Indiana Crash Facts 2024 puts Vanderburgh County at 5,667 collisions of every kind, the eighth-highest total of Indiana’s 92 counties, and 64 of them involved an alcohol-impaired driver. If one of those drivers hurt you, or killed someone in your family, in Evansville, the claim you bring is a civil one, separate from the OWI case the State brings against the driver. One of the county’s 16 fatal collisions that year involved an alcohol-impaired driver as well, and where a crash killed someone, who brings the claim changes. The civil claim has its own deadline and its own rules about who can be made to pay.
Start with a firm that does this kind of work and nothing else. Blackburn Romey practices personal injury and wrongful death law exclusively, so a drunk driving claim is not something we pick up between other kinds of cases. That work covers Evansville car accident claims of every kind and runs through the same statewide car accident lawyer practice. It also covers the wrongful death claim that follows a fatal crash, which Indiana law puts in different hands from an injury claim.
The second thing to look for is comfort with the part of a claim that happens on paper and in front of a judge. A contested injury claim can turn on written motions and oral argument rather than on the facts the parties already agree about. David A. Singleton handles Blackburn Romey‘s motion practice and oral arguments in the trial and appellate courts. He is admitted to practice law before all Indiana state courts, the United States District Courts for Indiana’s Northern and Southern Districts, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
The consultation is free and confidential. We will look at what happened and give you a straight answer about whether there is a claim worth bringing.
By blind lot, once the case has been filed. A civil injury claim from an Evansville crash is a civil tort case, the CT category in the county’s local rules. Where the case is filed in the Vanderburgh Superior Court, the rules assign it to one of four rotating judges by blind lot in the order cases are presented for filing. The county’s local rules are currently in effect, last amended on 1 December 2022. They put it this way: civil cases, the civil tort (CT) category included, “are assigned to one of the four remaining Judges by blind lot in the order presented for filing.” The four rotating judges sit in Divisions I, V, VI and VII, and both the Vanderburgh Circuit Court and the Vanderburgh Superior Court sit in Evansville, the county seat. The published rules do not divide civil tort cases between those two courts, so which one a case goes to is a question for your lawyer rather than one the rules answer.
The date you control is the filing date. Indiana’s filing deadline comes from IC 34-11-2-4(a), which gives you two years from when your claim arises to file an injury lawsuit. For most crash injuries that means two years from the day of the crash. Two years is not the only deadline you may face, and it is not always the first: where a government body may be answerable for the crash, a much shorter notice deadline comes first, and it is set out below.
No. Alcohol accounted for a smaller share of Vanderburgh County’s collisions, and a smaller share of its fatal collisions, than it did statewide. A claim turns on the evidence from one crash rather than on how often crashes happen in the county.
The figures are worth having anyway. Indiana counts a collision as alcohol-impaired when at least one driver involved has a blood alcohol test result at or above 0.08 g/dL, and results above 0.59 g/dL are excluded. On that count, 64 of Vanderburgh County’s 5,667 collisions in 2024 were alcohol-impaired, or 1.1%, against 1.7% statewide. One of the county’s 16 fatal collisions was alcohol-impaired, 6.3% of the county’s fatal total, against 10.0% statewide.
The label is narrower than it sounds. In the state’s County Profiles, “use of the term alcohol-impaired does not mean that a crash or fatality was caused by alcohol impairment, only that an alcohol-impaired driver was involved in the crash.” Whether alcohol caused a particular crash is settled by the evidence in that case, not by a column in a state table.
The drunk driver is the obvious defendant, and often not the only one. A bar, restaurant or private host who served the driver can also be responsible under IC 7.1-5-10-15.5, but only if they actually knew the driver was visibly intoxicated when they served them, and that intoxication was a proximate cause (a direct legal cause) of the injuries you are claiming for. That is a demanding test, and how liability is established is the ground the insurer will contest.
Your own conduct gets weighed as well. Indiana compares fault in a claim against another driver, but not in a tort claim against a governmental entity or a public employee under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, where the comparative fault chapter does not apply at all (IC 34-51-2-2). Where it does apply, your own share of fault reduces what you recover (IC 34-51-2-5), and only a share greater than everyone else’s combined bars the claim entirely (IC 34-51-2-6(a)).
The two years is not the first deadline where a government defendant is involved. Where an injury claim is a tort claim against a governmental defendant under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, notice comes first: a claim against a political subdivision (a county, township, city, town, school corporation, state educational institution, city or county hospital, or another entity in the definition at IC 34-6-2.1-155) is barred unless notice is filed with its governing body (and, in the cases the statute specifies, with the Indiana political subdivision risk management commission) within 180 days after the loss occurs, and a claim against the state is barred unless notice is filed with the attorney general or the state agency involved within 270 days after the loss occurs. Those two windows come from IC 34-13-3-8(a) and IC 34-13-3-6(a).
The notice must be in writing and delivered in person or by registered or certified mail. Both windows are far shorter than the two-year lawsuit deadline, and the Act has narrow exceptions of its own — so if any government body may be involved, speak to a lawyer well before the notice window closes, and do not assume a missed window has ended the claim without asking.
Who brings the case changes (IC 34-23-1-1). Where the person who died was not a child as Indiana defines one: the wrongful death lawsuit is brought by the personal representative of the person who died, and that action has to be filed within two years. Where the person who died was a child as Indiana defines one, IC 34-23-2-1 sets out who may bring the claim: the action may be maintained by the father and mother jointly, or by either of them if they name the other parent as a codefendant to answer as to his or her interest; or, after a divorce or dissolution of marriage, by the person to whom custody of the child was awarded; or by a guardian, for a protected person. If the person who was awarded custody has since died, a personal representative is appointed to maintain the action. A child’s claim is not one to leave sitting: Indiana’s two-year injury deadline is the one to work to, so ask a lawyer about your own dates rather than assuming you have longer. Identifying who may bring the claim is an early step in how a wrongful death claim is brought. Where a government body may be answerable for the crash, a much shorter notice deadline comes first, as set out above.
Indiana’s “child” here is narrower than the everyday word, and its three parts stack. The person who died must have been unmarried. They must also have been without dependents. And they must have been either under twenty, or under twenty-three and enrolled in a postsecondary educational institution or in a career and technical education school or program that is not a postsecondary educational program. So a married 17-year-old is not a child on that test, while an unmarried 21-year-old with no dependents who is still in college is.
What does not change is the nature of the case. A wrongful death lawsuit is a civil claim, separate from the OWI case the State brings against the driver, and it is decided on the evidence from that one crash rather than on how often fatal crashes happen in the county.
The parties who can be made to pay are the same as well. The drunk driver is the first defendant in a fatal case as in any other, and Indiana’s dram shop statute reaches “the death, injury, or damage alleged in the complaint,” so a bar, restaurant or private host who served the driver can be answerable for a death on the same actual knowledge and proximate cause conditions.
Cases are distributed without either side selecting a judge. The county’s local rules record that it “utilizes Odyssey which evenly distributes the cases among the Judges,” and that the “software also adjusts the new case assignments to account for recusals so that every attempt is made to evenly distribute the case load among the Judges.”
In 2023, Evansville recorded 4,469 total collisions, 37 of them alcohol-impaired, or 0.8%. Vanderburgh County as a whole recorded 5,612 collisions that same year, 65 of them alcohol-impaired, at 1.2%. Those columns count collisions, not people injured or killed.
Where the person who died was not a child as Indiana defines one, the personal representative of the person who died brings the lawsuit under IC 34-23-1-1, and it also has to be filed within two years. Where a government body may be answerable for the crash, a much shorter notice deadline comes first, as set out above. Where the person who died was a child as Indiana defines one, IC 34-23-2-1 sets out who may bring the claim instead, and those routes are given in full above.
No. If the court orders the driver to pay restitution in the criminal case, that does not close your civil claim for other damages. Under IC 35-50-5-3(e) a restitution order “does not bar a civil action for … other damages suffered by the victim,” so the civil claim is where those other damages are recovered.
Yes. The drunk driver’s liability insurer is the first place a claim goes. Indiana’s dram shop statute can also reach a bar, restaurant or private host who served the driver, on the actual knowledge and proximate cause conditions above, and it covers a death as well as an injury or other damage you are claiming for.
Evidence is easiest to secure early: the crash report, any chemical test results, and the accounts of people who saw what happened. The two-year period on an injury lawsuit runs in the background from the day your claim arises, and where a government body may be answerable there is a much shorter notice deadline to meet first. When the crash was fatal, who brings the claim turns on who died.
Where the person who died was not a child as Indiana defines one, the wrongful death lawsuit is brought by the personal representative, and it also has to be filed within two years. Where a government body may be answerable for the crash, the much shorter notice deadline above comes first there as well. Where the person who died was a child as Indiana defines one, IC 34-23-2-1 instead sets out who may bring the claim: the father and mother jointly, or either of them naming the other parent as a codefendant; the person awarded custody after a divorce or dissolution; or a guardian, for a protected person. The claim goes in as a civil tort case, and where it is filed in the Vanderburgh Superior Court, the rules assign it by blind lot to one of four rotating judges, in the order cases are presented for filing.
Blackburn Romey handles drunk driving injury and wrongful death claims for people hurt in Evansville, alongside the broader Evansville personal injury work we do here. We also serve clients in Fort Wayne, Merrillville, South Bend, Indianapolis, Terre Haute and Lafayette.
Call 833-366-6595 or contact us for a free, confidential consultation about what happened.
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