Truck Accident Lawyer

What you do after a truck crash matters even more than after an ordinary collision, because the other side moves fast. First, call 911 — with the severity of truck-crash injuries, you're entitled to have police and paramedics respond, and the officer's traffic collision report becomes an important early record. Do not leave the scene: leaving the scene of an injury accident is a crime, and even property-damage-only cases carry duties under Vehicle Code § 20002 (opens in new window). Get medical care right away, and keep getting it; a gap between the crash and treatment is the argument insurers use most often to claim you weren't really hurt.

If you're able, gather what you can before it disappears. Photograph the truck and your vehicle, the position of both, the roadway, and any debris or skid marks — and get the truck's company name, the number on the door or trailer, and the license and USDOT numbers if you can see them. Collect the names and numbers of any witnesses. This information helps a lawyer identify the company and act quickly, but never put your health at risk to gather it, and never assume the trucking company will preserve the evidence for you.

Two things to avoid. Do not admit fault or apologize at the scene — fault in a truck case depends on records you can't see yet, and an off-the-cuff apology can be twisted into an admission. And do not give a recorded statement to the trucking company's insurer, or accept a quick settlement, before speaking with a lawyer. A truck insurer's early settlement offer routinely arrives before the true extent of a catastrophic injury is known, and once you settle, the case is over. Report the crash to your own insurer as your policy requires, but get advice before you're recorded.

Every California injury claim rests on negligence, and Civil Code § 1714 (opens in new window) sets the basic rule that everyone is responsible for injury caused to another by a want of ordinary care. Start with the driver, then keep going. Under the doctrine of respondeat superior, a trucking company is generally responsible for the negligence of a driver acting in the course of employment — and a company may be independently negligent for hiring an unqualified driver, pushing schedules that force drivers past their legal hours, or putting an unsafe truck on the road.

Liability can reach further still. The owner of the tractor or trailer, a separate company that loaded or secured the cargo, a maintenance contractor responsible for the brakes or tires, and a manufacturer of a defective part may each share fault depending on what caused the crash. A name on a truck door is a lead, not a defendant — each one still has to be tied to the conduct that caused this crash — and our guide to who can be liable for a truck accident in California works through how each role is tested. Why it matters to you is coverage: who is in the case determines how much insurance is actually available to pay for a catastrophic injury.

Federal safety regulations shape the whole analysis. The FMCSA rules governing interstate trucking limit a driver's hours of service, require driver qualification and drug and alcohol testing, and mandate regular vehicle inspection and maintenance — and they require companies to keep records proving compliance. A violation of those rules is strong evidence of negligence, which is precisely why the driver logs, ELD data, and maintenance files must be preserved before they can quietly disappear. Where fault is shared, California's comparative negligence rule reduces a recovery rather than barring it.

Because trucks are so much heavier, the injuries — and therefore the stakes — tend to be greater than in a typical car crash. What separates a truck case is that the losses are usually dominated by the future: years of treatment, surgeries, long-term or in-home care, and work a person can no longer do. Those future costs are proven with records, bills, and expert testimony projecting what care will cost over a lifetime, and our guide to what damages a California injury claim can cover sets out the categories.

In the most serious cases the non-economic harm — pain, disfigurement, and the loss of the ability to live as you did before — is the largest part of the claim. If the crash was fatal, surviving family members may bring their own claim for their own losses, which is covered on our wrongful death page.

Valuing a truck case well means valuing the whole future, not just today's bills — because once a claim is settled, there's no coming back if the injury proves worse than the trucking company wanted to admit. Where a driver or company acted with especially egregious conduct, such as driving drunk or knowingly running an unsafe truck, the law may in some circumstances allow punitive damages on top of compensatory ones.

For most truck-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). In a truck case the practical clock runs faster still, because the electronic evidence that wins the case can be gone long before two years pass. The full set of California deadlines is in our guide to personal-injury filing deadlines.

A much shorter six-month deadline can apply when a government entity may be responsible — a city or county truck, a state vehicle, or a dangerous condition on a public road — and that's covered on our government liability page. It's not always obvious at the scene that a public entity is involved, which is a strong reason to get advice early rather than assume you have two full years.

Boyadzhyan Legal Shield is based in Encino on Ventura Boulevard and represents people injured by commercial trucks throughout the San Fernando Valley and greater Los Angeles — Encino, Sherman Oaks, Tarzana, Van Nuys, Woodland Hills, Studio City, Northridge, and the surrounding communities. The Valley sits at the crossroads of some of the busiest truck corridors in the region: the I-5, the US-101 (Ventura Freeway), and the I-405 all carry heavy commercial traffic, and the interchanges where they meet are where many of the worst truck crashes happen.

That local knowledge is practical, not decorative. Knowing how freight moves through a particular interchange, where the cameras are, and how a stretch of the 5 or the 405 tends to back up helps us reconstruct what happened and anticipate the arguments a trucking company's defense team will make. When a truck case cannot be resolved 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.