrongful death starts with understanding these two rights. It continues with a decision: to pursue them with someone who knows East Texas courts, East Texas juries, and East Texas defendants, or not.
The evidence won’t wait. The clock is running. And your family deserves every dollar the law entitles you to — not a dollar less.
Has Your Family Lost Someone in East Texas?
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