Car Accidents

Most of what decides a California car accident case is decided before anyone talks about the crash.

Three things run against you from the day of the collision, and none of them is about who was at fault.

A deadline that is two years — unless a city, county, or the state contributed, in which case it is six months.

Proposition 213, which can erase every dollar of your pain and suffering even when the other driver caused it.

And whether you were working. If you were, you have two claims, and the one nobody opened is usually the larger.

Proposition 213: the rule that surprises people most

Civil Code § 3333.4 bars non-economic damages — pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement — for three categories of injured person, no matter who caused the crash:

There is one exception, and it is narrower than it sounds. Under § 3333.4(c), an uninsured owner under (a)(2) who was hit by a driver operating in violation of § 23152 or § 23153 and convicted of that offense is not barred.

Read that again. The exception reaches paragraph (2) — the owner. It does not reach paragraph (3), the operator who cannot establish financial responsibility. And it requires a conviction, not an arrest and not a charge.

What Proposition 213 does not touch:

• Economic damages. Medical bills, lost earnings, future care, property damage. All of it survives.
• Passengers. The bar reaches owners and operators. A passenger in an uninsured car is not barred.
• Your workers' compensation claim. If you were working, § 3333.4 has nothing to say about it. A worker driving an uninsured personal car on a work errand gets the full range of workers' compensation benefits. Proposition 213 is a civil-damages rule; it does not reach the comp system.

Which is why, in an uninsured-driver work crash, the comp claim is not the small case. It may be the only case.

If you were working when it happened, you have two claims

Labor Code § 3852(a):

"The claim of an employee, including, but not limited to, any peace officer or firefighter, for compensation does not affect their claim or right of action for all damages proximately resulting from the injury or death against any person other than the employer."

Workers' compensation is the exclusive remedy against your employer. It is not the exclusive remedy against the driver who hit you.

The carrier gets reimbursed out of the civil recovery — but not off the top. Under Labor Code § 3856(b), where the employee sues alone the court

"shall first order paid from any judgment for damages recovered the reasonable litigation expenses incurred in preparation and prosecution of such action, together with a reasonable attorney's fee"

before the employer's lien is applied. § 3856(d) puts the amount of those fees and expenses in the court's hands, not the carrier's.

And if you are a city, county, or fire-district peace officer or firefighter, there is a further limit most people have never heard of. Under Labor Code § 3852(b)(2), your employer is entitled to no more than one-third of the third-party's applicable liability policy limits where (A) your total damages exceed the net recovery left after the employer's claim, and (B) the available limits cannot fully compensate both of you. How the presumptions work for public safety.

The deadlines

§ 335.1 reads in full: "Within two years: An action for assault, battery, or injury to, or for the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another."

The six-month public-entity claim is the one that ends cases. A city bus, a county truck, a state highway crew, a badly designed intersection, a signal that was out — any of those puts a public entity in the case, and § 911.2(a) gives you six months, not two years. Miss it and the claim against that entity is usually over before you have finished treating.

Being partly at fault does not end your case

California is a pure comparative negligence state. Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804 abolished the all-or-nothing contributory negligence rule and held that

"the damages awarded shall be diminished in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the person recovering."

There is no cut-off. A plaintiff found 70% at fault recovers 30%. That is worth knowing before you accept an adjuster's account of whose fault it was.

But note how the two damage categories split among defendants. Under Civil Code § 1431.2(a), in an action based on comparative fault, "the liability of each defendant for non-economic damages shall be several only and shall not be joint." Economic damages are not limited that way by § 1431.2. Practically: a defendant who is 10% at fault can still be reached for the medical bills, but only for 10% of the pain and suffering.

When the owner is not the driver

Vehicle Code § 17151(a) caps an owner's imputed liability — liability that does not arise through principal-and-agent or master-and-servant — at

"fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000) for the death of or injury to one person in any one accident … thirty thousand dollars ($30,000) for the death of or injury to more than one person in any one accident … and … five thousand dollars ($5,000) for damage to property of others in any one accident."

§ 17151(b) bars punitive damages against the owner on that theory.

So a case built only on who owned the car is a small case. A case built on who employed the driver is not, because that is agency, and § 17151 does not cap it. Whether the driver was working at the moment of impact is often the single most valuable fact in the file.

What to do this week

Photograph the vehicles before they are repaired or sold. Crush depth and impact location are evidence, and they disappear.

Get the traffic collision report and read the party list. If any vehicle is registered to a company, a government agency, or a rental fleet, that changes the case.

Do not give a recorded statement to the other driver's insurer before you have talked to a lawyer. You are not required to.

If a public entity might be involved in any way — road design, signal timing, a government vehicle, a transit bus — say so out loud now. The six-month clock has already started.

And if you were working, in any sense, including a delivery, an errand, a commute your employer paid for, or a call you took: open the workers' compensation claim as well. How the claim process works. · I was in a car accident for work.

Common questions