California Personal Injury Attorney
A personal injury claim exists when someone else's negligence causes you harm — a driver who was not paying attention, a property owner who ignored a hazard, a company that cut a corner. The law lets you recover what that carelessness cost you: medical treatment, the income you lost, and the pain and disruption you did not ask for.
You are dealing with an insurance company whose job is to pay you as little as possible, and they are practised at it. Their first offer usually arrives early, sounds reasonable, and is worth a fraction of the claim. Having a trial attorney on the file changes that calculation, because the adjuster knows the case can go somewhere they would rather it did not.
At DePaoli Law Team you work with Kelsey personally — not a case manager, not a call centre. No fee unless we win, and the consultation costs nothing.
The Cases We Handle
Personal injury covers a lot of ground. If your situation is on this list, the page below it goes into detail:
- Car accidents — from rear-end collisions to serious multi-vehicle crashes
- Truck accidents — commercial carriers, different rules, far larger insurance policies
- Motorcycle accidents
- Slip and fall & premises liability — when a property owner let a hazard stand
- Dog bites — California holds owners strictly liable
- Nursing home abuse and neglect
- Wrongful death — for families who have lost someone
If what happened to you is not on that list, call anyway. Plenty of good claims do not fit a tidy category.
How Long You Have to Act
California generally gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. Miss it and the claim is usually gone, however strong it was.
Some deadlines are much shorter. If a public entity is involved — a city bus, a county road, a government employee — you normally have six months to file a claim before you can sue at all. That one catches people out constantly.
Evidence has its own clock. Vehicles get repaired, footage is overwritten, and witnesses stop remembering clearly. The earlier someone starts preserving it, the more of your case survives.
If You Were Partly at Fault
You can still recover. California uses pure comparative negligence: if you are found 30% responsible, you recover 70% of your damages. Insurance companies push hard to inflate your share of the blame, because every percentage point comes off what they pay. That argument is worth having properly.
