Personal Injury

After an injury you can, in theory, handle a claim yourself — and the insurance company would often be delighted if you did. The reason has nothing to do with your intelligence and everything to do with the imbalance of the fight. On the other side is a company that resolves thousands of claims a year, with adjusters, defense lawyers, and a financial incentive to pay you as little as possible. On your side, unrepresented, is one person trying to recover from an injury while learning the system for the first time. A personal injury lawyer exists to level that field.

Counsel can identify the parties and insurance coverage involved, preserve evidence, organize medical and wage records, calculate deadlines, and communicate with the insurer while the injured person focuses on treatment. Which of those tasks matters most depends on the incident and the proof available.

A lawyer can also explain the consequences of a recorded statement, a medical authorization, or a proposed release before the client agrees to it. No particular result can be promised, but informed decisions require a clear view of the claim, its risks, and the record needed to support it.

Nearly every personal injury case turns on negligence — the legal idea that a person who fails to use reasonable care, and thereby injures someone, must pay for the harm. California's foundational negligence rule is set out in Civil Code § 1714 (opens in new window), which provides that everyone is responsible for injuries caused to another by their want of ordinary care. To recover, you generally must show that the other party owed you a duty of care, breached it, and caused your injuries, and that you suffered real damages as a result. Proving each of those links, with evidence rather than assertion, is the heart of an injury case.

California follows a rule called pure comparative negligence, and it is unusually favorable to injured people. Under it, being partly at fault does not bar your recovery — it only reduces it by your percentage of fault. A person who is found partly at fault still recovers, reduced by their own share, and even a person found mostly at fault can recover the portion attributable to the other side. This is why insurers work so hard to pin blame on you: every percentage point of fault they can shift is money out of your recovery. Rebutting that fault-shifting is a core part of what we do.

The compensation itself, called damages, falls into two broad categories. Economic damages are your measurable, out-of-pocket losses — past and future medical treatment, lost wages, lost earning capacity, property damage, and related costs — and California tort law (Civil Code § 3333 (opens in new window)) entitles an injured person to the amount that will compensate for all the detriment caused. Non-economic damages cover the harms that have no receipt: pain and suffering, emotional distress, disfigurement, and the loss of life's enjoyment. There's no fixed formula for pain and suffering; its value is argued from the severity and permanence of the injury, the length and difficulty of recovery, how the injury has changed your daily life and relationships, and the credibility of the whole picture. Presenting that human story clearly, and documenting the economic losses precisely, is the work of building the claim.

Every injury claim runs against a clock, and in California the clock is unforgiving. For most personal injury cases, the statute of limitations is two years from the date of the injury under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 (opens in new window). If you don't file a lawsuit within that window, the court will almost always throw the case out no matter how clearly the other side was at fault — the strength of your claim cannot revive a deadline you have already missed. A related deadline, three years, generally applies to claims for damage to personal property under Code of Civil Procedure § 338 (opens in new window).

There's a critical exception that catches people off guard. When a government entity may be responsible — a city or county vehicle, a dangerous public road or intersection, a transit bus, or a hazard on public property — you generally must first file a formal written claim directly with that entity within just six months of the injury under Government Code § 911.2, before any lawsuit is possible. This is a separate, much shorter deadline than the two-year rule, and missing it can end an otherwise strong case. Because so many Valley collisions involve public streets and public vehicles, this six-month rule comes up more often than people expect.

A few situations can shorten, lengthen, or pause these periods — injuries to minors, injuries not reasonably discovered right away, and certain other circumstances can change the analysis — but none of that is safe to assume without advice. The practical takeaway is simple: the deadlines are real, some are surprisingly short, and evidence degrades long before any deadline arrives. Talking to an attorney promptly is the only reliable way to be sure your claim is protected. This is general information about California deadlines, not legal advice about the timing of your specific case.

After an accident, the other side's insurance company will often contact you quickly, and it's important to understand what that call is really for. The adjuster is friendly, but their job is to protect the insurer's money, not to make you whole. Two tactics show up again and again: a fast, low settlement offer made before anyone knows how serious your injuries are, and a request for a recorded statement in which an offhand answer — 'I'm feeling okay,' 'I didn't see them' — can be replayed later to cut your claim. You are generally not required to give the other driver's insurer a recorded statement, and it rarely helps you to do so.

The early offer is the most common trap. Serious injuries reveal themselves over time; a back or neck injury or a concussion can worsen for weeks, and future treatment often costs far more than the first bills suggest. If you accept a quick check, you almost always sign a release that ends the claim forever — and you cannot come back when the next surgery or the lasting symptoms arrive. Once we're involved, we handle communications with the insurer directly, so you are not navigating recorded statements, blame-shifting, or pressure to settle while you are still hurt and still healing.

The most reliable way to protect your claim is straightforward: get medical care and follow through on it, keep records and photos, be careful about what you post on social media (insurers do look), and avoid giving statements or signing anything before you have talked to a lawyer. Then let counsel deal with the adjusters. Because we prepare each case for the possibility of trial, an insurer cannot assume the claim will simply go away.

Boyadzhyan Legal Shield is based in Encino on Ventura Boulevard and represents injured people 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 these streets: the crowded stretches of Ventura Boulevard, the on-ramps and interchanges of the 101 and the 405, and the surface-street corridors where so many of the Valley's collisions and pedestrian injuries happen.

If your injury case goes to court, a San Fernando Valley civil matter is generally heard at the Van Nuys Courthouse, which handles civil cases for much of the Valley. We litigate in Van Nuys and the surrounding Los Angeles County courts, which means knowing how cases move there, how the Valley's juries tend to see these disputes, and how the defense insurers operating in this area behave. That shapes how we build and value a case from the very start.

Working from a single Encino office keeps the firm close to the courts, the clients, and the communities it serves. Whether your injury happened in the Valley or elsewhere in Los Angeles County, you work directly with the attorney handling your case and can ask questions as the matter develops. Initial consultations are free, confidential, and carry no obligation to hire the firm.