Suspected impaired driver on Interstate 30: why waiting for the criminal case costs you
FOX 4 reported a crash involving a suspected impaired driver on Interstate 30 in Grand Prairie on March 23, 2025. Someone was killed. We had no involvement in it and we are not going to speculate about the facts. What we can do is set out the legal questions an incident of this kind raises in Texas, because families dealing with one are usually working it out from scratch at the worst possible moment.
The criminal case does not pay for anything
When an impaired driver injures someone, two entirely separate processes begin. The State may prosecute. Whatever that produces — a plea, a conviction, jail — compensates the injured family for nothing.
The civil claim is the one that pays medical bills and replaces lost income, and it proceeds on its own track under a lower standard of proof.
You usually should not wait
People assume the criminal case has to finish first. It generally does not, and waiting is actively harmful: the civil deadline keeps running and the evidence keeps degrading. A conviction is useful but not required, because the civil burden is lower — a driver acquitted, or never charged, can still be held civilly liable.
The bar may also be responsible
Texas dram shop law permits a claim against a licensed establishment that sold or served alcohol to someone already obviously intoxicated to the point of presenting a clear danger. This matters practically: an individual driver often carries minimum limits that come nowhere near the cost of a catastrophic injury, while a commercial establishment typically carries far more.
These claims run on perishable proof — point-of-sale records, interior surveillance footage, server testimony and training records. Interior video in particular is routinely overwritten within days, which is why a preservation demand cannot wait for the criminal case to resolve.
Exemplary damages
Texas permits damages intended to punish rather than compensate where conduct exceeds ordinary negligence. Drunk driving is among the clearest examples, though they carry a higher burden of proof and statutory limits.
When someone does not survive
Texas limits wrongful death claims to a defined group — the surviving spouse, the children, and the parents of the person who died. They may file individually or together. Siblings cannot bring a wrongful death claim, however close they were. If no family member has filed within three months of the death, the estate’s representative may do so.
Two claims usually arise from one death. The wrongful death claim belongs to the family and covers what they lost: financial support, companionship, mental anguish, lost inheritance, household services. The survival claim belongs to the estate and covers what the person suffered before death, along with medical and funeral expenses.
Where the conduct exceeded ordinary negligence, Texas also permits exemplary damages, subject to a higher burden of proof and statutory limits.
What a claim can actually include
Attention goes to the bills already received, because those are knowable. They are usually the smallest component.
- Future medical care, including further surgery or long-term treatment
- Lost earning capacity — not lost wages, but the gap between what you could have earned and what you can earn now
- Physical impairment, for what you can no longer do
- Disfigurement, where scarring is permanent
- Pain, suffering and mental anguish
- Household services now performed by someone else
Health insurers, hospitals and government programmes may also assert reimbursement rights against any recovery. Negotiating those down is part of what determines how much a family actually keeps.
A note on timing
None of the steps above require hiring anyone. They preserve options, and options are what disappear quietly in the first month while a family is dealing with everything else. The conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing; what it does is tell you which clocks are running.
Reporting that prompted this post
We write about incidents reported in the local press to explain the legal questions they raise. We don’t represent anyone involved unless we say so.
Our personal injury attorneys in Garland handle matters like this every day. The case review is free.
This post is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your situation, and reading it doesn’t make us your attorneys. Every case turns on its own facts.
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