Limitations on a Years-Old Texas Crash Injury Claim

Attorney Answer

Almost certainly too late for a lawsuit against the driver — but the question is still worth ten minutes with a Texas lawyer, because two different clocks may be involved and only one of them is obviously gone.

For a claim against the driver who hit you, Texas gives two years. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a) requires suit for personal injury to be brought not later than two years after the day the cause of action accrues, which for a crash normally means the day it happened. A 2018 crash sits well outside that window on its face. Texas does have a small number of rules that can pause the clock — for someone who was a child at the time, for example — but whether any of them reach your situation is a fact question I cannot answer from the statute alone, and it is not something to guess at.

The second clock is different in kind. If the claim you opened was under your own policy — personal injury protection, or uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage — that is a claim on an insurance contract with your own insurer, not a lawsuit against the other driver, and it does not run on the two-year injury deadline. It is worth finding out which kind of claim you actually had, because people often do not know. Personal injury protection pays without regard to who was at fault, and under Tex. Ins. Code § 1952.152 a Texas auto policy has to include it unless the named insured rejected it in writing. Uninsured motorist coverage works the same way under § 1952.101.

I will be straight with you. An unfinished claim from that long ago, with no suit ever filed, is a hard one, and hospital bills from the crash may already have been resolved in ways that affect what is left to recover. That is not a reason to skip the phone call. It is a reason to make it this week.

What you can do

1. Call the insurer, ask for the claim number, the coverage the claim was opened under, the date it was opened, and whether it is open or closed. Ask for that answer in writing.

2. Ask for a copy of the declarations page for the policy that was in force at the time. It shows whether you carried personal injury protection or uninsured motorist coverage.

3. Gather the hospital records and bills from the crash and anything showing who paid them.

4. Get the crash report from the agency that responded, if you never obtained one.

5. Take all of that to a Texas attorney and ask a single question: is any part of this still alive. Do not spend months assembling a perfect file first — go with what you have.

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. The two-year period in Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a) governs an injury suit against the driver, and on the timeline you describe it has very likely passed. Whether anything paused it, and whether a claim under your own policy stands on different footing, depends on your facts. Have a Texas attorney review the dates right away rather than relying on a page like this.