It depends on your medical treatment and whether the insurer negotiates in good faith. Many cases resolve within several months once you finish treating and the full extent of your injuries is known; cases that require a lawsuit take longer. Settling too early — before you know if you need future care — is one of the most expensive mistakes an injured person can make. A good lawyer moves efficiently but won't rush you into a lowball settlement.
Jimmy personally reviews every submission — most people hear back the same day.
Most of the variation is not lawyering. It is medicine.
A case should not be valued until you reach what doctors call maximum medical improvement — the point where you have either recovered or your condition has stabilized enough to predict what you will need going forward. Settle before that and you are guessing at the largest number in your own case, and the release is permanent.
So a soft-tissue injury that resolves in three months of therapy produces a much shorter case than a back injury that leads to injections and then a surgical consult. That is not delay. That is the case being valued honestly.
Treatment phase. However long it takes. Weeks for minor injuries, many months for serious ones. We work during this period — gathering records, investigating fault, locating every policy — but we do not demand yet.
Demand and negotiation. Once treatment is complete, the records and bills are assembled into a demand. Insurers typically take several weeks to respond, and there is usually back-and-forth. Many cases resolve here.
If suit is filed. Filing adds a year or more. Discovery, depositions, expert reports and mediation all take time, and court schedules are not fast — Harris County is one of the busiest civil dockets in the country. Most cases still settle, often at mediation, but the timeline lengthens considerably.
Gaps in treatment. If you stop going for six weeks and resume, the insurer argues you recovered and something else caused the later problem. That argument takes time to answer and costs money to overcome.
Disputed fault. When liability is contested, evidence has to be developed — reconstruction, vehicle data, witnesses — before anyone can talk about value.
Multiple parties or policies. A truck case with a carrier, a broker and a trailer owner has more insurers to satisfy than a two-car collision.
Liens. Health insurers, Medicare, Medicaid and medical providers may all have reimbursement rights, and those get negotiated before you are paid. It is real work and it happens at the end.
An insurer that simply will not pay. Sometimes the only way to move a claim is to file suit and show you will try it.
Most Texas injury suits must be filed within two years. Claims involving a government entity require notice far sooner — the City of Houston requires notarized written notice within 90 days. Negotiating does not pause either clock, and insurers are under no obligation to remind you.
An insurer that offers to close your file in three weeks is not doing you a favor. Early offers arrive precisely because nobody yet knows what your treatment will cost, and that uncertainty is worth money to them. The fastest possible case and the best possible case are rarely the same case.
Authority: Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003
A number set before your prognosis is known is a guess, and the release is permanent.
Gaps become the insurer's argument and add months to overcoming it.
Two years to file, far less if a government entity is involved.
Health insurers and providers get resolved before you are paid. It is worth doing properly.
Rear-endings, intersection crashes, uninsured drivers, hit-and-runs — in Houston, El Paso, and everywhere in between.
Federal regulations, black-box data, driver logs, multiple insurers. We move fast to preserve evidence before it disappears.
Hurt on the job for a non-subscriber employer, or injured by a third party at a job site? Texas gives you real options.
When the worst happens, we pursue accountability for surviving families with the care and seriousness it deserves.
La consulta es gratis y confidencial. No paga nada a menos que ganemos su caso. Jimmy contesta personalmente, hoy mismo.
Every day you wait, evidence disappears and the insurer gets ahead. One free call. Straight answers about your case — in English or Spanish. If you need a fighter, you'll have one. If you don't, I'll tell you that too.
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