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May 22, 2025
- Blog
- By Cesar Ornelas
Personal injury cases get complicated when you have multiple parties potentially at fault for an accident. An injury lawyer in El Paso will need to help you using some specific strategies to ensure you get fair compensation for your losses.
Can Multiple Defendants Be Held Liable In the First Place?
Texas law allows for multiple defendants to be held liable if their actions contributed to the accident. For example, if you’re involved in a car crash where there was a reckless driver, someone else with a poorly maintained vehicle, and a faulty traffic signal, the reckless driver, the other vehicle owner, and the city could all share some responsibility.
Texas follows a “proportionate responsibility” rule, and this means each defendant pays damages based on their percentage of fault. Figuring all this out can be tricky, so your lawyer will work to identify all liable parties, gather evidence to prove their roles, and pursue compensation from each.
How an Injury Lawyer in El Paso Handles Cases With Multiple Defendants
1. Identifying All Potentially Liable Parties
The first step is to thoroughly investigate the accident for the purpose of identifying everyone who may share in liability. Your lawyer will look through the police reports, examine witness statements, consider physical evidence and possibly ask an accident reconstruction expert to look over this evidence, too, and use this to get an idea of what happened.
Depending on the type of accident, you may need to go even further. For example, if a truck was involved, your lawyer might also need to look at the parts manufacturer, the records of all maintenance done on the truck, the trucking company’s hiring practices, the driver’s log, and much more.
There can also be some less obvious defendants that may turn up for your case. As an example, Texas has dram shop laws that mean certain entities can be considered liable if they over-serve alcohol in specific situations. The point here is to thoroughly look everywhere to identify all parties who might bear some responsibility. This gives you the best chance of recovering the full amount of your losses in a lawsuit.
2. Gathering and Presenting Evidence
To prove who is it fault and the degree of their fault, you’re going to need to establish all of this with clear evidence. Your lawyer will gather this evidence and arrange it in a way that shows clearly what happened. All kinds of evidence is going to be needed. Photographic and video evidence is important, but so are all kinds of documents, like maintenance logs, driver records, city repair reports, and more.
Many vehicles, especially commercial vehicles, have black boxes that record data, and the information from this may be important to your case. Witness testimony will also add credibility, and your lawyer will talk with all witnesses to determine who is credible and has useful information, and then work with them on how to give their testimony in a way that is compelling. Your lawyer will also present all of this evidence to the insurance company or even in the courtroom to prove fault and then link that fault to your injuries.
3. Protecting You Against Comparative Fault
As mentioned above, comparative fault, or proportionate responsibility, is very important in these types of cases. These laws acknowledge that accidents are often caused by the actions or inaction of multiple entities, and each of these entities could bear a different degree of fault. Everyone who is not primarily at fault or not equally at fault with everyone else can collect damages from the at-fault parties, but their damages will be reduced by the same percentage as their fault.
This is where things can get particularly confusing, because it’s in the best interest of everyone involved to try to minimize their own degree of fault and maximize everyone else’s. The insurance companies covering the liable parties can be expected to try to blame you as much as possible because every percentage point of blame that they can put on you could mean hundreds or even thousands of dollars in savings to them.
Say, for example, that you have $100,000 in damages and are bringing a claim against two defendants. One of them is 60% at fault and the other 30% at fault, but their insurance companies have claim that you are 10% at fault. Maybe you were going a couple of miles an hour above the speed limit, or they say you were talking on the phone at the time of the accident: that 10% of fault would mean that you lose out on $10,000 of your damages. It’s your lawyer’s job to thoroughly investigate the accident and ensure that you are not given any fault that you don’t deserve so that you can maximize your settlement.
4. Coordinating Claims Against Multiple Parties
Another thing that your lawyer will need to do in an accident involving multiple parties is to coordinate bringing the claims. In most cases, it’s best to file a lawsuit or insurance claim simultaneously against everyone liable. This will then start a process where information and evidence has to be shared among all parties, and this will take a lot of work to manage.
Your lawyer will take over all communication with the legal teams defending each of the liable parties, gather and present your evidence while also evaluating evidence from the defendants, and immediately begin negotiations. The idea of coordination is to prevent delays, make sure that no one avoids responsibility, and build a cohesive and logically sound case that will stand up in court, if it comes to that.
5. Negotiating Settlements with Multiple Defendants
Most of these cases are settled out of court, which is good news, but the difficulty lies in negotiating settlements when you have multiple defendants. Not only will each defendant be hoping to blame you as much as possible to lower the amount they are responsible for, but they are also likely to try to blame each other to shift responsibility.
Your lawyer needs to stick with the evidence, push hard, and coordinate these negotiations to make them effective. In some cases, one of the defendants is willing to settle quite quickly, and this means adjusting the strategy to go after the remaining parties.
6. Preparing for Trial When Necessary
While most personal injury cases settle, your lawyer will still prepare for trial just in case. Being prepared for trial also puts pressure on the defendants to negotiate in good faith to avoid having to go to court. Preparing for trial will require your lawyer to organize all the evidence to show, step-by-step, what happened and who was responsible. It also means preparing witnesses so they can testify consistently and preparing to cross-examine witnesses from multiple defense attorneys.
There is a lot that goes into preparing a case like this, and you should work with an experienced attorney who knows Texas law well and has experience here in our El Paso courts. To start your free consultation, reach out to us at Cesar Ornelas Law in El Paso today. We also serve San Antonio, Dallas, Midland, Odessa, and clients in Northern California and New Mexico.
