If you or a loved one has suffered a catastrophic injury in McAllen, the attorneys at Patino Law Firm will fight for the compensation you deserve. Catastrophic injuries permanently change how a person lives and works, and these cases involve lifetime medical costs that can reach millions of dollars.
Your immigration status has nothing to do with your claim. Our team offers a free consultation to review your case. You pay nothing unless we win.
Patino Law Firm represents victims of catastrophic injuries across McAllen and throughout the Rio Grande Valley, from Edinburg and Pharr to Mission and Weslaco. Dr. Louis Patino founded this firm on the belief that veterans, bilingual families, and working people across McAllen deserve an attorney who brings both medical and legal training to their case.
Dr. Patino practiced as a chiropractor for twenty years before turning to the law, and that clinical training shapes how he reads the medical evidence in cases like yours. Our attorneys prepare every case for trial in Hidalgo County.
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When you hire our firm, Dr. Louis Patino handles your case personally, from the first phone call through the final settlement or verdict. You will not be handed off to a junior associate or a case manager you have never met. Many of the large billboard firms across South Texas work that way, but Dr. Patino takes fewer cases so he can give each one the attention it requires.
Dr. Patino reads your MRIs, CT scans, and X-rays himself and can explain to an insurer or a jury exactly what the imaging shows about the permanence of your condition. Catastrophic cases demand an attorney who understands both the medicine and the law, because the medical evidence is what separates a fair recovery from one that falls short by millions.
Our attorneys handle catastrophic injury cases involving permanent disability and life-altering harm. These include traumatic brain injury claims, spinal cord injury resulting in paralysis, and amputations that require a lifetime of prosthetic care.
We also represent victims of severe burn injuries, as well as crush injuries and serious fracture injuries involving multiple bones or joints. Severe burns may require skin grafts, reconstructive surgery, and long-term rehabilitation. A McAllen burn injury lawyer can evaluate the cause of the injury and the compensation that may be available. We take cases where a single accident produces trauma to several body systems at once.
Each of these injuries requires years of treatment, rehabilitation, and ongoing medical support, and the compensation you pursue must cover all of them. You can read more about the long-term consequences of serious injuries on our blog.
Texas allows catastrophic injury victims to recover three categories of damages when someone else’s negligence caused the harm. Economic damages cover the costs you can calculate, including past and future medical care, lost wages, and the loss of your ability to earn income going forward.
Non-economic damages compensate for losses that are harder to measure, such as physical pain, mental anguish, disfigurement, physical impairment, and the loss of enjoyment of life.
In cases involving gross negligence, Texas law also permits punitive damages, which are designed to punish the at-fault party rather than compensate the victim. There is no statutory cap on economic or non-economic damages in most personal injury cases. A jury can award whatever amount the evidence supports.
You have two years from the date of your injury to file a lawsuit under Section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Missing that deadline almost always means losing the right to recover anything at all, regardless of how severe your injuries are.
Texas does not have a single statutory definition of catastrophic injury. Courts apply the term when an injury is severe enough to permanently prevent a person from returning to work or living independently. The federal definition under 42 USC § 3796b uses a similar standard.
Learning that your injury will never fully heal changes everything for you and your family. The fear, the grief, and the weight of what comes next are real, and you deserve an attorney who understands the full scope of what you are facing.
The types of injuries described in the section above all meet this standard, and they share one defining feature: permanence. A broken bone heals. A severed spinal cord does not.
A life care plan is a detailed, evidence-based projection of every medical, rehabilitative, and personal expense you will need for the rest of your life after a catastrophic injury. A certified life care planner builds this document by reviewing your medical records and consulting with your treating physicians. The planner then calculates what each category of care will cost over your remaining life expectancy.
The plan accounts for future surgeries, physical and occupational therapy, prescription medications, attendant care, home and vehicle modifications, and assistive equipment like wheelchairs and prosthetics. Prosthetic limbs alone need replacement every three to five years, and each replacement carries its own fitting, rehabilitation, and adjustment costs.
Without a life care plan, catastrophic cases are almost always undervalued because the initial hospital bills represent only a fraction of what the injury will actually cost. Medical inflation drives those costs higher every year, and a properly prepared plan builds that growth into its projections.
You can estimate your compensation with our free online calculator for a rough starting point.
There is no fixed value, because every case depends on the severity of the harm and the lifetime care the injury will demand.
A recent $16 million TBI verdict in a truck accident case shows the scale these claims can reach when the evidence supports it. Every case is different, and past results do not predict the outcome of yours. They do show that the legal system takes permanent injuries seriously when the case is built correctly.
A certified life care planner starts by reviewing your full medical history and consulting with the specialists who are treating you. The planner then projects every category of future need described in the section above and assigns a cost to each one over your remaining life expectancy.
The financial pressure of living with a permanent disability while waiting for these answers is real, and the process can feel slow. Plans typically take four to eight weeks to complete, but that detail prevents an insurer from undervaluing a claim that will affect you for decades.
Focus first on getting the best available medical care, because the quality of your treatment affects both your recovery and the strength of your legal case. Do not accept any settlement offer from an insurer before the full scope of your injuries is clear, because early offers almost never reflect the true lifetime cost.
Contact a catastrophic injury attorney as soon as your condition allows, so evidence from the accident scene, medical records, and witness accounts can be preserved before they disappear. The two-year statute of limitations under Texas law starts from the date of the accident and does not pause while you recover.
Catastrophic cases follow a different path than standard personal injury claims, and we staff them accordingly from the start.
A catastrophic injury reshapes your entire future, and the legal case that follows it must account for every cost that future will bring. Patino Law Firm has spent more than a decade fighting for families in McAllen who are facing exactly that, and Dr. Patino’s medical training means we see what your injuries will demand long after the initial treatment ends.
We are veteran-owned, fully bilingual, and you pay nothing unless we win. Your injury is permanent. Your compensation should reflect that. Call our McAllen team at 956-631-3535 or 855-LAW-NINJA, or schedule a free consultation online.
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