Oakland Personal Injury Lawyer

California Code of Civil Procedure Section 335.1 gives most personal injury victims two years from the date of injury to file a lawsuit. Once that window closes, the right to sue is gone regardless of how strong the claim is.

Critical exceptions:

• Government entity defendants: If your injury was caused by a city, county, state agency, Caltrans, or public transit system (such as AC Transit, BART, Muni, or LA Metro), the Government Claims Act requires you to file a formal government claim within six months of the incident. After the agency rejects or ignores the claim, you have six months to file suit. Fail to file the government claim within six months, and the lawsuit is barred.
• Minors: The statute of limitations is tolled until the minor turns 18. They then have two years from their 18th birthday.
• Discovery rule: For injuries not immediately apparent, the clock may start when the injury was discovered or reasonably should have been discovered.

The six-month government claim deadline is the most commonly missed deadline in California personal injury law. If a government entity was involved in any way, contact an attorney immediately.

California follows pure comparative negligence, established in Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) and codified under Proposition 51 for cases with multiple defendants. You can recover compensation even if you were partially at fault. Your damages are reduced by your share of fault, but they are not wiped out.

If you were 30 percent at fault in a car accident and your total damages are $100,000, you recover $70,000.

This is more favorable than the contributory negligence rules still used in some states, where any plaintiff fault eliminates the entire claim. However, it also means insurance companies routinely argue that injured people contributed to their own accidents in order to reduce payouts. Building a strong factual record before a demand is made is how you counter those arguments.

California personal injury cases can include two categories of damages:

Economic damages (calculable financial losses): - Medical bills, past and future - Lost wages and loss of earning capacity - Property damage - In-home care and rehabilitation costs

Non-economic damages (real losses that don’t come with receipts): - Pain and suffering - Emotional distress - Loss of enjoyment of life - Loss of consortium (for spouses and domestic partners)

California does not cap non-economic damages in general personal injury cases. Medical malpractice cases are treated differently under the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), which limits non-economic damages and scales that cap upward annually through 2033. Punitive damages are available in cases involving malice, oppression, or fraud under California Civil Code Section 3294.

Burneikis Law handles personal injury cases on a contingency fee basis. No upfront fee, no hourly billing. The attorney’s fee is a percentage of the recovery: typically 33.3 percent before litigation begins and 40 percent after a lawsuit is filed. Case costs advanced by the firm (filing fees, expert witnesses, deposition transcripts) are deducted from the settlement at the end. If there is no recovery, you owe no attorney fee.

California’s minimum liability insurance requirements increased on January 1, 2025 to $30,000 per person, $60,000 per accident, and $15,000 property damage. Many drivers carry only the minimum. When your damages exceed the at-fault driver’s policy limits, an attorney can identify additional sources of recovery: underinsured motorist coverage, umbrella policies, and in commercial cases, corporate insurance programs.

A serious case requires evidence gathering that starts immediately: witness statements, surveillance footage, event data recorder (black box) downloads, police reports, and in some cases accident reconstruction. Most of this evidence disappears quickly, and insurers do not collect it for you.

An attorney works with your treating physicians and independent medical experts to document the full scope of your injuries, including future treatment needs that an insurance adjuster will not voluntarily account for.

California’s comparative negligence rules give insurers an opening to assign you partial blame. An attorney builds the factual record that counters those arguments before a demand ever goes out.

An insurance company negotiating with an attorney it knows will take a case to trial in Alameda County Superior Court, San Francisco Superior Court, or the United States District Court for the Northern District of California behaves differently than one handling an unrepresented claimant. The credible threat of litigation is the most powerful settlement tool there is.

Monica is admitted to the US District Courts for the Northern and Central Districts of California. When a case involves a federal defendant, a federal civil rights claim under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, or diversity jurisdiction, she can pursue it in federal court without sending you to another attorney.