What is a tort? A plain-English guide to the legal idea behind every Texas injury claim

A tort is a civil wrong that causes someone harm, giving that person the right to sue for money damages.

That's the whole idea. Everything else, the courtroom procedures, the insurance negotiations, the medical-bill arguments, builds on that one sentence.

Why the word even matters

You probably didn't come here looking for Latin. "Tort" comes from the Latin tortum, meaning twisted or wrong. Texas courts still use it because it draws a line between two types of law that get confused constantly.

Criminal law is the state punishing you for breaking a rule. Civil tort law is a private person asking a court to make them whole after someone else's careless or intentional act hurt them. When a drunk driver runs a red light on Ben White Boulevard and breaks your arm, two things can happen at once: the DA can prosecute the driver for a crime, and you can sue the driver for your medical bills, lost wages, and pain. Those are separate cases. The criminal case doesn't pay your rent. Your tort claim does.

The four things you have to prove

Every Texas negligence case rests on the same four elements. Miss one and the claim fails, regardless of how badly you were hurt.

Duty. The defendant had a legal obligation to act with reasonable care toward you. Drivers owe that duty to everyone on the road. A property owner owes it to visitors on their premises. It's rarely contested.

Breach. The defendant failed to meet that standard of care. Running a red light is a breach. So is leaving a wet floor unmarked at a grocery store off East Riverside.

Causation. The breach actually caused your injury, in a direct enough way that Texas law recognizes the connection. This is where cases get fought. Insurance adjusters love to argue your injury predated the crash, or that something else caused it.

Damages. You suffered real, measurable harm. Pain and suffering count. So do hospital bills at Dell Seton or St. David's, lost income, and the cost of future care.

If you can show all four, you have a viable tort claim.

The three main categories

Not every tort works the same way. Texas recognizes three broad types.

Negligence is by far the most common in injury cases. It doesn't require any bad intent. The other driver wasn't trying to hurt you; they were texting. That's enough. Car wrecks, slip-and-fall injuries, truck accidents on I-35, cycling crashes near the MoPac flyover all typically run through a negligence theory.

Intentional torts cover acts where someone meant to cause harm. Battery, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress. These come up in cases involving road rage or bar fights. They can also open the door to something negligence usually doesn't: exemplary damages (sometimes called punitive damages). Texas requires clear and convincing evidence of fraud, malice, or gross negligence before a jury can award them.

Strict liability skips the negligence question entirely. If a product was defectively designed and injured you, the manufacturer can be liable without anyone proving carelessness. Texas also applies strict liability to a narrow set of abnormally dangerous activities.

How Texas comparative fault changes the math

Texas follows a modified comparative-fault rule. If you were partly at fault for your own injury, your damages get reduced by your percentage of responsibility.

Say a jury finds you 20% at fault for stepping into a crosswalk when the signal was borderline. Your damages were $100,000. You collect $80,000. But there's a cutoff: if a jury finds you 51% or more responsible, you collect nothing. That's the 51% bar under Texas comparative fault and it's one of the first things insurance adjusters try to use against you after a crash.

What a tort claim can actually recover

Texas tort law lets injured people recover economic and non-economic damages.

Economic damages are the calculable ones: past and future medical bills, lost earnings, reduced earning capacity, property damage. Non-economic damages cover pain, suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life. There's no fixed formula for non-economic damages; juries decide.

One thing worth knowing if your case involves medical bills: Texas's paid-or-incurred rule limits what you can recover for medical expenses to the amounts actually paid or owed, not the full sticker price a hospital might charge. That rule has real teeth and affects almost every personal-injury case in Travis County.

The two-year window

Texas gives most personal-injury plaintiffs two years from the date of injury to file suit. Miss that deadline and the court will almost certainly dismiss your case, regardless of how clear the other party's fault was. Two years sounds like plenty of time. It goes faster than you'd expect when you're still recovering, dealing with an adjuster, and trying to get back to work.

Some claims have shorter windows. Suits against a government entity carry a separate, much shorter notice deadline, and it varies by entity. The City of Austin's charter requires written notice of a claim within 45 days of the incident, far shorter than the two-year statute. Miss that notice deadline and you may lose the right to sue entirely, even though the two-year statute hasn't run.

Where tort law meets your insurance claim

Most Texas injury claims settle before anyone files a lawsuit, let alone goes to trial. But the tort framework still drives the negotiation. The adjuster on the other side knows what a jury could award. Your attorney knows it too. The settlement talks are really just a negotiation over what a court would probably decide, discounted for the cost and uncertainty of litigation.

Understanding that you're working within a tort framework, not just filing an insurance form, matters for one practical reason: your rights as a tort plaintiff are broader than your rights as a claimant under the other driver's policy. An insurer can deny a first-party claim for technical policy reasons. A jury can hear your story.

Talking to someone about your specific situation

Every tort claim is different. The facts about where the crash happened, who was at fault, what injuries resulted, and what insurance is in play all shape what's actually recoverable. If you'd like to talk through your situation with Anselmo Aguirre, the firm offers a free intake call with no obligation. The firm handles cases in Travis and Williamson counties, and you pay nothing unless your case resolves in your favor.

If you're ready, schedule a free consultation and bring whatever you have: a crash report, photos, a denial letter from an insurer. That's enough to start.