Statute of Limitations in California Personal Injury Cases

If you have been injured in a California accident you are probably all-too familiar with the costs and expenses that can add up in the days, weeks, and months that follow. In 2013, one study found that the average cost of a bodily injury claim was approximately $15,000 and the average cost of a property damage claim was approximately $3,000. When lost earnings and reduced earning capacity are factored into the equation, a California accident victim can face truly staggering costs as they try to recover.

How can an accident victim be expected to manage these costs? Most Americans do not have enough in savings to cover a $500 emergency, let alone tens of thousands of dollars for damage control after an accident. In California, personal injury accident victims may recover compensation through personal injury lawsuits. These lawsuits, however, must be filed within a certain period of time. This period of time is known as the statute of limitations.

What is the Statute of Limitations for Personal Injury Claims in California?

So, if you’ve been involved in an accident, how much time do you have to file a personal injury claim for damages? The answer will depend on the type of injury you sustain, who you are filing the claim against, and when you discover your injury. For most bodily injury claims in California, however, the statute of limitations is two years from the date of the accident that caused the injury. This means that the clock begins to run as soon as you are injured in the accident.

This, however, is the general rule. California law has evolved to include more specific time frames for more specific harms. It also includes protections for accident victims that may not immediately notice an injury.

  • Bodily Injury Claims: must be filed within two years of the date of the accident or within one year of the date you discover a related injury. Common causes of bodily injuries may include assault, battery, product liability, premises liability, and negligence.
  • Property Injury Claims: must be filed within three years of the date that your property is damaged or destroyed. Claims for damage to property may be brought for theft, trespass, fraud, nuisance, and physical destruction.
  • Injuries Caused By Medical Malpractice: must be filed within three years of the incident causing your injury or within one year of the discovery of the malpractice.

However, special circumstances may cause the applicable statute of limitations to be paused or accelerated.

Tolling the Statute of Limitations in California

What happens if there are circumstances beyond your immediate control that make it impossible for you to file a claim for damages within the appropriate statute of limitations?

California may permit the statute of limitations to be “tolled” in certain situations. Tolling the statute of limitations is basically like hitting the pause button. They are paused until the special circumstance no longer exists. Circumstances that may cause the statute of limitations to toll include having a defendant who is a minor, out of state, imprisoned, or mentally insane.

Government Defendants May Cause Limitations on Time Permitted Under Statute of Limitations

If you are injured in a California accident and believe that the government is responsible you are permitted to ask for the government to compensate you for your injuries. However, the process involved in seeking compensation from the government is different than for other defendants. If you are interested in seeking compensation from the government you will have to move quickly. The statute of limitations for personal injury claims is significantly shorter when the government is involved.

In order to recover compensation from the government, you must file an administrative claim with the government within six months of the accident that caused your injury. If you do not file this administrative claim within that six month period your chances of recovering compensation (from the government) are slim. (There are certain exceptions to the rule.) After you submit your administrative claim the government must respond. They have 45 days to approve or deny your claim. The government, more often than not, will deny your claim, if only to avoid the repercussions of not responding at all. If the government does not respond to your administrative claim the original two-year statute of limitations is reinstated. When the government issues a denial, you then have six months to file a personal injury claim in the appropriate civil court.

Hire an Attorney to Ensure Your Claim is Filed Within the Statute of Limitations

The steps you take immediately following a California accident can really affect your ability to recover the compensation you may truly need in the future. The best way to ensure that your personal injury claim for damages is filed on time is to hire an experienced California personal injury attorney. An attorney will focus on making sure that your claim meets all legal and procedural requirements while you focus on your physical and emotional recovery after an accident.

This article is from Citywide Law Group – a team of Los Angeles personal injury lawyers with a track record of success.

What Is Negligence?

Most personal injury lawsuits are based on the argument that another person’s negligence was the cause of an injury. What exactly is negligence, though? Negligence is defined as “the failure to behave with the level of care” that a reasonable person “would have exercised under the same circumstances.” Put another way, negligence is the failure to use reasonable care and which results in harm to another person. Negligence can be based on someone’s actions or failure to act in a certain situation.

Negligence is made up of four distinct elements: duty, breach, causation, and damages. A successful negligence claim requires a plaintiff to prove each element of the offense. According to Sherwin Arzani, a California injury lawyer, “Failing to prove one of these four elements will defeat a claim based on negligence.” Let’s take a closer look at the elements of negligence.

Duty

The first element of negligence requires that the defendant has a duty to the plaintiff to exercise reasonable care and/or act in a specific manner. What is reasonable care? Reasonable care is a subjective standard and is calculated by weighing facts and circumstances relevant to a specific case. Factors that should be of primary consideration in determining whether a person’s conduct lacked reasonable care include:

  1. Reasonable likelihood that conduct will result in harm to another;
  2. Severity of any harm that could result from the conduct; and
  3. The burden on the defendant of taking precautions to eliminate or reduce the risk of harm to others.

When does a duty exist? A person may be encumbered with a duty to exercise reasonable care in many situations. Common situations that may impose a duty include the defendant voluntarily assuming responsibility for protecting a plaintiff from harm; the defendant knowing that his or her conduct could reasonably harm plaintiff; or defendant and plaintiff establish a special relationship. Relationships that may trigger a duty include:

  1. Doctor/patient;
  2. Lawyer/client;
  3. Innkeeper/guest;
  4. Landlord/tenant; and
  5. Business owner/customer.

Breach

The second element of negligence requires that the defendant breaches his or her duty to the plaintiff. A breach occurs when the defendant acted or failed to act to uphold their duty. A breach is determined by asking if a “reasonable person” would have acted in the same way as the defendant under similar circumstances. A breach occurs when a reasonable person would have acted differently.

Causation

The third element of negligence requires that the plaintiff’s injury (or injuries) were caused by the defendant’s behavior. Causation is broken down into two subcategories: actual causation and proximate causation. States have variations and exceptions for determining actual and proximate causation, but the general concept remains the same in each.

What is actual causation? A plaintiff must prove that the defendant’s behavior was the actual cause of his or her injuries. If A was injured in a car accident after B drove through a stop sign and hit her car, A would only need to show that B operated the car that hit her. B’s car hitting A’s car was the actual cause of her injury.

What is proximate causation? is more complicated. Defense attorneys may try to sink a plaintiff’s case by showing that while a defendant’s behavior may have been the actual cause of an accident, it was not the proximate cause. Attorneys use a “but for” test to show proximate causation. A plaintiff must show that “but for” the defendant’s negligence, he or she would not have been injured. The injury to the plaintiff must be a foreseeable risk of the plaintiff’s behavior.

Simply put: the plaintiff’s injury must be a probable and foreseeable risk of the plaintiff’s behavior. For example, if a truck drives into the side of a building, it would be foreseeable that a person inside the building could be injured by the truck or debris. If a window breaks and falls on a person inside the building, it could be said that the truck driver’s negligence was the proximate cause of that person’s injuries. If, after the truck has crashed into the building, a burglar climbs through the wreckage and stabs someone in the building, the driver’s actions will probably not be considered the proximate cause of the subsequent injuries. Being injured by a burglar is not a foreseeable risk of negligently driving a truck into a building.

Damages

The final element of negligence requires that the plaintiff suffer some sort of compensable harm. Simply put, a court must be able to compensate a plaintiff for an injury they sustain. Generally, a physical injury or property damage that caused the plaintiff to suffer monetary losses will satisfy this element.

__

If you or someone you know has been injured in an accident because of another person’s negligence you may be entitled to compensation. Finding an experienced personal injury attorney as soon as possible after your accident will help to ensure that your legal rights are protected. For more information, visit Sherwin Arzani’s law firm at https://www.citywidelaw.com.

Understanding Pedestrian Accidents In Nevada

About one in four of the traffic fatalities in the Silver State are pedestrians, and that figure is well above the national average. Many, if not most, of these fatalities occur outside crosswalks in non-urban areas during non-daylight hours (between dusk and dawn), and most victims are either young children or older adults.

These facts mean a lot. Many vehicles slow down around intersections, especially if traffic is heavy, and speed up in non-intersections, especially if traffic is light or moderate.

Further, as a rule of thumb, visibility is about 300 times greater during daylight hours. And, since many non-crosswalk areas are unlit, the difference may be even greater when it comes to pedestrian accidents. Lack of visibility also explains why so many young children are victims, because it is simply harder for motorists to see them, especially if they are not really looking for pedestrians in the first place.

Injuries in Pedestrian Accidents

In collisions, several layers of glass, plastic, and steel, not to mention multiple restraint layers, protect vehicle occupants. However, in similar situations, pedestrians are completely exposed to the risk of injury. Some common wounds include:

Head Injuries: With no seat belts or airbags to hold them in place, nearly all pedestrians are launched into the air in these cases. The jarring motion when they land, even if they do not land on their heads, often causes permanent brain injuries.
Broken Bones: Fall-induced fractures in young people often heal quickly with little medical intervention. In almost all other cases, and for almost all other victims, surgeons must use metal screws, pins, or plates to set the bone.

After several weeks or months of near-total immobilization, most victims require weeks or months of expensive and painful physical therapy to regain a minimal amount of lost function.

Blood Loss: Because of the serious nature of the injuries, and because many of these incidents occur relatively far from first responders and hospitals, the victims often lose vast amounts of blood before they can be properly stabilized, and the weakened state of their bodies makes their other injuries even worse.

All these injuries often mean huge medical bills and significant time away from work, so victims are entitled to compensation for these economic damages. There are intangible wounds as well, such as loss of enjoyment in life and pain and suffering damages as well.

Fault and Liability in Pedestrian Accidents

Speed is a factor in about a third of fatal car crashes. First, excessive velocity greatly increases stopping distance, which is thinking distance (reaction time) plus braking distance (amount of time required to stop safely). At 20mph, stopping distance is about three car lengths for most passenger vehicles. At 40mph, stopping distance triples to nine car lengths, or even more in some cases. In practical terms, if a pedestrian is in the path of a slow moving car, for whatever reason, the motorist can nearly always avoid the crash by slowing down, stopping, or changing lanes. However, if a pedestrian is in the path of a fast moving car, a collision is basically inevitable.

Speed-induced crashes also have much more force, because of Newton’s Second Physical Law. That is why, as a rule of thumb, pedestrian accidents at under 20mph are typically survivable and often do not even cause serious injuries, and collisions at greater than 40mph are nearly always fatal.

Next, alcohol is a factor in about a third of vehicle crash fatalities. After only one drink, most people are unable to make good judgements because alcohol is a depressant and have problems controlling their motor skills because alcohol is a tranquilizer. After another drink or two, these symptoms significantly worsen and joined by blurred vision because of bloodshot eyes; most people are essentially comatose if they consume much more alcohol.

In terms of pedestrian accidents, the slowed reactions increase stopping distance, the impaired vision makes it more difficult to see pedestrians, and the impaired motor skills make it more difficult for drivers to control their vehicles in emergencies.

Distracted driving causes many other fatal and serious injury crashes. Cellphones garner considerable attention in this area, because these devices combine all three types of distracted driving:

Visual: People who are looking at screens are not watching the road. Moreover, at highway speeds, a vehicle can travel the length of a football field in the time it takes to send a text message.
Manual: In addition to using cellphones for communication or web-surfing, people also take their hands off the wheel to adjust the radio or air conditioner.
Cognitive: Both live and virtual conversations require concentration, so drivers take their minds off driving when they talk on cellphones, send messages, post on social media, or talk to passengers.

Hands-free devices, whether they are built into the vehicle or hand-held devices in speaker mode, are not much safer than hand-held devices, and because they give drivers a false sense of security, they may even be more dangerous.