Car Accident Lawyer

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's 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 (opens in new window).

Exchange information with the other driver — name, license, insurance, and vehicle details — as California law requires under Vehicle Code § 16025 (opens in new window), 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.' Whether you feel hurt at the scene is a question for a doctor rather than something to decide on the roadside. A gap between the crash and your first treatment is the argument insurers use most often to claim you weren't 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're recorded.

Almost every California car-accident claim is built on negligence — the failure to use reasonable care behind the wheel. Civil Code § 1714 (opens in new window) 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: being partly at fault reduces your recovery by your share of the blame rather than barring it, even where you were mostly at fault. Adjusters routinely try to pin an inflated share on the injured driver 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. How fault gets allocated, and what it does to a claim, is set out in our guide to comparative negligence in California injury claims.

There's 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 economic damages — the measurable losses like medical bills, lost wages and lost earning capacity, and vehicle damage — and non-economic damages, which cover pain, disfigurement, and the loss of things you used to be able to do. Our guide to what damages a California injury claim can cover explains how each category is proven.

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's 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.

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 (opens in new window), and missing that deadline generally ends the case no matter how strong it is. A much shorter six-month deadline applies when a city, county, or state entity may be responsible — a city bus, a public vehicle, or a dangerous condition on a public road — and that rule is set out on our government liability page, which carries the deadline material for this site. Our guide to California personal-injury deadlines covers the situations that change either timeline. Do not rely on having plenty of time: evidence degrades long before any deadline arrives, and your own deadline is something to confirm with an attorney rather than read off a general rule.

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. The initial consultation is free, confidential, and carries no obligation to hire the firm.