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Losing a loved one in a preventable accident is devastating. When someone else’s negligence caused that loss, Texas law gives your family the right to hold that person accountable. Chandler Ross Injury Attorneys serves families throughout the McKinney area and surrounding Collin County from our office at 110 N. Woodrow Ln, Ste 120, Denton, TX 76205. If you have questions about a potential wrongful death claim, call us at (940) 800-2500 for a free consultation. Each case is different, and past results do not guarantee any particular outcome in your matter.
Table of Contents
- What Texas Law Says About Wrongful Death Claims
- Who Can File a Wrongful Death Claim in Texas
- Fatal Crashes in McKinney and What Causes Them
- What Damages a McKinney Wrongful Death Claim Can Recover
- The Deadline to File a Wrongful Death Claim in Texas
- Why Chandler Ross Injury Attorneys Handles McKinney Wrongful Death Cases
- FAQs About McKinney Wrongful Death Claims
What Texas Law Says About Wrongful Death Claims
Texas law gives surviving family members the right to sue when a loved one dies due to someone else’s negligence or wrongful conduct. That right comes from Chapter 71 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which is the state’s Wrongful Death Act. Under Section 71.002, a person is liable for damages when their wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, or default causes another person’s death. This applies whether the at-fault party acted directly or through an agent or employee.
The law covers a wide range of situations. Car accidents on US-75 or US-380 through McKinney, commercial truck crashes, workplace accidents, and even premises liability incidents can all give rise to a wrongful death claim. If the death was caused by a vehicle owner, operator, or someone in control of machinery, that person can be held liable under the statute.
Texas also allows what is called a survival action under Section 71.021. This is a separate claim that continues the legal rights the deceased person held at the moment of death. While a wrongful death claim compensates the surviving family for their own losses, a survival action recovers losses the deceased personally suffered, such as medical expenses, lost earnings between the injury and death, and conscious pain and suffering before passing. Both claims can often be filed together in the same lawsuit.
One important detail: under Section 71.009, if the death was caused by willful conduct or gross negligence, the family may also seek exemplary damages, sometimes called punitive damages, on top of actual compensation. Texas also protects wrongful death recoveries under Section 71.011, which states that damages recovered are not subject to the debts of the deceased. This means the money goes to the family, not to creditors.
Understanding how these statutes work together is the first step toward protecting your family’s rights. The personal injury lawyers at Chandler Ross Injury Attorneys can walk you through how the law applies to your specific situation.
Who Can File a Wrongful Death Claim in Texas
Texas law is specific about who has the legal right to bring a wrongful death claim. Under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 71.004, a wrongful death action is for the exclusive benefit of the deceased person’s surviving spouse, children, and parents, and those same people are the ones who may bring it. If you fall into one of those three categories, you have standing to file.
Texas courts have made clear that siblings of the deceased do not have standing under the Act, and grandchildren are likewise not among the statutory claimants. This can feel unfair when a close family member is left out, but the statute is strictly construed. Natural or adoptive parents can recover for the wrongful death of a child, while stepparents generally cannot unless they legally adopted the child.
What happens if no eligible family member files right away? If none of the eligible family members files within three calendar months of the death, the estate’s executor or administrator brings the action unless all beneficiaries request otherwise. This built-in protection ensures the claim does not simply go unfiled while a family is grieving.
When multiple family members are eligible, they can all be part of the same lawsuit. The damages are then divided among those entitled to recover. Under Section 71.010, a jury awards damages in proportion to the injury each person suffered, and those damages are divided among surviving beneficiaries according to the jury’s verdict.
If you are unsure whether you qualify to file, do not guess. Call Chandler Ross Injury Attorneys at (940) 800-2500 and speak with someone who can give you a clear answer based on your family’s situation.
Fatal Crashes in McKinney and What Causes Them
McKinney is one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas, and its roads reflect that growth. Six people were killed in McKinney traffic crashes in 2024, across six fatal wrecks, according to TxDOT. Collin County as a whole recorded 73 traffic deaths that year, and Texas recorded 4,150. Behind each of those numbers is a family that lost someone they loved.
The fatality rate statewide was 1.35 deaths per hundred million vehicle miles traveled, and no day of 2024 passed without a death on Texas roads. McKinney’s rapid growth means more vehicles on corridors like US-75 and US-380 every year, which keeps the local crash volume high even when the statewide rate dips slightly.
What causes these fatal crashes? State and federal data point to a short list of repeat offenders: speeding, which Texas leads the nation in; distracted driving, especially phone use in stop-and-go traffic on US-75; impaired driving, concentrated at night and on weekends; and failure to yield, common at busy surface intersections along US-380, Custer Road, and Eldorado Parkway.
Crashes involving large commercial vehicles add another layer of danger. Delivery trucks, 18-wheelers, and other commercial vehicles travel McKinney’s roads daily. When a driver is fatigued, a company skips required maintenance, or a vehicle is overloaded, the results can be catastrophic. These cases often involve federal trucking regulations in addition to Texas state law, which makes them more complex to handle.
Whether a loved one was killed near Towne Lake Park, on the Sam Rayburn Tollway, or at a busy intersection downtown, the cause of the crash matters enormously for your legal claim. Identifying negligence, gathering evidence quickly, and preserving witness accounts are all steps that need to happen as soon as possible after a fatal accident.
What Damages a McKinney Wrongful Death Claim Can Recover
A wrongful death claim in Texas can recover two broad categories of loss: what the family lost and what the deceased suffered before death. These are addressed through the wrongful death claim and the survival action, respectively, and both can be pursued at the same time.
The wrongful death claim recovers lost earning capacity, lost care, maintenance, support, services, advice, and counsel, plus mental anguish and loss of companionship and society. Think about what your family depended on your loved one for, financially and emotionally. A parent who provided income, childcare, and guidance. A spouse who managed the household and offered daily support. All of that has a measurable value under Texas law.
The survival action recovers the losses the deceased personally suffered, such as the medical expenses from the final injury, lost earnings between injury and death, conscious pain and suffering before death, and funeral expenses. These damages belong to the estate, not directly to family members, but they are still part of the overall recovery.
When the death was caused by gross negligence or a willful act, Section 71.009 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code allows the jury to award exemplary damages as well. These are meant to punish particularly reckless conduct, like a drunk driver who got behind the wheel knowing the risk, and to discourage others from the same behavior.
Compensatory damages are not capped outside of medical malpractice, and only exemplary damages are capped under Section 41.008. This means your family’s actual losses, financial and emotional, can be fully pursued without an arbitrary ceiling in most wrongful death cases.
Every family’s losses are different. The value of a wrongful death claim depends on the specific facts of your case, including the deceased’s age, income, health, and the relationship with surviving family members. Chandler Ross Injury Attorneys can help you understand what your family’s claim may be worth after reviewing the details of your situation. Past results in other cases do not predict the outcome of yours.
The Deadline to File a Wrongful Death Claim in Texas
Time is one of the most critical factors in a wrongful death case. Under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003, wrongful death claims must be filed within two years of the date of death, not the date of the incident that caused the death. Miss that deadline and your family’s right to compensation is almost certainly gone forever.
This distinction matters because sometimes there is a gap between when an accident occurs and when death results from those injuries. For example, if your loved one was injured in a car accident on January 1st but passed away from those injuries on March 15th, the two-year statute of limitations would begin on March 15th.
Some situations can affect the timeline. Claims involving a governmental unit carry their own shorter notice requirements under the Texas Tort Claims Act, and certain situations can affect the timing, so the exact deadline should be confirmed early with a licensed Texas attorney. If a city vehicle or government employee caused the fatal crash, your window to act may be significantly shorter than two years.
When a minor child is one of the beneficiaries, the statute of limitations on that child’s individual claim may be tolled, meaning paused, until the child reaches the age of majority. However, this tolling applies only to that child’s portion of the claim and does not extend the deadline for other beneficiaries.
Beyond the legal deadline, waiting also hurts the strength of your case. Security camera footage gets deleted. Physical evidence disappears. Witnesses’ memories fade. The sooner an attorney can begin preserving evidence, interviewing witnesses, and building your claim, the better positioned your family will be. If you lost someone in a crash near the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney or anywhere in the surrounding area, call Chandler Ross Injury Attorneys at (940) 800-2500 right away. Do not wait to find out whether you still have time.
Why Chandler Ross Injury Attorneys Handles McKinney Wrongful Death Cases
Chandler Ross Injury Attorneys is a Denton-based personal injury firm that handles wrongful death cases for families throughout McKinney and Collin County. Our office is located at 110 N. Woodrow Ln, Ste 120, Denton, TX 76205, and we serve clients across the North Texas region. We are licensed to practice in Texas.
Wrongful death cases require a thorough investigation. That means pulling crash reports from TxDOT, obtaining black box data from commercial vehicles, reviewing medical records, working with accident reconstruction professionals, and building a clear picture of what happened and who is responsible. Insurance companies have experienced adjusters and legal teams working to limit what they pay. Your family deserves someone working just as hard on your side.
We handle cases involving car accidents, truck and 18-wheeler crashes, drunk driving fatalities, distracted driving deaths, pedestrian fatalities, and other incidents caused by negligence. Whether the at-fault party is an individual driver, a trucking company, a property owner, or another entity, we know how to identify all responsible parties and pursue every available avenue of recovery.
We work on a contingency fee basis, which means you pay no attorney’s fees unless we recover compensation for your family. There is no financial risk in calling us to discuss your case. We will listen to what happened, explain your legal options honestly, and let you decide how to move forward. No pressure, no promises about outcomes, just straightforward information from attorneys who care about the families they represent.
If your family lost a loved one in McKinney or anywhere in the surrounding area, contact Chandler Ross Injury Attorneys at (940) 800-2500 today. We are here to help you understand your rights and take the next step.
FAQs About McKinney Wrongful Death Claims
What is the difference between a wrongful death claim and a survival action in Texas?
A wrongful death claim compensates surviving family members, specifically the spouse, children, and parents, for their own losses caused by the death. A survival action is different. It continues the legal claim the deceased person would have had if they had survived, recovering losses like pre-death medical bills, lost earnings, and conscious pain and suffering. Both claims can be filed in the same lawsuit, and both are governed by Chapter 71 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code.
Can I file a wrongful death claim if the at-fault driver was also killed in the crash?
Yes. Under Section 71.008 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, if the defendant dies while a wrongful death action is pending, or before the action is even filed, the executor or administrator of that person’s estate can be named as the defendant. The case proceeds as though the at-fault party were still alive, and any judgment is paid through the estate’s administration process.
How long does a wrongful death case in Texas typically take to resolve?
There is no single answer because every case is different. Some cases resolve through settlement negotiations within several months after a thorough investigation. Others require filing a lawsuit, going through the discovery process, and potentially proceeding to trial, which can take a year or longer. The complexity of the case, the number of parties involved, and whether liability is disputed all affect the timeline. What matters most is that you act quickly to preserve evidence and meet legal deadlines.
Are wrongful death damages taxable in Texas?
Generally, compensatory damages received in a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit are not subject to federal income tax under the Internal Revenue Code. This includes compensation for physical injuries and emotional distress tied to physical harm. However, tax rules can be complex depending on the specific components of a recovery, such as any interest that accrues on a judgment. You should consult a tax professional about your specific situation, as this is not legal or tax advice specific to your case.
What if my loved one was partially at fault for the accident that caused their death?
Texas uses a modified comparative fault system. Under this rule, a plaintiff can still recover damages as long as the deceased was not more than 50 percent responsible for the accident. If the deceased was found to be partially at fault, the total damages awarded would be reduced by that percentage of fault. For example, if the jury found your loved one 20 percent at fault and awarded $500,000 in total damages, the recovery would be reduced to $400,000. An attorney can help evaluate how fault may be allocated in your specific case.
Content prepared by Chandler Ross, Injury Attorneys, 110 N. Woodrow Ln, Ste 120, Denton, TX 76205. Our attorneys are licensed to practice law in Texas. This page is attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any future matter.
