personal injury dispute over car damage from auto accident

Insurance will always deny liability when they can. Unless they are forced to pay, they won't. Is it worth it? Hard to say. You have a claim, whether you choose to pursue it, is completely up to you. Good luck.

People using reasonable care generally (a) look to see if a car is coming before opening a car door AND (b) look to see if someone in an adjacent parked car is opening a door before pulling into a parking space. Failing to use reasonable care is negligence. I suspect most juries would find both your son and the other driver to have been negligent: The situation you describe is a classic example where both parties are at least arguably at fault. But they may not have been EQUALLY at fault.

Texas law compares the proportionate responsibility of the parties. Were you to sue, the court or jury would "determine the percentage of responsibility ... with respect to each person's causing or contributing to cause in any way the harm for which recovery of damages is sought" for both your son and the other driver. If your son's percentage of responsibility is determined to be greater than 50 percent, he can't recover any damages at all. If your son's responsibility is less than 50 percent, then your son can recover the percentage of his damages "equal to [the other driver's] percentage of responsibility."

Especially if the other driver was moving at a rate of speed sufficient to tear the door off, a pretty good argument can be made that he was more at fault than your son -- both in failing to keep an adequate lookout (pay attention) and in pulling into the slot at an unsafe speed that didn't permit him to react to suddenly opened doors. I think most people's natural tendency may be to place slightly more responsibility on the parking driver rather than the person exiting the car, just because a moving vehicle is capable of inflicting so much greater damage than an opening car door, but that's just my hunch.

If, for example, the judge or jury decided that the other driver's percentage of responsibility was 75%, then your son could recover 75% of his damages. If it's 50/50, everyone goes home empty-handed, even if the other driver has counterclaimed. If it turns out that the jury decides that your son was MORE at fault, however, and the other driver has counterclaimed for his own property damages, then a lawsuit could result in your son being held liable.

Your liability insurance company won't bring suit on your behalf to recover your son's damages. And if your son sues -- even in small claims court -- then the other driver's insurance company will probably hire a lawyer to defend him. But if the other driver counterclaims for his own damages, then at that point -- when you're being sued too -- your insurance company would hire a lawyer to defend your son.

Or you may be able to interest a lawyer -- especially a young, hungry one -- in taking your case on a contingent fee basis if your son's property damages are substantially more than the other driver's. If the door repairs are, for example, $5000, but the other car's damages from running into it are only $1000, the relative percentages work in your favor.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Last point: There may be other factors that would affect a judge or jury's assessment of who's more at fault. If, for example, your son's vehicle had heavily tinted windows or other attributes that made it impossible for the other driver to see if there was a passenger inside, that might help excuse the other driver to some extent. (Of course, the counter-argument to that is that if the windows are tinted, that by itself should be a signal to a driver about to park in the adjacent space that he needs to be EXTRA careful about exiting passengers.)

These cases allways seem like 50/50 to me. Maybe you can get them to pay 1/2.

Check the parking lot for cameras, maybe there is a video of the incident that will show who is at fault.

Turn the claims in and negotiate.

Find a local attorney or legal aid to help you.

Peter ;)

The law does not provide answers to many situations that life hands us. This is what we call an "accident"...where both people were at fault. Both should take their respective losses and learn all they can from the experience.