Damages After A Permanent Hand Injury And Total Loss

Attorney Answer

No one can honestly give you a normal number, and you should be cautious of anyone who does. What can be answered is which of the things you are asking for are recognized categories in Texas. Your injury losses and the income lost while you had no vehicle are on solid ground. The replacement down payment is not.

Start with the injury. A person hurt by someone else's negligence in Texas generally seeks compensation for past and future medical care, lost earnings and lost earning capacity, physical impairment, disfigurement, and physical pain and mental anguish. A finger that is permanently disfigured, no longer functional and constantly painful implicates several of those at once, and it is exactly the kind of injury where a treating physician's opinion about permanence carries real weight. What any of it is worth depends on medical proof, on your own work history, and on facts no general page can see. That is not evasion. Anyone quoting you a normal figure for a permanent hand injury is guessing.

On the car and the income, Texas law is more favorable than most people expect. In J & D Towing, LLC v. American Alternative Insurance Corp., 478 S.W.3d 649 (Tex. 2016), the Texas Supreme Court held that loss-of-use damages may be recovered even when personal property is totally destroyed, not only when it can be repaired. The Court limited the idea, though: the loss must be foreseeable, directly traceable to the wrongful act, not speculative, and confined to a reasonable period for replacing the property. For a delivery driver, that is where lost earnings during the time without a vehicle belong.

That limit is also the answer to the four-to-five-month question. The measure is a reasonable replacement period, not the time it actually takes when financing is hard to arrange. Time spent locating an equivalent vehicle is a much stronger claim than months attributed to a credit problem. The down payment and the negative equity are a different matter. Neither is its own category of damage. They describe your financing, not the value the collision destroyed, and a property claim compensates the value of what was lost. Texas has its own rules for measuring a totaled vehicle and for gap coverage, so ask a Texas attorney to go through your actual numbers.

One caution. Even on a claim you describe as no-fault, the other side may assign part of the responsibility to you. Under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.001, a claimant more than 50 percent responsible recovers nothing, and § 33.012(a) reduces the award by the claimant's percentage.

What you can do

1. Ask each treating provider's office for your complete records and bills, and make sure the record says clearly what the finger can and cannot do and whether the condition is permanent.

2. Photograph the hand now and every few weeks, in good light, and keep the dated images.

3. Download your delivery earnings history for the year before the crash and every week since, and pull your tax returns for the same period.

4. Keep the total-loss valuation, the loan payoff statement and every receipt for transportation you have paid for since.

5. Check your own policy's declarations page for personal injury protection, rental reimbursement and gap coverage, all of which are separate from the other driver's insurance.

6. Do not accept a settlement while your treatment is unfinished, and ask a Texas lawyer to review any offer and any release before you sign it. A permanent injury is not something to settle early.

Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.

⏱ Time limits apply. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a) generally requires suit to be brought within two years after the day the cause of action accrues, covering both your injuries and the damage to your vehicle. When that period started on your facts, and whether anything affects it, is a question for a Texas attorney looking at your dates. No deadline is calculated here.