Car Accident Lawyer

A serious car accident upends your life in an instant — the injuries, the medical bills, the missed work, the totaled car, and then the phone calls from an insurance adjuster who sounds friendly but works for the other side. In the days that follow, the single most important thing you can do is protect your health and your claim before the evidence disappears and before you say something to an insurer that is used to pay you less. Boyadzhyan Legal Shield represents injured drivers, passengers, motorcyclists, and pedestrians throughout Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, and we handle these cases on contingency — you pay no attorney's fee unless we recover for you.

Founding attorney Knarik Boyadzhyan has represented injured clients in claims arising from automobile collisions and other serious-injury matters, guiding them through the insurance and litigation process while they focus on getting better. She brings a trial lawyer's discipline to every claim: building the liability case with real evidence, documenting the full extent of an injury and its future cost, and refusing to let an insurance company set the value of a person's recovery. The goal from the first conversation is simple — take the weight of the claim off your shoulders so you can heal, and pursue the full compensation the law allows.

California law lets an injured person recover for far more than the emergency-room bill. Medical care past and future, lost wages and lost earning capacity, vehicle and property damage, and non-economic harm — the pain, the limitation, the disruption to your life — are all compensable when someone else's negligence caused the crash. What those damages are actually worth depends on the facts, the severity of the injury, and how well the case is proven, which is exactly where experienced representation makes the difference. No lawyer can promise a result, but we can promise a claim built on evidence rather than on whatever the adjuster is willing to concede.

This page explains what to do after a crash in Los Angeles, how liability is proven under California's negligence and comparative-fault rules, what a claim may be worth, the deadlines that can end a case before it begins, and how we handle car accident matters locally in the Valley. It is general information about California law, not legal advice about your specific situation — for that, the consultation is free and confidential.

What you do in the minutes and days after a crash can shape your health and your claim for years. First, check for injuries and call 911 — if anyone is hurt, or if there is significant damage, you are entitled to have police and paramedics respond, and the officer's traffic collision report becomes an important record later. Move to safety if you can, but do not leave the scene: leaving the scene of an injury accident is a crime, and even a property-damage-only hit-and-run carries duties under Vehicle Code § 20002.

Exchange information with the other driver — name, license, insurance, and vehicle details — as California law requires under Vehicle Code § 16025, and get the names and phone numbers of any witnesses before they leave. Photograph everything: the vehicles and their damage, the position of the cars, the intersection or roadway, skid marks, traffic signals and signs, license plates, and your own visible injuries. Photos taken at the scene capture facts that no one can reconstruct later, and they are often the most persuasive evidence in the entire case.

Get medical care promptly, even if you feel 'okay.' Adrenaline masks pain, and serious injuries — concussions, soft-tissue damage, internal injuries — frequently do not announce themselves for hours or days. A gap between the crash and your first treatment is the argument insurers use most often to claim you were not really hurt, so seeing a doctor early protects both your health and your claim, and it creates the medical record that ties your injuries to the collision.

Two things to avoid. Do not admit fault or apologize at the scene — fault is a legal question that depends on facts you may not have, and an off-the-cuff 'I'm sorry' can be twisted into an admission. And do not give a recorded statement to the other driver's insurance company, or accept a quick settlement, before you have spoken with a lawyer: those recorded statements are taken to lock you into an account before the full extent of your injuries is even known. You must report the crash to your own insurer as your policy requires, but you can and should get advice before you are recorded.

Almost every California car-accident claim is built on negligence — the failure to use reasonable care behind the wheel. Civil Code § 1714 sets the basic rule that everyone is responsible for injury caused to another by their want of ordinary care. To recover, we show four things: that the other driver owed you a duty to drive carefully, that they breached that duty, that the breach caused the crash, and that you suffered real harm as a result. A violation of the Vehicle Code — running a red light, speeding, an unsafe lane change, following too closely, driving impaired — is powerful evidence of that breach.

Liability is not always limited to the other driver. An employer can be responsible for a crash caused by an employee driving in the course of their job under the doctrine of respondeat superior; a rideshare company's insurance may answer for a driver who was on the app; a government entity may be liable for a dangerously designed or maintained road; and in some cases a vehicle or parts manufacturer shares responsibility. Identifying every liable party — and every insurance policy that applies — is one of the most valuable parts of building a serious claim, because it determines how much coverage is actually available to compensate you.

California follows a 'pure comparative fault' rule, which is important to understand because insurers use it against you. If you are found partly at fault for the crash, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault — but you are not barred from recovering, even if you were mostly at fault. Being 20 percent responsible does not end your claim; it reduces it by 20 percent. Adjusters routinely try to pin an inflated share of blame on the injured person to shrink what they pay, which is why proving the other driver's fault clearly, and rebutting an unfair fault argument, is central to the work we do.

There is no chart that spits out the value of a car-accident claim, and any lawyer who quotes you a number before understanding your injuries is guessing. California divides compensable harm into two broad categories. Economic damages are the measurable financial losses — past and future medical bills, lost wages and lost earning capacity, the repair or replacement of your vehicle, and other out-of-pocket costs. These are proven with records, bills, pay history, and, where the future is involved, expert testimony projecting what ongoing care and lost earnings will cost over time.

Non-economic damages compensate the human cost that no receipt captures — physical pain, emotional distress, anxiety, the loss of the ability to do the things you used to enjoy, and disfigurement. California does not use a rigid formula for pain and suffering; its value depends on the severity and permanence of the injury, how it has changed your daily life, and how credibly and completely that impact is documented and presented. This is where thorough medical proof and honest, well-supported testimony matter most, and it is frequently the largest part of a serious claim.

Valuing a claim well means valuing the future, not just the present. A serious injury can require years of care, produce permanent limitation, or reduce what you are able to earn for the rest of your working life, and a settlement that only covers today's bills leaves the hardest costs unpaid. We work to document the full arc of an injury before resolving a claim, because once you settle, the case is over — there is no coming back for more if the injury turns out to be worse than the insurer wanted to admit.

Two situations deserve special mention. If the at-fault driver had no insurance or fled the scene, your own uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage can provide the compensation the other driver cannot — a claim you paid premiums for and are entitled to pursue. And if you were driving uninsured yourself at the time of the crash, be aware of California's Proposition 213: an uninsured owner-driver is generally barred from recovering non-economic damages (pain and suffering), even when the other driver was entirely at fault, though economic damages like medical bills and lost wages can still be recovered. Exceptions exist, and this is exactly the kind of issue to review with a lawyer rather than assume.

California sets firm deadlines for bringing an injury claim, and missing one generally ends the case no matter how strong it is. For most car-accident injury claims the statute of limitations is two years from the date of the crash under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. A claim for vehicle or property damage alone has a longer window, but where you were injured, the two-year deadline is the one that controls, and it is not something to test — filing late is one of the few mistakes that cannot be fixed.

A different and much shorter deadline applies when a government entity may be responsible — a city bus, a county or state vehicle, or a dangerous condition on a public road. Under Government Code § 911.2, you generally must present a written claim to the public entity within six months of the incident before you can even file a lawsuit, and the procedural rules are strict. Because it is not always obvious at the scene that a government entity is involved, these deadlines are a strong reason to get advice early rather than assume you have two full years.

There are limited circumstances that can change these timelines in either direction — for example, claims involving a minor, or situations where an injury was not immediately discoverable — but they are exceptions, not the rule, and they are fact-specific. The safe course is never to rely on having 'plenty of time.' The sooner a claim is evaluated, the more of the evidence can be preserved and the less risk there is of a deadline quietly running out. This is general information, not legal advice about your particular deadline, which should be confirmed with an attorney.

Boyadzhyan Legal Shield is based in Encino on Ventura Boulevard and represents injured people in car-accident claims throughout the San Fernando Valley and greater Los Angeles — Encino, Sherman Oaks, Tarzana, Van Nuys, Woodland Hills, Studio City, Northridge, and the surrounding communities. We know the roads these crashes happen on, from the US-101 (Ventura Freeway) and the I-405 to the length of Ventura Boulevard and the busy Valley intersections where broadside and left-turn collisions are a daily occurrence.

That local knowledge is practical, not decorative. Knowing how traffic moves through a particular interchange, where the cameras are, and how a specific stretch of the 101 or the 405 tends to back up helps us reconstruct what happened and anticipate the arguments an insurer will make. When a car-accident case cannot be settled fairly and has to be filed, San Fernando Valley civil matters are generally heard at the Van Nuys Courthouse, and we appear in Van Nuys and the surrounding Los Angeles County courts.

Working from a single Encino office keeps the firm close to the clients and communities it serves. You work directly with the attorney handling your case — not a rotating cast at a high-volume settlement mill — and because we take these cases on contingency, strong representation is available regardless of your financial situation. The consultation is free, and you owe no attorney's fee unless we recover for you.