Rejecting a Low Injury and Rental Reimbursement Offer

Attorney Answer

No, you do not have to accept it. An offer is a position, not a valuation, and nothing requires you to answer it on the insurer's schedule. The two things bothering you are challenged in different ways, so it helps to separate them.

Start with the rental, because it has the clearer answer. Time without a vehicle is a recognized element of damage in Texas, not a courtesy the insurer extends. In J & D Towing, LLC v. American Alternative Insurance Corp., 478 S.W.3d 649 (Tex. 2016), the Supreme Court of Texas held that loss-of-use damages are recoverable even where a vehicle was destroyed outright, and it framed the limits: the loss must be foreseeable, traceable to the collision, proved with more than speculation, and confined to a reasonable period for repair or replacement. So when an adjuster cuts off rental reimbursement after a set number of days, that is the insurer taking a position on what period was reasonable. It is a position you can meet with evidence — what the shop actually did, when parts arrived, when the vehicle was released.

The injury figure is different, because there is no formula. Texas has no schedule for physical pain and suffering, no multiplier the law recognizes, and no table an adjuster is bound by. What moves that number is documentation: the diagnosis, the course of treatment, how long symptoms lasted, what you could not do, and what a physician says about the future. An offer made before treatment is finished is a guess about your recovery, and a small one is usually a guess made from a thin file. If you are still symptomatic, the most useful thing you can do is finish treating and let the records speak.

Two limits to know so you spend energy in the right place. Liability being clear does not create leverage over the other driver's carrier itself. Tex. Ins. Code § 541.060(a) lists unfair settlement practices, including failing to attempt in good faith to effectuate a prompt, fair, and equitable settlement of a claim on which liability has become reasonably clear — but § 541.060(b) says: "Subsection (a) does not provide a cause of action to a third party asserting one or more claims against an insured covered under a liability insurance policy." The pressure comes from the underlying claim, and from being willing to file suit on it. And the policy behind the claim has a ceiling: under Tex. Transp. Code § 601.072(a-1) the Texas minimums are $30,000 for injury to one person, $60,000 for two or more, and $25,000 for property damage. If your losses approach that, Tex. Ins. Code § 1952.101 — which requires an insurer to provide uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage unless a named insured rejected it in writing — is worth checking on your own policy.

What you can do

1. Keep every rental receipt and build a dated list of the days you were without your vehicle.

2. Ask the shop, in writing, for the repair timeline: the date it came in, when parts were ordered and arrived, and when it was released.

3. Ask the insurer, in writing, how many rental days it will pay for and on what basis it chose that period. Make it answer in writing.

4. Finish your treatment before valuing the injury, and keep every record, bill, and work note.

5. Do not sign a release while you are still treating. Signing ends the whole claim, including for anything that develops later.

6. Call your own insurer and ask whether you have personal injury protection or underinsured motorist coverage on this loss.

7. Ask a Texas attorney to look at the offer against the records before you accept it. Many will review this kind of file quickly.

8. 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) requires suit for personal injury and for injury to property to be brought not later than two years after the day the cause of action accrues, and negotiating with an insurer does not extend it. A claim under your own coverage runs on different rules and may carry earlier requirements written into the policy. When each clock started depends on your facts — have a Texas attorney confirm the dates rather than counting from the day of the crash.