Broken Bones

If you broke a bone in a Texas personal injury accident, you can generally recover compensation for your medical treatment and how the injury has affected your life.

A broken bone, which doctors call a fracture, is any crack or break in a bone, and what matters most for a claim is how your records describe it: nondisplaced, mildly displaced, or displaced.

Displaced vs. Nondisplaced Fractures

A displaced bone fracture means the broken ends of the bone moved out of their normal position. A nondisplaced fracture means the bone cracked, but the pieces stayed in place. A mildly displaced fracture sits in between: the ends shifted, but not by much.

Most breaks are closed, meaning no bone broke through the skin. A break that does pierce the skin is called an open, or compound, fracture. These carry a higher risk of infection and almost always mean surgery.

No Texas law grades a claim by how displaced the bone was. What the label actually does is point to the treatment you needed, and that treatment is what drives the value of a claim.

Common Causes of a Broken Bone in an Accident

A bone breaks when it takes on more force than it can handle, and the type of force involved often points back to what kind of accident caused it:

• Impact force: Getting struck by a vehicle or hitting the ground in a car or pedestrian accident can break a bone on contact.
• Bending or twisting force: A fall, or a foot caught wrong during a slip, can snap a bone from the twisting motion alone, even without a direct hit.
• Crushing force: Heavy equipment or a vehicle coming down on a limb, common in motorcycle and workplace accidents, can shatter bone rather than just crack it.
• Repetitive stress: Repeated motions on the job, like lifting or carrying, can wear a bone down into a stress fracture over time.

How the bone broke often shapes what evidence your claim relies on. A car accident leans on crash reports and vehicle damage. A workplace injury leans on safety records and equipment logs.

What Your Medical Records Need to Show

Your medical records need to connect the accident to the break, show the treatment you needed, and record what that treatment cost. A few pieces of your file do most of that work:

• Imaging and your doctor’s description of the break: Notes whether it was a mild displaced fracture or a fully displaced one, and whether the bone was set or held with hardware.
• Continuity of treatment: Follow-up visits, how long you were in a cast, physical therapy, and any hardware left in place.
• The billing records, read closely: Texas law limits what you can recover to what was actually paid or incurred, which is often far less than the amount first billed.
• What the injury cost you day to day: Work missed, tasks handed to someone else, and activities you gave up while the bone healed.

Hold on to the discharge summary, the radiology report, and every bill, including the ones insurance already paid.

Possible Complications From a Broken Bone

Most broken bones heal without lasting problems, but a few complications can affect the value of your claim:

• Blood clots: The body forms a clot to help a fracture heal, but a piece of that clot can break off and travel to the lungs, a serious condition that needs its own treatment.
• Arthritis: A fracture near a joint can wear down the joint over time, leading to ongoing pain that has no cure.

A complication like this adds its own medical bills and its own record of what the injury has cost you, on top of the original break.

What Damages Can You Recover for a Broken Bone in Texas?

Texas law lets you recover two kinds of damages. Economic damages are your out-of-pocket losses, like medical bills and lost income. Non-economic damages cover physical pain, physical impairment, and disfigurement.

Under Texas law’s definition of economic damages, the term covers money you have already spent or lost. Non-economic damages are defined in that same part of the law:

• Economic: Medical charges, limited to what was actually paid or incurred, lost income during treatment, and out-of-pocket costs such as braces and travel to appointments.
• Non-economic: Physical pain and suffering, physical impairment, disfigurement including surgical scarring, loss of enjoyment of life, and mental anguish.

A badly displaced fracture, or one that needed surgery, tends to show up on the second list far more than the first. That is where a wrist that no longer turns the way it used to gets its value.

Either kind of damages still depends on proving that someone else’s carelessness caused the break in the first place.

How Long Do You Have to File a Broken Bone Claim in Texas?

In Texas, you generally have two years to file a personal injury lawsuit for a broken bone. The clock starts on the day you were hurt. File late, and the court will normally throw the case out, no matter how strong it is.

That two-year period comes from Texas’s statute of limitations for injury claims. One narrow exception applies under the state’s disability rule: if you were younger than 18 when the injury happened, or of unsound mind at that time, that period does not count toward the two years. You cannot stack one disability on another to stretch the deadline, and a disability that starts after the clock is already running does not pause it.

Can You Recover Compensation If You Were Partly at Fault?

You can still recover in Texas if you were partly at fault for what happened. Your share of the blame just cannot be greater than 50%, and your damages drop by whatever percentage of fault gets assigned to you.

That 50% limit comes from Texas’s comparative fault law. Below that line, a related rule tells the court to reduce your damages by your share of fault. A fracture claim carrying a 20% share of blame pays 20% less. How fault actually gets divided depends on the evidence in your specific case.

Frequently Asked Questions About Broken Bone Claims

What Is a Broken Bone?

A broken bone, or fracture, is any crack or break in the bone. Your medical records will describe it as nondisplaced, mildly displaced, or displaced, and that description affects how your injury is treated and valued in a claim.

Does a Broken Bone Always Require Surgery?

No. Most nondisplaced and mildly displaced fractures heal with a cast, boot, or splint. Surgery is typically reserved for displaced fractures or open fractures where the bone breaks through the skin.

Can I Still File a Claim if My Fracture Was Not Displaced?

Yes. A nondisplaced fracture can still support a claim if someone else’s carelessness caused it. The label affects the treatment and value of your case, not whether you can file one.

Talk With a Texas Injury Lawyer About Your Fracture

A broken bone from an accident can leave you with bills, missed work, and lasting limits on what you can do. Talking with a Texas personal injury lawyer is how you find out whether a claim is worth filing, and a first call is mostly listening: you say what happened, what treatment you have had, and how much of the two-year deadline is left.

Our attorneys at Gamez Law Firm handle personal injury claims across Texas and offer a free consultation to talk through what your records show. Call us at 210-736-4040 or get in touch to schedule a time to talk.