HB 19 and Texas Truck Accident Trials

In any Texas lawsuit over a crash involving a commercial motor vehicle, the defendant can file a motion to bifurcate, and the court has no discretion to refuse a timely one. The statute says the court shall grant it.^[1]

The motion has its own clock. The defendant must file it by the later of 120 days after its original answer or 30 days after being added to the case. Miss that window and the right is gone, which is why the first thing we check in a new truck case is whether the deadline has already passed.

Once granted, the trial splits. The first phase decides who was at fault for the collision and what your compensatory damages are: the medical bills, the lost earnings, the pain, the impairment. The second phase happens only if the first finds the defendant liable, and it decides whether the defendant also owes exemplary damages, the punishment layer of a Texas verdict.

The practical effect is what the trucking lobby paid for. The jury that sets your compensation number hears a narrower story about the company than it would have heard before 2021.

HB 19 gave carriers a second tool that works together with bifurcation. Under Section 72.054, if the company stipulates that its driver was an employee acting in the scope of employment, the company's liability in phase one runs only through the driver's negligence.

That stipulation sounds like a concession. It is a shield. Once it is filed, you generally cannot present your negligent entrustment, negligent hiring, or negligent training claims against the company in phase one. The evidence that the carrier put an unqualified driver in an 80,000-pound vehicle waits for phase two, in front of a jury that has already set your compensation without hearing it.

Defense firms file this stipulation as a matter of routine now. A Texas truck case has to be built with the assumption that the stipulation is coming, which changes which evidence carries the compensatory phase.

The table below shows where the major pieces of a Texas commercial-vehicle case are tried once a defendant bifurcates and stipulates. The split is set by Sections 72.052 through 72.054, and getting a claim on the left side of it is worth real money, because phase one is where compensation is decided.

Every row of that table is a fight in a real case, and the fights are won with evidence gathered early, before the carrier's litigation team has shaped the file.

The statute carves out company claims that do not depend on the driver doing anything wrong. Negligent maintenance is the named example: bad brakes, bald tires, a trailer that should not have been on the road. Those claims are tried in phase one, in full, stipulation or not.

The same logic reaches other corporate failures that stand on their own, such as an overloaded or improperly secured load. When the mechanical and cargo evidence is strong, the maintenance claim becomes the path that keeps the company's own conduct in front of the compensation jury.

This is also where the crash's physical evidence earns its keep. The tractor's electronic control module, the post-crash inspection, and the maintenance records either support that claim or they do not, and they have a way of disappearing into the carrier's ordinary document retention if nobody sends a preservation letter early.

HB 19 also added Section 72.055, which makes properly authenticated photos and video of the vehicles presumptively admissible, without expert testimony, even when they are offered to argue about how severe the injuries were.

Insurers like this rule because it lets them wave low-damage photos at a jury and argue a serious injury could not have come from a modest-looking impact. The rule cuts both ways. Crush damage, underride intrusion, and dashcam video come in just as freely, and in most serious truck cases the pictures are on the victim's side.

What the rule punishes is a thin file. The side with better documentation of the vehicles, the scene, and the sequence of the collision gets more out of Section 72.055 than the side hoping to explain photos away.

Texas still places no cap on compensatory damages in a truck case, your fault percentage still follows the state's proportionate responsibility rules, and a carrier's exposure to punitive damages survives into phase two. The Legislature tried to go further in 2025 with SB 39, a second trucking bill, and it died without passing.^[2] As of August 31, 2026, HB 19 is the trucking rulebook, and the next chance for it to change is the 2027 session.

What the law changed is how much of your case's value depends on early, deliberate work. The motion deadline, the stipulation, the 72.054(c) list, and the maintenance carve-out each reward the side that knows the statute and moves first. A truck claim handled like a big car wreck gives up the advantages the statute still leaves on the table.

HB 19 moved the furniture in a Texas truck trial. It did not move the law of damages. The trucking lobby bought a procedure, not an outcome. We tried truck cases before HB 19 and we try them under it.

One honest note for people who already have a lawyer. If your truck case is pending and nobody has explained how bifurcation, the stipulation, or the violation list applies to it, that conversation is overdue. We review represented cases quietly and talk lawyer to lawyer about co-counsel where it helps; our page on switching personal injury lawyers explains how that works without costing you anything extra.