Call Now
713-521-0059
Get the exam first. It is free, it does not require a police report, and for an adult it is available within 120 hours. The Houston hospitals that perform it are listed on our Houston SANE exam locations page, and our what to do now page walks through the first days in order.
If you are able to, report to the police now. You are not required to, but the same early evidence that builds a prosecution builds a civil claim.
Then call 713-521-0059, or message us, and say it happened this week. We will tell you what your case needs and get it started, beginning with written notice to whoever holds the video and records so it is kept. There is no guaranteed response time, but we typically respond within 12 to 24 hours of a call or message.
Often, yes. If you were sexually assaulted at a hotel, an apartment complex, a bar, a store, a parking garage or another business, the company that controlled the property may be responsible. Your claim against it is separate from any claim against the person who assaulted you. It is about what the business failed to do that allowed the assault to happen.
The step that cannot wait is the business’s own records. Surveillance video, access logs, incident reports and staffing schedules are on automatic timers, and once they are overwritten they do not come back. If the assault was recent, that is the reason to call now, before you decide anything else. Call 713-521-0059.
Where the assault happened decides who is responsible and what has to be proved, so these situations have their own pages:
If it happened at a bar, a nightclub, a restaurant, a retail store, a gym, an office building, a parking lot or a parking garage, this page is for you. The business, not only the attacker, may be liable.
There are usually two claims, and usually only one of them has insurance behind it. The person who assaulted you is often uninsured, sometimes never identified, and frequently has nothing to pay a judgment with. The business or property owner is different. Commercial property carries liability insurance, and a company can answer for a verdict. Texas law allows you to bring both claims.
No. You do not need an arrest, a charge, a conviction or a police report to bring a civil claim. A civil claim is your own case, brought on your own timeline. It is decided by a lower standard of proof than a criminal prosecution.
What your case does need is evidence, and most of it is not yours. It is in the building’s own records.
If you showered, waited, told nobody or never called police, that is rarely what decides one of these cases. Most people do exactly that. What matters more is how soon someone asks the business to stop deleting. Our page on what evidence matters, and what disappears goes through it.
The business answers for the security failure, not for the assault itself. That means the choices the company made about the place.
Were the parking lot and stairwells lit? Did cameras exist, and did they work? Was a guard posted where the company told customers one would be? Did the locks and key controls function? Was an employee with a history left alone with customers?
Had earlier incidents at the same location warned the company, and did it do nothing? Those questions shape the claim.
The strength of your case usually turns on the property’s history, not on anything you did or did not do. A location with prior assaults, robberies, police calls and complaints is a location where the company was on notice. That record exists in documents the company keeps and in police call data for the address, and it can be obtained.
There are two separate showings. The first is foreseeability.
Foreseeability. Timberwalk Apartments, Partners, Inc. v. Cain, 972 S.W.2d 749 (Tex. 1998), directs courts to consider whether criminal conduct previously occurred on or near the property, how recently, how often, how similar it was, and what publicity it received such that the owner knew or should have known.
For a business, this analysis usually starts with the police call history for the address and the surrounding blocks, and with the business’s own incident reports. A bar with a documented history of fights in the parking lot is in a different position from one without.
A second route to foreseeability. Del Lago Partners, Inc. v. Smith, 307 S.W.3d 762 (Tex. 2010), holds that the Timberwalk factors “are not the only reasons that a criminal act might be deemed foreseeable.” Del Lago itself involved roughly ninety minutes of open, escalating hostility between intoxicated patrons that the owner observed and did not address. Where staff watched something build and did nothing, prior-crime statistics are not the only evidence available.
Usually not by itself. The second showing is that the risk was unreasonable.
Unreasonableness. UDR Texas Properties, L.P. v. Petrie, 517 S.W.3d 98 (Tex. 2017), holds that foreseeability is necessary but not sufficient: “Foreseeability is the beginning, not the end, of the analysis in determining the extent of the duty to protect against criminal acts of third parties.” The plaintiff must present evidence about the burden of preventing the risk, weighed against the risk. In UDR the plaintiff lost because that evidence was absent.
In a business case that means evidence about a specific measure: a security guard during specific hours, a functioning camera, lighting in a specific part of the lot, a door that locked, a policy about cutting off intoxicated patrons. What it would have cost, and what it would have prevented.
These cases come from bars and nightclubs, particularly in and around parking areas at closing time. They also come from restaurants, convenience stores and gas stations, retail parking lots, shopping centers, gyms, and office buildings and their garages.
Faster than most people expect. Each kind of business keeps a different set of records. A hotel or motel has key card entry logs, folio and registry records, camera coverage of corridors and entrances, housekeeping and maintenance logs, and personnel files. A bar, restaurant, store, gym or office has camera coverage, incident reports, staffing and shift schedules, security contracts and post orders, and complaint records. The apartment complex and rideshare pages list what those companies keep.
The timing problem is the same everywhere. Surveillance systems record over themselves on a loop. In Brookshire Bros., Ltd. v. Aldridge (2014), the Supreme Court of Texas described one store’s system as recording “in a continuous loop that, after approximately thirty days, recorded over prior events.” In that case the store preserved about eight minutes of footage and let the loop overwrite the rest. Every system is set differently, and what gets saved is decided in the first days.
That is why the first letter matters more than the first lawsuit.
Texas courts address this in Brookshire Bros. and in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Johnson. A business is generally not obliged to preserve anything until it knows there is a substantial chance a claim will be made and that the specific records matter to it. A dated, specific letter naming the cameras, the time window and the logs and reports changes that. It is where we start where the facts call for it.
A civil case can include medical and counseling costs, already incurred and reasonably expected in the future. It can include lost earnings and lost earning capacity. It can also include compensation for mental anguish, emotional harm and the effect on your daily life. That last category is usually the heart of a sexual assault case. Many survivors carry no visible physical injury, and the absence of one does not by itself weaken your claim.
How long you have depends on what happened and how old you were. The negligence claim against the business usually runs on the ordinary two-year period under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003. Our page on the time limits on a Texas sexual abuse claim explains the longer periods that can apply to a claim based on the assault itself. If you think it may be too late, call and ask rather than assume. In most circumstances you can also bring the claim without your name appearing publicly.
Every statute and case linked above was read at its primary source. Texas statutes change every legislative session and case law is constantly changing.
This page is general information about Texas law. It is not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Camera footage is often overwritten within days at smaller businesses and within thirty days at larger ones. Ask for the business’s incident report and prior reports for the same location, the police call history for the address, the security vendor contract, and names of witnesses. Employees often leave these jobs quickly.
We start by sending the business a written demand to preserve its video, logs and reports, because that evidence is what your case is built on. Then we pull the history of the location and identify every party responsible for its security: the business, the property owner and any security contractor.
Schiffer Law Firm is a Houston personal injury firm with 50 plus years of combined experience representing injured people and survivors across Texas.
If you are an advocate or a counselor asking on someone’s behalf, you are welcome to call with a general question. We will not ask you for their name.
There is no charge to talk, and no attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery.
Call 713-521-0059.
Where the lot is part of the premises the business controls and the risk was foreseeable and unreasonable, yes. The facts about that lot, and what the bar knew about it, decide the claim.
Foreseeability under Timberwalk or Del Lago, and unreasonableness under UDR v. Petrie. They are separate, and a claim that proves only the first usually fails.
No. You do not need a police report, an arrest or a criminal case. A civil claim is decided by a lower standard of proof than a criminal prosecution.
The claim is against the business, not the attacker, so it usually does not depend on identifying the person who assaulted you.
Usually two years for the negligence claim against the business, under Section 16.003 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, but ask about your dates. The deadline page explains the longer periods that can apply to a claim based on the assault itself.
In most circumstances you can bring the claim without your name appearing publicly. Our page on filing without your name explains how.