Recent Recoveries
- $2,000,000Car crash — litigation settlement
- $1,750,000Slip & fall — litigation settlement
- $1,000,00018-wheeler — litigation settlement
- $850,000Tractor-trailer — litigation settlement
- $650,000Commercial collision — litigation settlement
- $650,000Trucking accident — litigation settlement
- $550,000On-the-job injury — litigation settlement
Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Every case is decided on its own facts.
Dallas was laid out for cars, and everybody in it is a pedestrian several times a day — between the car and the shop, between the office and the DART platform, across a car park at closing time.
It takes one driver turning without looking for the length of a crossing. There is no metal, no belt and no helmet between the two of you, so the car goes home with a dent and you go to Parkland.
The first week decides most of what follows. The adjuster rings while you are still on painkillers and asks for a recorded statement; somebody suggests you were not supposed to be crossing there; the trauma bill arrives before anyone has said who is paying it. None of that has to be handled by you, and almost none of it should be.
Free case review
You talk to the lawyer who would try it, not to an intake screener.
No fee unless we win
Nothing up front. The fee comes out of the recovery, or there is none.
We know these roads
Harry Hines, Ferguson, Buckner, Fort Worth Avenue — and the courts around them.
Why It Matters
Why a pedestrian’s claim is fought differently
Every other injured road user brings something to the scene — a vehicle, a data recorder, a camera, an account of their own.
A collision that costs a driver a wing panel costs a person on foot a pelvis. Everybody understands that part, and it is the part nobody argues about.
What people do not expect is what happens next. The driver stayed upright, stayed on scene and gave the responding officer their account while you were being loaded into the back of something. That account goes into the crash report, the report is the first document every adjuster reads, and from that moment the file contains a version of events that nobody asked you about — frequently one you would not be able to contradict, because you do not remember the minute before.
Undoing that takes evidence nobody kept for you: the damage to the car, the marks on the road, the cameras along the street, the phone on the passenger seat. It has to be asked for in the first days, and it has to be asked for by somebody the other side knows will put all of it in front of a jury.
Nobody disputes who is in hospital. What gets disputed is whether they were entitled to be in the road — and that is answered with the car, the cameras and the tarmac, not with anybody’s memory.
Aaron Genthe · Founder
- 01
You are the one who cannot give a statement
The driver stayed upright, stayed on scene and told the responding officer what happened. You were on the tarmac, or in the back of an ambulance.
- 02
You arrived with nothing that recorded it
No car, no black box, no dashcam, no helmet camera. The proof is the driver’s vehicle, the driver’s phone, the marks on the road and the cameras on the buildings — every one of them in somebody else’s hands.
- 03
“They stepped out in front of me”
Dark clothes. No crosswalk. On a phone. The standard answer is an argument about the person who was walking, not about the driving — and in Texas every point of it comes off the recovery.
Texas Law
The five rules that decide a pedestrian’s claim
Even where the crash was plainly the driver’s doing, Texas law shapes what you recover. These five decide most of it, and the first is where the whole fight happens.
Blame is divided, and the split is the case
Texas is a modified comparative fault state. Civil Practice and Remedies Code §33.001 lets you recover unless your own share of responsibility is greater than 50%, and whatever share is assigned to you comes off the award.
Awarded $600,000 and found 30% responsible, you receive $420,000. Found 51%, you receive nothing. On a pedestrian claim this is where the entire fight is, because the injuries are rarely arguable and the crossing always is — which is why every percentage point is worth arguing over.
Crossing outside a crosswalk is not the end of it
There is no Texas offence called jaywalking that extinguishes a claim. §552.005 requires you to yield away from a crosswalk, and failing to do so is a factor in the split above.
Both are true at once, and the second is the half that gets left out of the adjuster’s letter.
Dark clothing is not negligence
Texas asks nothing of a pedestrian’s clothing. What it does ask of a driver is §545.351: no faster than is reasonable and prudent in the conditions, and slow enough to avoid colliding with a person lawfully in the road.
Which turns the point around. If you genuinely could not be seen until it was too late, the question becomes why the vehicle was travelling faster than the distance its own headlights lit.
A driver who does not stop commits a felony
§§550.021 and 550.023 require a driver involved in a crash to stop, remain at the scene and render reasonable assistance.
The criminal case is not your case, and it is not a substitute for one. A prosecution recovers nothing for the person in hospital, and it can take a year of its own before it decides anything.
Two years, and a great deal less in practice
Most Texas injury claims must be filed within two years of the crash. A claim involving a government defendant, an injured child or a death runs to a different clock, and several of those are shorter.
The filing deadline is not the pressure. The car is repaired, the shop footage overwrites, the marks on the road wash away and the witness who stopped stops answering. The two-year bar is the last of those to run out, not the first.
The Process
What happens when you call us
If you have never worked with a lawyer before you may feel overwhelmed, or a little suspicious.
- 01
Free case review
You call or message. We ask what happened, where, what you have been told and what you are dealing with now.
- 02
We take the calls
We notify the insurers, and every call comes to us from that point. You give a recorded statement to nobody.
- 03
We go and get the proof
The cameras along the street, the driver’s vehicle before it is repaired, the report, the scene, the witnesses — in the first days, not the first year.
- 04
We build and negotiate
Future care, impairment, home help and equipment, valued properly. Then we push the adjuster, and file suit if the number will not move.
- 05
You get paid
We go through the settlement line by line. Nobody leaves here wondering what just happened to their case.
Client Reviews
What our clients say about us
The first was left by a client who was run over in a crosswalk. All three are published as the client wrote them.
Rated five out of five stars
“Upon getting ran over by car in a crosswalk, Aaron was one of my first phone calls. He knew what therapy and doctors I needed… cared about my physical pain and agony… and treated me like an individual, not just a case.”
Adrianne Miller
Rated five out of five stars
“I was badly injured. Broken knee. Broken ankle. Severe head and neck trauma. I called several attorneys for help. No one returned my calls… He made sure I had the best specialists that covered every medical issue that I required.”
Tracy Fortner
Rated five out of five stars
“This was my first experience with the legal system, and was even more daunting as we were going before a jury. Aaron was patient and had a calm demeanor; but a tenacious work ethic and court presence.”
Vu Nguyen
Your Attorney
The lawyer who works your case
This page has promised you a real attorney rather than a call centre several times over. It is only fair to say who that is.
Founder · Trial Attorney
Aaron Genthe
A Texas A&M graduate who went into personal injury straight out of law school, Aaron spent years as a litigator at one of the larger firms in Dallas — long enough to build a reputation as an aggressive and effective attorney, and long enough to watch how easily a client becomes a file number at a firm that size.
He started Genthe Law Firm so that the person you speak to about your case is the person who tries it. He has litigated collision cases across Dallas County and North Texas since, including the ones where the injured person was the only one at the scene who could not give an account of it.
- Practising since
- 2015
- Cases handled
- Hundreds, in Dallas and across Texas
- Education
- Texas A&M graduate
- Fee
- Contingency — nothing unless you recover
Questions
Pedestrian accident FAQs
The questions people ask on the first call, answered the way we answer them on the phone.
The driver says I stepped out in front of them.
They almost always do, and they said it first, to the officer, while you were being treated. It is an argument rather than a finding, and it is answered with the things that do not have a version of events — the damage to the vehicle, where it came to rest, the marks on the road, the street cameras and the driver’s phone.
Can I still recover if I was partly at fault?
Yes, unless your share is greater than 50%. Texas applies modified comparative fault and your percentage is deducted from the award — awarded $600,000 and found 30% responsible, you receive $420,000.
How long do I have to file a pedestrian accident claim in Texas?
Two years from the date you were struck, in most cases.
What does a Dallas pedestrian accident lawyer cost?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency: the fee comes out of the settlement or the verdict, and if there is no recovery there is no fee.
Also Handled Here
If your injury was something else
The neighbouring claims this firm litigates most often, including the two other ways of being hurt on a Dallas road with nothing around you.
- 01Car AccidentsThe driver who turned across you
- 02Wrongful DeathClaims brought by a surviving family
- 03Traumatic Brain InjuryHead injury with nothing to absorb it
- 04Bicycle AccidentsStruck on two wheels instead
- 05Motorcycle AccidentsThe other rider the insurer blames first
- 06Truck AccidentsStruck by a trailer, a box truck or a bus
- 07Uber & RidesharePickups, drop-offs and layered policies
- 08Slip & FallBroken pavement and premises hazards
Read more on walking in Dallas
- What are the Top Causes of Pedestrian Accidents in Dallas?What the crash reports actually show
- Can Pedestrians Ever Be At Fault in an Accident?The question on nearly every first call
- Uninsured & Underinsured Motorist Claims in TexasThe policy that pays when the driver has nothing
- Tips for Avoiding a Devastating Pedestrian AccidentCrossing a city that was built for cars
- Safe Driving Campaign Aims to Reduce Pedestrian InjuriesWhat is being tried, and what it is up against
- Who’s Responsible for Sidewalk Trip and Fall Injuries in Texas?When the hazard was the pavement itself
