Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer in Corpus Christi

Weekend nights around downtown and North Beach send a steady stream of drivers home from bars, and some of them shouldn’t be behind the wheel at all. If one of them hit you while you were riding, here’s the answer up front: your civil claim moves on its own, no matter what happens in their criminal case.

A DWI arrest doesn’t settle your claim, but it doesn’t erase it either. It’s one more piece of proof stacked on top of everything else already working in your favor.

Proving your claim takes less than proving a crime

Criminal court and civil court run on different rules. Prosecutors have to prove a DWI beyond a reasonable doubt, a high bar that can take a jury months to reach, if it ever gets there at all. Your injury claim carries a lighter burden: tip the scales past even, and that’s enough. It’s why your claim doesn’t sit around waiting on a verdict. A plea deal, a dropped charge, even an acquittal in criminal court doesn’t decide your civil case for you.

What gets written down when police make an arrest

An arrest report holds detail an ordinary fender-bender never generates. Field sobriety results, a breath or blood test number, the officer’s own account of what they saw at the scene: all of it lands in the file. None of that happens automatically in a routine crash, and all of it can become part of the proof behind your claim.

The driver isn’t always the only name on the claim

Sometimes a bar or restaurant that kept pouring for someone visibly impaired shares in the blame, but that’s a fact-dependent question with no automatic answer. And because drunk driving goes beyond ordinary carelessness, Texas courts can sometimes weigh added damages on top of your medical bills and lost income, though that call rests with a judge or jury, never a guarantee built into every case.

Their court date and your deadline don’t share a calendar

A DWI case can spend a year or more inching toward a plea or a trial, and your claim isn’t required to wait on any of it. Texas still runs its own filing window for your injury claim, separate from anything happening in criminal court. Read the guide on the state’s filing deadline before you assume the criminal case buys you extra time.

If the crash took someone’s life, the wrongful death guide walks through who can bring that kind of claim. And if you’re building your case around scarring, pain, or a body that doesn’t work the way it used to, the pain and suffering guide explains what actually documents that kind of loss.

The decision to get behind the wheel that night was the other driver’s, not yours. What happens next is your decision to make, and it doesn’t have to wait on theirs.