Employer Closing While a Work-Truck Lawsuit Is Pending

Attorney Answer

A business that is winding down does not automatically drop out of a lawsuit that has already been filed, and its closing does not make you personally responsible for its share of any judgment. Whether the company still has to appear depends on whether it was actually named as a defendant, on what the court has ordered, and on how the business is being dissolved. That last piece — what a dissolution does to a case already on file — is worth a Texas lawyer's eyes on your actual papers.

Here is what Texas law does say clearly about who pays for what. Under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.003, the trier of fact assigns a percentage of responsibility, in whole numbers, to each claimant, each defendant, each settling person, and each responsible third party who has been properly designated. Section 33.013(a) then limits a liable defendant to the percentage of the damages equal to that defendant's own percentage of responsibility. There is no joint-and-several liability by default in Texas. The exception in § 33.013(b) is narrow: a defendant found more than 50 percent responsible, or one who acted in concert with another to commit certain intentional Penal Code offenses, can be held jointly and severally liable. So the company's share does not migrate onto you because the company shut its doors.

The same chapter can end the case entirely. Section 33.001 provides: "In an action to which this chapter applies, a claimant may not recover damages if his percentage of responsibility is greater than 50 percent." If the person suing you is found more than half responsible for the collision, she recovers nothing.

It is also worth understanding why the company is in the picture at all. In Painter v. Amerimex Drilling I, Ltd., 561 S.W.3d 125 (Tex. 2018), the Texas Supreme Court described a two-part inquiry for holding an employer responsible for a worker's conduct: whether the worker was the employer's employee, and whether the worker was acting in the course and scope of that employment at the time, which turns on the employer's right to control the conduct in question. Driving the company's delivery truck on company deliveries is the ordinary setting for that analysis. The company's liability insurance, if there is a policy on that truck, is usually what actually funds a defense — and that is a question to ask now rather than after your setting.

What you can do

1. Read the papers you were served and find the exact date, time, courtroom and cause number on them, and calendar the setting. Missing a court date is the hardest mistake to undo.

2. Look at the list of parties at the top of the petition and see whether the company is named as a defendant alongside you, or whether you are the only one sued.

3. Ask whether an insurance policy covering the delivery truck is providing your defense, and get the name and number of any lawyer assigned to you. If a lawyer is already defending you, run everything else through that lawyer.

4. Preserve what already exists — dispatch or route records, your employment paperwork, photos, any officer's crash report, and the correspondence you have received. Preserve records; do not prepare a new written account of the accident for the other side.

5. Do not discuss how the accident happened with the other driver, her lawyer or her insurer. Send them to your lawyer instead.

6. Ask a Texas attorney about whether the former employer should be designated as a responsible third party, and what its dissolution means for the defense of this case. Those are legal choices, not do-it-yourself steps.

7. Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts with someone who can ask you questions is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.

⏱ Time limits apply. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a) requires suit for personal injury or property damage to be brought not later than two years after the day the cause of action accrues. Once a case is on file, the deadlines that control you are the court's — the answer date on the citation you were served with, and the trial setting. Those depend entirely on your own documents, and a missed answer date can cost the case by default. Have a Texas attorney review the actual papers right away. Nothing here is a calculation of your dates.