If a city truck, county vehicle, state trooper, or TxDOT crew hit you, this is not a normal insurance claim. Texas law shields governmental entities from most lawsuits, and the Texas Tort Claims Act only pokes a narrow hole in that shield for vehicle wrecks.
That hole comes with strict rules: damage caps that limit what you can recover, and a notice deadline that can be as short as 90 days, far shorter than the two years you may be used to for an ordinary car wreck.
Miss a step, and the claim can die quietly, long before anyone files a lawsuit. An attorney who regularly works with the Texas Tort Claims Act can identify which cap applies to your case, meet the notice deadline, and find every available source of recovery.
Why a Wreck With a Government Vehicle Doesn’t Work Like a Normal Claim
You did everything right after your wreck. You called the police, got checked out, and figured you would deal with the other driver’s insurance company the way you always have. Then you found out the other driver was a city employee, a county road crew worker, or a state trooper, and suddenly the rules changed on you.
That confusion is normal. Texas cities, counties, and state agencies are generally immune from lawsuits. It is called sovereign immunity when it applies to the state, and governmental immunity when it applies to cities, counties, school districts, and other political subdivisions. The Texas Tort Claims Act, found in Chapter 101 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, carves out specific, narrow exceptions to that immunity. One of the biggest exceptions covers exactly what happened to you: an injury caused by the operation of a government-owned motor vehicle.
That exception is why you have a claim at all. But it comes bundled with limits and deadlines that do not exist in a typical car accident case, and they can catch an injured person off guard at the worst possible time.
At Varghese Summersett, our Personal Injury Division is led by Ty Stimpson, who built his practice representing people hurt in car wrecks, 18-wheeler crashes, and other vehicle collisions. Partner Damian Williams, based in our Dallas office, handles catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases and has secured multiple seven-figure verdicts and settlements in Texas.
Past results do not guarantee future outcomes, but they reflect the caliber of trial experience our team brings to a claim. Senior Counsel Katie Steele has also represented insurance companies from the defense side, so she understands how an adjuster is trained to evaluate and minimize a claim like yours. Firm founder Benson Varghese worked as an insurance adjuster before law school, insight that shapes how our Personal Injury Division approaches every claim against an insured or self-insured defendant, including a governmental entity. Across the firm’s four Texas offices in Fort Worth, Dallas, Southlake, and Houston, our attorneys bring decades of combined trial and negotiation experience to personal injury matters.
Sovereign Immunity and the Motor Vehicle Exception, Explained
Under ordinary Texas law, if a negligent driver hurts you, you sue them or their insurance company and prove your case using the same rules as any other civil claim. Governmental units do not play by those rules unless the legislature has specifically said they can be sued.
The Texas Tort Claims Act, under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter 101, waives that immunity in a short list of situations. The most commonly used waiver, under Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 101.021, applies when your injury was caused by the operation or use of a motor-driven vehicle or motor-driven equipment by a government employee acting within the scope of their job, and that employee would have been personally liable to you under ordinary Texas negligence law if they had been driving their own car.
In plain terms: if a city sanitation truck, a county sheriff’s cruiser, a state trooper’s patrol car, or a TxDOT maintenance vehicle hit you because the driver was negligent while doing their job, the motor vehicle exception likely applies, and you can pursue a claim.
To win, you still have to prove the basic elements of a Texas negligence case: that the government employee owed you a duty of care, breached that duty, and that the breach caused your damages. Your burden of proof is a preponderance of the evidence, meaning it is more likely than not that the negligence caused your injury. Texas also applies modified comparative fault under Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 33.001. If you are found more than 50 percent responsible for the wreck, you recover nothing. If you are 50 percent or less at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault.
One important carve-out inside the carve-out: discretionary, policy-level decisions by a governmental unit, such as how to design a road or how many patrol cars to put on the street, generally remain immune under § 101.056. That immunity does not extend to how an individual employee actually operated a vehicle that day. This distinction matters most in road defect and design cases, which is a harder claim than a straightforward vehicle-operation wreck.
The Damage Caps: What the Texas Tort Claims Act Actually Limits
Even when the motor vehicle exception applies, the amount you can recover from a governmental unit is capped by statute under § 101.023. These caps apply no matter how serious your injuries are, which is one of the hardest parts of this area of law for injured clients to accept.
- State of Texas (TxDOT, DPS, state universities, state hospitals): $250,000 per person and $500,000 per occurrence for death or personal injury; $100,000 per occurrence for property damage.
- Municipalities (city police, fire, sanitation, transit, and other city-owned vehicles): $250,000 per person and $500,000 per occurrence for death or personal injury; $100,000 per occurrence for property damage.
- Counties and other local governmental units: generally $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence for death or personal injury, unless the entity carries liability coverage above the statutory minimum, in which case the higher insured amount can apply.
Two things make this worse than it looks on paper. First, the Texas Tort Claims Act does not allow exemplary or punitive damages against a governmental unit, even in a case involving gross negligence, under § 101.024. Second, if your injuries are catastrophic, a $250,000 or $100,000 cap can be exhausted by medical bills alone. This is exactly why an experienced attorney looks beyond the government’s cap for every other available source of recovery, including your own uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, which may respond to fill part of the gap between your damages and what the government’s cap allows, depending on your policy language and the facts of your claim.
The Notice Deadline: Why “As Short As 90 Days” Is Not an Exaggeration
This is the part that destroys the most claims before they ever get started. Under § 101.101, you generally must give the governmental unit formal written notice of your claim within six months of the incident. That notice has to reasonably describe your injury or damage, when and where it happened, and the incident itself.
Here is the trap: a home-rule city’s charter or local ordinance can shorten that six-month window, as long as it does not go below 90 days. Many Texas cities have done exactly that. If you assume you have six months, or worse, the two years you are used to for an ordinary car accident claim, you can lose your right to recover before you ever realize the clock was running.
There is a narrow exception called actual notice. If the governmental unit already had actual, subjective knowledge that its own fault produced your injury, formal written notice may not be strictly required. Texas courts have interpreted this exception narrowly, so it is not a substitute for giving proper notice as soon as possible.
Also understand that the notice deadline and the lawsuit deadline are two different clocks. The general two-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims under Texas law still applies to when you must file suit. But if you miss the shorter-notice deadline, that two-year window may not matter at all because the underlying claim may already be barred. For a deeper look at how these deadlines work across different Texas governmental entities, see our related article on time limits to file a claim against the government in Texas.
Who You Are Really Negotiating Against
A claim against a governmental entity is rarely handled by the driver or by a typical auto insurer. In Texas, claims involving state agencies, many cities, and many counties are managed through specialized risk‑management and risk‑pool operations rather than standard personal policies. Depending on who hit you, your claim may be handled by the State Office of Risk Management for state agencies, the Texas Municipal League Intergovernmental Risk Pool for many cities, or the Texas Association of Counties Risk Management Pool for many counties — entities whose job is to control risk and defend claims, not to cut quick checks
Under § 101.106 of the Texas Tort Claims Act, the way you structure your lawsuit can make or break your recovery. If you file suit under the Act against the governmental unit, that filing is an irrevocable election that immediately and forever bars any suit or recovery against the individual employee regarding the same subject matter. If you sue the employee alone for conduct within the general scope of employment in circumstances where you could have sued the governmental unit under the Act, the employee can move to have the suit treated as official‑capacity only, forcing you to dismiss the employee and substitute the governmental unit as the defendant. In other words, naming the individual driver does not create a second pocket the way it might in a private auto case; the statute forces you into a single lane of recovery, and a lawyer who understands this at the outset can avoid wasting time on a dead‑end strategy.
The First Two Weeks Matter More Than You Think
Evidence in a government vehicle case disappears fast. Dash-cam and body-cam footage from police and other municipal fleets is often retained on a short cycle unless someone formally requests it be preserved. GPS and telematics data from city and county fleet vehicles, 911 dispatch logs, and vehicle maintenance records can all be purged on a routine schedule if no one steps in.
In the first two weeks after a wreck like this, an experienced plaintiff’s attorney typically will:
- Send a preservation letter to the correct governmental entity’s records custodian before footage and data are purged on a routine retention schedule.
- Identify exactly which entity and which notice deadline applies, since a city, a county, a school district, and a state agency each follow different rules.
- Request the official crash report and begin documenting your injuries and lost income from day one.
- Avoid giving a recorded statement to the government’s risk-management adjuster before your injuries and the facts are fully understood.
Common mistakes in this early window include giving a recorded statement too soon, posting about the wreck on social media, letting gaps appear in your medical treatment, and signing a broad medical records authorization that gives the adjuster more access than the law requires.
What to Expect From Varghese Summersett
Our Personal Injury Division does not treat a government vehicle claim like an ordinary car wreck file. We identify the correct governmental entity and notice deadline immediately; we send preservation letters before evidence disappears; and we calculate every layer of potential recovery, including your own underinsured motorist coverage when a statutory cap will not cover your full damages. Because members of our team have sat on the defense and insurance side of claims like this one, we know how these cases are evaluated internally and where a fair settlement actually sits.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the individual government employee who hit me? +
Usually not as a separate, additional source of recovery. If the employee was acting within the scope of their job, Texas law directs the claim toward the governmental unit itself, and suing the employee personally typically does not add a second pocket of recovery.
What if a pothole or road defect, not another vehicle, caused my wreck? +
Road defect and design claims against entities like TxDOT are harder than a straightforward vehicle-operation case, because decisions about how to design or maintain a road can fall under discretionary function immunity. These claims still can succeed, but they require a different kind of proof. Our road defect accident page covers this in more depth.
Does the Texas Tort Claims Act cap apply if a school bus hit me? +
School districts are governmental units under Texas law, so a school bus wreck typically falls under the Tort Claims Act framework as well. [VERIFY: confirm any school-district-specific insurance minimums or exceptions under the Texas Education Code before publication.]
What if the government employee was off duty when they hit me? +
The motor vehicle exception applies to an employee acting within the scope of employment. If the driver was off duty and not performing government business, your claim may fall outside the Tort Claims Act entirely and instead proceed as an ordinary claim against that individual, which does not carry the same caps.
I think I missed the notice deadline. Is my claim automatically dead? +
Not necessarily, but it is a serious problem that needs immediate legal attention. Depending on the facts, the actual notice exception or other arguments may still be available. Do not assume the claim is over without having an attorney review exactly what happened and when.
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If a city, county, or state vehicle hit you in Texas, the clock is already running, and it may be running faster than you think. Call Varghese Summersett for a free consultation so we can identify your deadline, protect the evidence, and pursue every source of recovery available to you.
