A Stephenville man's lawsuit accusing a prominent Dallas personal injury firm of illegally soliciting him just two days after a car crash went to trial this week in Erath County, putting Texas's decades-old barratry law under fresh scrutiny in the age of online lead generation. Barry Marshall alleges that case runners contacted him without his consent after a driver crashed into his pickup truck near Stephenville, eventually funneling him toward attorneys at Loncar Lyon Jenkins.
Jury selection and opening statements were set to begin Monday in the case, according to The Dallas Morning News. Marshall filed the lawsuit alleging unlawful solicitation after his crash in April 2024, and the case has since narrowed to two defendants: Loncar Lyon Jenkins and Robert Paschall, who worked for the firm as a lead generator, along with his business. Erath County District Court Judge Jason Cashon earlier granted requests to dismiss Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins, former state Sen. Ted Lyon and firm COO David Brown from the suit as individuals, and separately dropped Susan Gray-Frank, who was named on the truck's title but was not in the accident, from the complaint.
Loncar Lyon Jenkins has denied any wrongdoing. The firm is co-owned by Jenkins and Lyon, and traces back to 1988, when it was founded as Loncar Associates by the late Brian Loncar.
What Happened in the Two Days After the Crash
According to Marshall's account, an unknown caller reached him just two days after the crash, and a webpage called Liftyouup.org called both him and Gray-Frank around the same time. Paschall has said Liftyouup.org transferred the call to his company, which then sent Marshall to the law firm. Paschall's company representative allegedly obtained Marshall's crash report by identifying herself as his authorized representative on the state transportation department website, and the business owned by Paschall emailed Marshall his crash report five minutes into his call.
Marshall said in a legal declaration that he never contacted Liftyouup.org and did not know how the site obtained his phone number. A man on the call offered to refer Marshall to attorneys at Loncar Lyon Jenkins, and the firm sent him a contract minutes after he answered what was reportedly the sixth call he received. Liftyouup.org has since gone offline; per the Dallas Morning News report, it was a now-defunct webpage that had listed hundreds of attorneys along with mental-health resources and other aid.
Two Competing Accounts of Consent
Loncar Lyon Jenkins attorneys have countered by alleging that Marshall clicked an online link inviting the referral, and the firm provided an intake form indicating Marshall supplied his phone number and email address before the call took place. Both Paschall and Loncar Lyon Jenkins representatives said they had no connection to Liftyouup.org and did not initiate the call to Marshall themselves. The jury will weigh whether the firm and its middleman crossed the line into unlawful solicitation or whether Marshall's own online activity opened the door to a lawful referral.
Under Texas law, attorneys or intermediaries are prohibited from initiating contact with crash victims within 31 days of an accident, a restriction rooted in Texas Penal Code Section 38.12(d), which bars lawyers, chiropractors or their representatives from reaching out to accident victims or their families during that window, according to the State Bar of Texas. Barratry itself is a criminal offense in Texas, and the same statute makes initiating prohibited solicitation or paying for referrals a Class A misdemeanor for a first offense, escalating to a third-degree felony carrying two to 10 years in prison for repeat violations, per FindLaw.
A Statewide Push to Raise the Stakes
Beyond criminal exposure, Texas Government Code Section 82.0651, first enacted in 2011, lets people targeted by prohibited solicitation sue in civil court to void their legal contracts and recover statutory penalties, actual damages and attorney's fees. Texas lawmakers moved to sharpen that deterrent in 2025, introducing House Bill 4325 during the 89th Legislative Session to raise the civil penalty for prohibited barratry from $10,000 to $50,000 per violation. Even so, prosecutors rarely pursue barratry charges in Texas, leaving much of the enforcement burden to civil suits like Marshall's.
Legal ethicist Alexandria Zant has said misleading advertisements may conceal that submitting contact information permits an attorney referral, a dynamic at the heart of disputes over what counts as genuine consent online. Attorney Vic Feazell has said lead generators increasingly use deceitful social-media tactics that resemble unlawful solicitation, reflecting a broader shift documented by legal ethicists and personal injury litigators, who report that Texas barratry has moved from physical case runners toward digital lead-generation platforms that collect accident victim data online and instantly transfer calls or contracts to law firms, according to the Patterson Law Group Podcast. Case runners have historically used tow truck drivers, funeral homes and police scanners, along with targeted advertisements, to find crash victims before attorneys ever entered the picture.
The Attorney Behind the Lawsuit
Marshall's case was brought with the help of Dallas attorney Tom Carse, who has filed dozens of barratry lawsuits over the past decade and built a reputation, according to the Houston Chronicle, as one of the state's most persistent civil anti-barratry litigators. Loncar Lyon Jenkins has accused Carse of running an extortive money grab, an allegation Carse has denied. Carse lost a similar case against Paschall, Loncar Lyon Jenkins and other defendants in Smith County earlier this year, though a Texas appeals court in Dallas reversed a sanctions order against him in a separate case, Tom Carse v. Rachel Huntress Pinkerton, this month, finding insufficient evidence of bad faith or harassment in his representation of a client alleging an illegal barratry scheme.
Under Texas rules, law firms may lawfully use lead generators to refer clients seeking legal help, but only when the clients make the first move. That distinction is exactly what the Erath County jury must now sort out: whether Marshall's calls followed a genuine online request for help, or whether they were the product of a solicitation scheme built to reach him before he ever had the chance to ask.
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