Personal Injury

Grimberg Law PC represents people injured by someone else's carelessness, including car accidents, truck and motorcycle accidents, pedestrian and bicycle accidents, and slip and fall injuries.

Most people who should call a personal injury lawyer talk themselves out of it first. Usually for one of three reasons, and all three are worth a second look.

CASES WE HANDLE

Car accidents
Truck accidents
Motorcycle accidents
Pedestrian and bicycle accidents
Slip and fall and trip and fall injuries
Injuries on someone else's property

WHAT YOU HAVE TO PROVE

The elements of a negligence claim are well established:

1. A legal duty to use due care

2. A breach of that duty

3. The breach as the proximate or legal cause of the resulting injury

4. Actual loss or damage

A breach of the duty of care requires a lack of the ordinary care a reasonable person would exhibit in similar circumstances. That reasonable person standard is the standard of care.

"IT WAS PARTLY MY FAULT"

This is the belief that costs people the most, and it has been wrong in California since 1975.

Before then, California followed an all-or-nothing rule: if your own negligence was a proximate cause of your injury, the defendant was released from all obligation to compensate you, even when the defendant's act was also a proximate cause.

That rule was abandoned in 1975. Two defects drove the change: it forced injured plaintiffs to bear the full cost of accidents a defendant was partly responsible for, and juries kept awarding damages to negligent plaintiffs anyway.

California adopted the "pure" version

California uses a pure form of comparative negligence, which means there is no threshold level of fault that a plaintiff must remain below in order to recover damages.

Instead, the trier of fact decides whether you were partially responsible, and then reduces your total damages by the percentage of negligence attributable to you, compared with the fault of all other persons whose conduct contributed to the injury.

So if you are found 30 percent responsible, your damages are reduced by 30 percent. They are not eliminated. Even a plaintiff found mostly at fault still recovers the remaining share.

If you have been told you have no case because you were partly to blame, that is not California law.

"SOMETHING ELSE CAUSED IT TOO"

The second reason people talk themselves out of calling.

California uses the substantial factor test for cause-in-fact. A substantial factor is a factor that a reasonable person would consider to have contributed to the harm. It must be more than a remote or trivial factor, but it does not have to be the only cause of the harm.

And this follows directly: if a defendant's conduct was a substantial factor in causing the harm, that defendant may be liable even if some other person, condition, or event was also a substantial factor.

More than one thing can cause an injury. That does not let anyone off.

SLIP AND FALL AND OTHER INJURIES ON SOMEONE ELSE'S PROPERTY

Premises liability is negligence applied to property. To establish the claim you must prove:

1. That the defendant owned, leased, occupied, or controlled the property;

2. That the defendant was negligent in the use or maintenance of the property;

3. That you were harmed; and

4. That the defendant's negligence was a substantial factor in causing your harm.

The elements of a negligence claim and a premises liability claim are the same. Premises liability is grounded in possession of the premises and the attendant right to control and manage them, and mere possession with its attendant right to control conditions is a sufficient basis for imposing an affirmative duty to act.

One thing to sort out early: if the property belongs to a public entity, different rules govern dangerous conditions of public property. That changes the case substantially.

WHAT YOU CAN RECOVER

Compensatory damages are classified as either general or special.

General damages necessarily result from the act complained of. In a personal injury action, damages for physical pain, suffering, and emotional distress are general damages. So is impairment of earning capacity.

Special damages depend on circumstances peculiar to the particular injury. Medical expenses are special damages. So are actual lost past earnings.

Pain and suffering is broader than people expect

A person injured by the tortious act of another is entitled to money damages as reasonable compensation for pain and suffering. Pain and suffering frequently constitutes the principal element of tort damages.

It is not limited to physical pain. It also includes fright, nervousness, grief, anxiety, worry, mortification, shock, humiliation, indignity, embarrassment, apprehension, terror or ordeal.

If the accident left you unable to sleep or afraid to drive, that is not separate from your injury. It is part of it.

Punitive damages, in the right case

Punitive damages require proof by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant has been guilty of oppression, fraud, or malice.

Where the defendant is a corporation, the oppression, fraud, or malice must be on the part of an officer, director, or managing agent. That is a demanding standard and it does not fit most cases. It fits some.

What a case is worth depends on facts specific to that case. Nobody can tell you a number on a website, and you should be skeptical of any firm that tries.

"MY INSURANCE ALREADY PAID THE BILLS"

The third reason people don't call.

Under the collateral source rule, you may recover as damages the amounts paid on your behalf, by an insurer or another party wholly independent of the person who injured you, for health care needed to treat the injury, without reduction due to the fact that you did not pay those expenses yourself. Evidence of that payment is generally inadmissible at trial.

The person who hurt you does not get a discount because you were responsible enough to carry insurance.

The honest limit: if private medical insurance paid your care in full at negotiated rates below what the provider would normally bill, you are limited to recovering, as economic damages, the amount actually paid or still owing. Evidence that a provider accepted less than full billing as payment in full is admissible to prove past medical expenses. Evidence that an insurer made the payments generally remains inadmissible.

WHAT TO DO NOW

Photograph everything, immediately. The scene, the condition, your injuries. Conditions get repaired and the evidence disappears.

Get the names. Witnesses, the manager on duty, the responding officer, the report number.

Get treated and keep going. Gaps in treatment become the other side's argument that you were not really hurt.

Do not give a recorded statement to the other side's insurer before you have talked to a lawyer.

Call.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CALL

1. A conversation, free, confidential, and no obligation. You tell us what happened. We ask questions.

2. We tell you honestly whether you have a case, including when you don't. We would rather say so on the first call than take a case that isn't there.

3. If we take it, we handle the filings and the deadlines. You go back to your life.

We don't get paid unless we recover for you. We advance all case costs and are reimbursed from the recovery. If there's no recovery, you owe nothing.

Call (818) 578-4969 for a free, confidential consultation.

CALL (818) 578-4969