Personal Injury Attorneys

If you have been injured in a serious accident and you believe you are entitled to financial compensation, you do not have to go it alone. B&D Law Group, APLC handles personal injury claims throughout California and in Las Vegas. The sections below set out what each type of case usually involves, and where the deadlines fall.

Motor vehicle accidents

Most claims begin with a vehicle. Car accident cases turn on fault, and California applies pure comparative negligence: your recovery is reduced by your share of the blame, but it is never wiped out by it, even if you were mostly responsible. Truck accident claims add a layer most drivers never see, because federal hours-of-service limits, maintenance histories and electronic logging data all bear on liability, and carriers only retain some of that material for a fixed period. Motorcycle claims often draw an argument about lane splitting, which has been lawful in California since 2016 under Vehicle Code section 21658.1. There is no minimum speed rule attached to it, whatever an adjuster may tell you.

Rideshare claims depend on which app period the driver was in when the collision happened, and the available coverage changes with it. Bus and train cases frequently involve a public entity, which shortens your window sharply: a claim against a government body generally has to be presented within six months under Government Code section 911.2 rather than the usual two years. Bicycle and pedestrian cases usually hinge on right of way, including unmarked crosswalks, which exist at most intersections whether or not there is paint on the road. Boat and airplane accidents can pull federal or maritime rules in alongside ordinary state negligence law.

Injuries on someone else’s property

Premises liability claims generally require showing that the owner knew, or should have known, about the hazard and did not deal with it. That is why photographs, incident reports and maintenance logs matter so much in the first days. Dog bite claims work differently: California imposes strict liability under Civil Code section 3342, so an owner is responsible even for a dog that has never bitten anyone before. Amusement park operators are held to a high standard as common carriers on rides. Construction site injuries often run in parallel with a workers’ compensation claim, and a separate claim against a third party on site can matter more than the comp claim itself.

Defective products and medical care

Product liability claims do not require proving carelessness. If a product was defectively designed or manufactured, or shipped without adequate warnings, everyone in the chain of distribution can be answerable for the harm. Medical malpractice claims are governed by MICRA, which caps non-economic damages. For 2026 that cap is $470,000 in cases where the patient survived and $650,000 in wrongful death cases, and both figures rise every January. Birth injury cases sit in the same framework but are usually built on a much longer record, because the full cost of a lifelong injury has to be projected rather than totalled.

Catastrophic injury and wrongful death

Catastrophic injuries such as brain trauma, spinal cord damage, amputation and severe burns are valued differently from ordinary injuries, because the claim has to account for decades of care, lost earning capacity and adapted housing rather than a course of treatment that ends. Wrongful death claims belong to a defined group of surviving family members set by statute, and a separate survival action can run alongside them for what the person endured before death.

When the insurer is the problem

Sometimes the dispute is not about who caused the accident. Insurance claim disputes arise when a carrier denies, delays or underpays a claim you have already paid premiums against. Judgment enforcement is the step people rarely think about until they reach it: a judgment is a piece of paper until someone locates assets and collects on it.

On timing. Most California personal injury claims must be filed within two years of the injury under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. Claims involving a public entity are far shorter, and claims involving a minor or a delayed diagnosis can run differently again. If you are not sure which deadline applies to you, it costs nothing to ask early, and a great deal to ask late.