Law Firms in Los Angeles, CA

Hiring a lawyer in Los Angeles: what is different

The limitation period for a personal injury is two years, under section 335.1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and that part is the same everywhere in the state. The rule that decides more Los Angeles cases is section 911.2 of the Government Code: a claim against a public entity has to be presented in writing within six months, and once it is rejected the clock to sue is six months rather than whatever was left of the two years.

Six months is a short time anywhere. It is shorter here because of how much of this county is a public entity. Metro runs the buses and the rail. The City owns the sidewalks and most of the streets. The County runs the hospitals and the beaches. The school district is its own entity again, and so is each of the eighty-odd other cities inside the county. A fall on a pavement, a bus that stopped short, a pothole on a boulevard: each of those is a six month claim rather than a two year one, and which entity it is against is not always obvious from the street you were standing on.

That is the one thing worth establishing in a first call, before anything about who was at fault. If a public body is involved, the deadline is already running and it is not the one most people have read about.

Being partly at fault does not end a California claim

California reduces what you recover by your share of the fault rather than barring the claim, which is not how every state works and is worth knowing before somebody talks themselves out of calling. A driver who was speeding and was hit by a driver who ran a light still has a claim; it is worth less.

It also means the argument in most cases is about percentages rather than about whether there is a case at all, and that is the argument a firm is actually being hired to have.