The first 30 days after a serious crash will shape the rest of your case more than any other period. What you do in those 30 days, what you say, what you sign, who you talk to — all of it either protects your recovery or starts chipping away at it.
Most people don’t know this. They find out later, when a statement they gave to an adjuster on the day of the crash becomes the insurance company’s argument that they weren’t really hurt. Or when a form they signed in week one turns out to have closed their case. Or when the call they should have made to an attorney on day two didn’t happen until month three, and half the evidence is already gone.
This guide is for the people who are in those 30 days right now, or who love someone who is.
I’ve practiced personal injury law in California since 2003. I spent several years in transactional practice before I switched to personal injury — interesting work, but not the work I became a lawyer to do. The colleagues I knew who were doing personal injury cases came to it with a kind of purpose I didn’t have in transactional law. They were helping people who had nowhere else to turn. That’s the kind of lawyer I wanted to be. So I made the switch. I haven’t looked back.
BANA LAW is a team of eight attorneys with experienced and highly trained staff, headquartered in Los Angeles and representing injured clients throughout California, with consultation availability in San Bernardino and Fresno. The firm operates bilingually in English and Spanish — every team member is bilingual.
What’s in this guide isn’t theory. It’s the patterns I’ve seen across more than two decades of practice, told the way I’d tell them to you across a kitchen table if you’d just been hit by a car and were trying to figure out what to do next.
The guide is organized chronologically. The first 24 hours. The first week. Weeks two and three. Week four. At each stage, I cover what to do, what not to do, and why it matters. Where a topic needs more depth than the chronological flow allows, I link to dedicated resources that cover it fully.
— Ryan
Day 1: The First 24 Hours
Every situation is different. The severity of the crash, whether you’re seriously hurt, whether you need an ambulance, whether you’re being transported — those variables determine what your day one actually looks like.
But across all the variables, there is one mistake I see more than any other in the first 24 hours, and it’s the mistake that does the most damage to a case down the line.
The single biggest mistake people make on day one
Taking the call from the at-fault driver’s insurance company and giving them a statement.
The adjuster will call. They’ll be friendly. They’ll act like they’re there to help you. They’ll lure you into giving a statement, and most people in the first 24 hours are still in shock — this is almost always the first serious accident they’ve ever been in. They give the statement because the adjuster convinces them it’s necessary, or required, or that it’ll help move the claim along faster.
It isn’t. There’s no legal duty to give a statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. There’s no benefit to doing it. There’s only damage.
The most common version of the damage looks like this. The adjuster asks how you’re feeling. You’re running on shock and adrenaline. You haven’t really started to feel the impact yet — pain from these injuries can take one to seven days to fully set in. You answer honestly: “I’m fine,” or “a little sore but okay.” That recording of you saying you weren’t hurt goes in the carrier’s file, and for the rest of the case, the carrier’s position will be: you said you were fine.
Three days later you can’t turn your head. You’re in a clinic getting imaging. The injuries are real. But the recording is in the file, and you’re going to spend the rest of the case fighting against it.
Don’t take the call. If they reach you, decline politely and refer them to your attorney. If you don’t have an attorney yet, retain one before you call back.
Get medical attention if you’re hurt
If you’re seriously hurt, get medical attention immediately. This is for your health. It’s also the foundation of your case — and it’s where our Los Angeles car accident lawyers start every case too. Gaps between the crash and your first medical evaluation are one of the first things the carrier will use to argue your injuries weren’t serious. The longer the gap, the harder that fight gets.
If paramedics offer to evaluate you, let them. If they say go to the hospital, go. If you decline care at the scene and start feeling pain over the next day or two, don’t wait it out. Get to an urgent care or emergency room that day.
At the scene, talk only to the police and the other driver
Don’t talk to anyone else at the scene about the crash. Limit your conversation with the other driver to exchanging information — license, registration, insurance card. Don’t apologize. Don’t speculate about fault. Don’t volunteer anything beyond the basic exchange.
When the officers arrive, stick to the facts. Where you were going. What lane you were in. What you saw. Don’t guess at speeds or distances. Don’t accept blame. Before you leave the scene, get the report number and how to obtain a copy.
What people get wrong about police reports
Most people believe whatever the officer concludes is final for their case. It isn’t. The officer is an investigator who didn’t witness the accident. Most of the time, they’re working from the statements of the two drivers and sometimes a witness.
Drivers giving statements to police often word things in ways that favor themselves and avoid liability, and sometimes they lie about the facts. Witness statements carry more weight, but witnesses make mistakes too. They don’t always communicate what they saw correctly, and sometimes they fill in gaps because people like to help — they think they’re helping the officer.
There are ways to get information from a police report into evidence later, but the report itself is hearsay, and many of the statements in it never come in. If a report is inaccurate or doesn’t state the facts correctly, there are ways to request changes or supplements. Don’t try to do that yourself. Talk to an attorney before taking that step.
Document everything you can
The scene starts disappearing the minute the crash is over. Cars get towed. Skid marks fade. Witnesses leave. You have a narrow window before the physical evidence is mostly gone, and you can’t get it back.
If you can move, use your phone. Photograph:
- Every vehicle from several angles, including license plates
- The intersection, signals, signs, skid marks, debris
- Any visible injuries (and keep photographing over the next few days as bruising develops)
- The other driver’s license and insurance card
- Contact information for any witnesses willing to give it
A photo beats a memory in the vast majority of cases. Memory fades and gets challenged. A timestamped photo doesn’t.
Don’t sign anything without an attorney reviewing it
In the first day, you might be handed documents to sign. Medical authorizations. Property damage releases. A quick settlement offer. Each of these has consequences that aren’t obvious from the page.
The single most damaging document you can sign is a release or settlement agreement on the bodily injury portion of your claim. In the vast majority of cases, the value of the claim is higher than what’s being offered at the time the release is presented. The value tends to go up over the following weeks as you realize your injuries are worse than you thought. Once the release is signed, recovering more is extremely difficult, often impossible. The release closes out your claim against the at-fault driver and their insurance carrier.
Don’t sign a release or settlement agreement before talking to a lawyer. Honestly, don’t sign anything before talking to a lawyer, but the bodily injury release especially, because that’s the one that ends the case.
If you can’t do any of this yourself
If you’re in the hospital, sedated, or just too hurt to handle any of this, a family member can take these steps for you. A spouse, parent, adult child, or close friend can photograph what they find if they get there in time, grab your belongings from the car, request the police report, and call your insurance company.
What they shouldn’t do is talk to the at-fault driver’s insurance, sign anything, or give a recorded statement. If anyone pushes for that, the answer is: “We’re consulting an attorney. All communication should go through them.”
If you need to talk to us, call 800-789-8840. We’re a contingency firm. No fees unless we win, and we advance all case costs. The consultation is free, and I’ll take it from a hospital bed if that’s where you are.
The rule for day one: Get medical care. Get the police report. Photograph everything. Don’t talk to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Don’t sign anything. And call a personal injury lawyer before the other side does.
Days 2–7: The First Week
The first week is when insurance companies move fastest. They know you’re hurting, probably on medication, maybe not working, and not thinking clearly. The pressure that shows up in week one isn’t an accident. It’s strategy.
Here’s what’s actually happening, and how to protect yourself from it.
How the adjuster’s calls actually unfold
The at-fault driver’s insurance company tries to make contact as quickly as possible. The first call is usually within 24 to 48 hours of the crash.
What I’ve seen across many years is that adjusters often work the first call as a rapport-builder. They don’t always push for a recorded statement on call one. They check in. They sound concerned. They build trust. Then they call back two or three days later — once they’ve established a relationship and you’re starting to trust them — and that’s when the recorded statement request comes. I’ve written a full breakdown of adjuster tactics and what to say if you want the detail.
Either way, the goal of every call from the at-fault driver’s insurance company is the same: to extract statements that help the carrier and hurt your claim. Insurance companies are publicly traded businesses with a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to increase profits. The adjuster handling your file has a performance evaluation tied to how cheaply they resolve claims. The friendliness in the first call is a technique, not a coincidence.
You have no legal obligation to talk to them. Decline and refer them to your attorney. If you haven’t retained one yet, retain one before you call back.
Your own insurance company is a different conversation
You do have a contractual obligation to cooperate with your own insurance carrier — that’s in your policy. But “cooperate” doesn’t always mean a recorded statement on the carrier’s first call, and the timing and scope are typically negotiable through counsel.
Before giving any statement, including to your own carrier, talk to an attorney. Your attorney will work out the timing and scope with the carrier. The cooperation obligation gets met. You don’t end up giving a statement at the worst possible moment, before you know what your injuries are, with no legal counsel guiding the conversation.
What changes the moment you have an attorney
Once you’re represented, the at-fault driver’s insurance company can’t contact you directly anymore. Every communication goes through your lawyer. The calls stop. The pressure stops. You get to focus on getting better while someone else handles the fight.
That’s one of the most immediate benefits of representation, and it matters more than people realize when they’re deciding whether to call a lawyer.
Following your doctor’s instructions
Do what your doctor tells you. Go to the follow-up appointments. Do the physical therapy. Get the imaging. This sounds basic, but it’s where a lot of cases get weaker.
Insurance companies use every gap, every skipped appointment, every cancelled scan to argue the injury wasn’t serious. A 30-day gap means you must have recovered. A missed PT session means you were exaggerating. Whether any of that is fair doesn’t matter. It’s the playbook — and it’s one of the biggest factors in how case value actually gets determined
If you can’t afford care, tell us. Many of our clients don’t have health insurance, or their coverage won’t cover what they actually need. BANA LAW has access to physicians across California — specialists, surgeons, imaging centers, physical therapists — who accept patients on a medical lien basis. These are independent medical providers who treat injured patients on a lien arrangement, where medical costs are paid from the eventual recovery rather than at the time of care. The firm doesn’t direct medical care or recommend specific providers. The decision about treatment, providers, and the course of care belongs to you and your treating physicians. What we do is help you access care that wouldn’t otherwise be available to you at the point of injury.
Treat early. Treat consistently. The longer you wait to start treatment, the more pain you tend to endure, and the longer it takes to resolve the injuries. Patients who put treatment off for a few weeks tend to end up with longer recoveries than the ones who started right away.
Healing matters more than the case. If we recover millions of dollars for a client who hasn’t healed, we haven’t done our job.
Keep a recovery journal
Starting in the first week, write something down every day. It doesn’t need to be long — three to five sentences is enough.
Write down:
- Where it hurts and how badly (use a 1–10 scale)
- What you couldn’t do that day — couldn’t lift your kid, couldn’t sleep through the night, couldn’t sit through a meeting
- Every medical visit, who you saw, what they said
- Every hour of work you missed, every meeting you couldn’t take
- How you’re feeling emotionally — anxious driving past that intersection, trouble sleeping, pulling back from things you used to do
That journal ends up being one of the most valuable pieces of evidence in your case. It documents what you actually lived through, in your words, while it was happening. That’s worth more than anything you can reconstruct two years later from memory.
A notebook, your phone’s notes app, or an email to yourself each night all work. What matters is that you do it consistently.
By the end of week one, talk to an attorney
Every injured person should have talked to a personal injury attorney by the end of the first week. Not because every case needs one — I’ll get to that next — but because you can’t make a smart decision about whether you need one without having the conversation.
Our consultations are free and come with no obligation. We work on contingency. No fees unless we win, and we advance all costs. Every day you wait, more decisions get made without you.
Call 800-789-8840.
The rule for the first week: The other side’s insurance company is not on your side. Keep communication minimal, refuse recorded statements, don’t sign anything without legal review, and get to an attorney before the first week is out.
Weeks 2–3: The Decisions That Shape Everything Else
By weeks two and three, the worst of the immediate chaos is behind you. The car situation is sorted out. The first round of medical appointments has happened. The adrenaline is gone and you can actually feel your injuries. This is when the real strategic decisions get made.
The trigger that brings most clients to us
What I see most often, by a wide margin, is this: someone gets frustrated. They’ve been getting calls from an adjuster they don’t trust. A medical bill arrived. A claim got denied. They had a conversation that didn’t sit right. They vent to a family member or a friend. The family member or friend says, “You should call my lawyer” — or “Call the firm that handled my brother’s case” — and that’s how they end up on the phone with us.
Some clients find us through a Google search at 2 a.m., or through social media, or through firm advertising. Those routes are real and they bring us good clients. But the dominant intake pattern is the personal referral — frustration plus a trusted recommendation from someone the client already knows.
If you’re in that frustrated moment right now, take it as a signal. The frustration is information. It usually means the case has moved past what you can manage on your own. If you’re weighing it, here’s an honest look at whether you should hire a personal injury lawyer or handle the claim yourself.
When you actually need a personal injury attorney
Not every case needs a lawyer. Let me be straight about that — it’s part of why you should trust the rest of this.
If you were injured and the crash wasn’t your fault, you need a personal injury attorney.
This is the category of case where representation makes a real, measurable difference — both in what you recover and in how you’re protected along the way. Insurance companies handle represented claims differently from unrepresented ones. The gap is significant.
If you’re not sure who was at fault, or you think you’ve been wrongly blamed, talk to a personal injury attorney.
Fault calls made by insurance adjusters, officers at the scene, or you from memory under stress are often wrong, and they can be corrected — but only if someone goes back and investigates.
If you weren’t injured and only your car was damaged, your own insurance company can usually handle it.
Property damage claims follow a standard process and don’t typically justify an attorney.
Whatever your situation, an attorney should be retained as soon as possible. The earliest decisions in a case — about medical care, what you say to insurers, what you preserve — are some of the most consequential. Representation from the start lets those decisions be made with legal protection, not reconstructed after the fact.
How contingency fees actually work
When clients ask me about fees at the first consultation, the most common reaction once I explain it is relief. They were braced for an upfront cost they didn’t have. Most are surprised that there are no upfront fees, no costs to advance, and no checks they have to write while the case is pending.
BANA LAW works on contingency. No fees unless we win. No upfront fees. No costs to advance. We pay for everything — expert witnesses, medical records, filing fees, depositions, investigation — out of the firm’s pocket while the case is active. If we don’t recover, you don’t owe us anything.
The contingency model exists because injured people shouldn’t be shut out of legal representation because they can’t afford an hourly rate. It’s what makes the civil justice system actually available to ordinary people — and it’s a big part of the math on attorney’s fees when you compare representation to going it alone.
Who pays for medical treatment right now
Medical bills don’t wait for the case to resolve. How they get paid depends on what you have.
Health insurance covers treatment subject to your deductibles, copays, and network rules. The health insurer may later claim a lien against your settlement to recover what it paid. Your attorney negotiates that as part of wrapping up the case.
Treatment on a medical lien is how we handle it for clients without health insurance, or with coverage that doesn’t cover what they need. You pay nothing upfront. Your medical bills get paid from the settlement at the end.
Medical payments coverage (med-pay) is an optional part of your auto policy that pays medical expenses regardless of fault. Limits vary — $1,000 to $10,000 is common. It’s available immediately and doesn’t require a lawsuit. Check your policy and use it if you have it.
The goal is simple: no injured person should skip necessary treatment because they can’t pay at the point of care. That tends to lead to worse health and weaker cases. Both are preventable.
Replacing lost income while the case runs
Lost wages are a recoverable part of any personal injury claim. Time away from work, reduced hours, days you couldn’t perform your full job — all of that is compensable. So is long-term loss of earning capacity if your injuries affect what you can do going forward.
What most people don’t know is that even paid time off is recoverable. If you used three days of PTO to treat or rest after the crash, you’ve used a benefit you earned. We can make a loss-of-earnings claim for that time and recover those amounts as part of the case. The PTO itself doesn’t come back, but the financial value of the time you used is part of the recovery.
A few other resources for the gap between injury and resolution:
- California State Disability Insurance (SDI) — most California employees pay into this program through payroll and qualify for partial wage replacement when they can’t work due to injury or illness
- Short-term and long-term disability insurance through your employer or a private policy
- Sick leave, in addition to PTO, from your employer
Pre-settlement funding companies also exist — companies that advance money against your eventual recovery. We use them only as a last resort because the interest and repayment terms tend to be very high, but in some situations they make sense for clients who genuinely need immediate funds.
Your attorney documents and pursues the lost wage claim. Your job is to track everything — every missed day, every reduced shift, every opportunity you couldn’t take — and get it to your case manager.
If the at-fault driver is uninsured or underinsured
About one in five California drivers — 20.4% as of 2023 — has no auto insurance at all, the eighth-highest rate in the nation, according to the Insurance Research Council’s 2025 study. Nationally, 15.4% of drivers were uninsured. One in three U.S. drivers (33.4%) was either uninsured or underinsured. Many more drivers carry only the legal minimum, which isn’t nearly enough to cover a serious injury. If you’re in a crash with one of them, how uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage works in California is what determines whether and how you get compensated.
Using UM or UIM coverage doesn’t raise your rates in California. Insurance companies aren’t allowed to penalize you for using coverage you paid for, as long as you weren’t at fault. People often hesitate to file a UM claim because they’re afraid their premiums will go up. That fear is misplaced.
Why driving uninsured in California is a serious mistake
California’s minimum liability insurance limits went up on January 1, 2025 — from $15,000 / $30,000 / $5,000 to $30,000 / $60,000 / $15,000. Carrying at least the minimum isn’t just the law. It’s protection against a California law called Proposition 213 that substantially reduces what you can recover if you’re injured while uninsured — even if the crash wasn’t your fault.
Under Prop 213, if you’re driving without insurance and get hit by someone else’s fault, you can still recover your medical bills, lost wages, and other economic losses. But you can’t recover for pain and suffering, emotional distress, or loss of enjoyment of life. In most serious injury cases, those damages are the largest part of the recovery. The full picture of how Proposition 213 affects uninsured drivers is worth understanding before you ever get behind the wheel uninsured.
The rule for weeks two and three: If you were injured and not at fault, get an attorney as soon as possible. The decisions you make now — about medical care, coverage, and representation — determine almost everything that happens from here.
Week 4: What the Rest of the Case Looks Like
By the end of the first month, you’re past the immediate crisis. You’re in active treatment. You’ve either retained an attorney or decided you don’t need one. The initial insurance contact is behind you. What remains is the actual work of the case, which unfolds over months, not weeks.
Most clients ask some version of: how long is this going to take? The honest answer is that every case is different. The duration depends on how serious your injuries are, how long your treatment takes, how you respond to that treatment, the insurance coverage available, how many parties are involved, whether litigation is necessary, and — if it is — the court’s docket. Any one of those can add weeks or months. Several together can add a year.
What doesn’t change is the sequence. Every personal injury case moves through the same stages: investigation, medical treatment, records compilation, demand, negotiation, and — depending on how the carrier responds — either settlement or a lawsuit, followed by distribution of the recovery.
The expectation gap
Clients are almost always surprised by how long it takes to resolve a case. Here’s why it has to take that long — and if you want the stage-by-stage breakdown, here’s the full California personal injury case timeline.
You should never settle a case until you’ve reached maximum medical improvement — meaning your injuries have either resolved, or a doctor has told you you’ll have chronic pain for the rest of your life. The reason is that once you settle, you can’t reopen the claim. If your injuries turn out to be worse than expected at the time of settlement, you pay out of pocket for future medical care, and you don’t recover anything additional for the additional pain and suffering.
In California, you have a two-year statute of limitations to file a lawsuit. For serious or catastrophic injuries, treatment often takes longer than two years to complete. When that happens, we file a lawsuit to protect the statute of limitations and continue to litigate while treatment finishes. If the statute expires without a settlement or a filed lawsuit, all rights and claims are lost.
The major exception to the “settle at MMI” rule is when the at-fault driver has policy limits that aren’t enough to cover the damages. In a low-limits situation, you do not want to treat beyond what is necessary to obtain the policy limit, because additional treatment past that point only adds medical liens that come out of the same fixed pool. There’s no compensation left for the client after the medical bills are paid. Identifying that scenario early and managing the case around it is part of what an experienced personal injury attorney does.
The whole picture — protecting the statute, timing the settlement to MMI, evaluating policy limits, knowing when to file suit — is why hiring a personal injury lawyer matters.
On what your case is worth
Clients want to know what their case is worth, usually within the first conversation. I get it. I’d want to know too.
Here’s the honest answer: no attorney who’s being straight with you can give you a real number at intake. Case value is determined by how extensive your medical treatment ends up being, what injuries get diagnosed, what treatment you receive, and how you respond over time. Almost none of that is known at the beginning.
Any firm that tells you a specific dollar amount at the initial consultation is selling, not analyzing. The number is a guess designed to get you to sign. If you want the real framework, here’s how attorneys actually value a personal injury case.
What Our Recoveries Look Like
I won’t quote a number on your case at intake, for the reasons covered above. What I can tell you is what the firm has recovered for clients in serious injury cases across California. Two examples.
A $4.5 million recovery in Tulare County. Our client was driving a passenger vehicle when a pickup truck pulled in front of them, causing a high-impact collision. The injuries included traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury. The case settled for $4.5 million.
A $23.7 million bench trial award in Los Angeles County. Our client was riding a motorcycle when a truck collided with them — one of the motorcycle accident cases the firm has taken to trial. The crash resulted in a below-knee amputation. The case was tried to a bench trial and resulted in a $23.7 million award.
These are two outcomes among many — both of them catastrophic injury representation matters. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in your case. Every case turns on its own facts, available coverage, treatment course, and the strength of the evidence. But results like these are what the firm exists to pursue when the facts and the injuries support them. See more case results.
What Happens When You Call Us
The most common question from people who haven’t called yet is some version of: “What’s the call actually like?” Fair question. Here’s what to expect.
When you call 800-789-8840, a member of our intake team answers — typically within a few rings, including evenings and weekends. The intake team’s job is to take down the basic facts, make sure you’re safe, and get one of our Los Angeles personal injury lawyers involved as quickly as possible. If your situation is urgent, we move.
From there, you’ll have a real consultation with an attorney. Not a screening. Not a pitch. An actual conversation about what happened, what you’re dealing with medically, what insurance is involved, and what your options look like. The attorney will tell you honestly whether your case is one we can effectively handle, what we’d do if you retained us, and what the next steps would be.
The consultation is free. There’s no obligation to retain the firm afterward. If you decide to hire us, the contingency arrangement kicks in — no fees unless we win, no upfront costs, no surprises. If you decide not to hire us, you walk away with information you didn’t have before. That’s the worst-case outcome of making the call.
Where the consultation happens is up to you. By phone. By video. In person at our Los Angeles office. By appointment in San Bernardino or Fresno when in-person consultation outside Los Angeles is preferred. At your home, if travel is hard. At your bedside, if you’re in the hospital. The firm comes to you when you can’t come to us.
What to bring or have ready, if you can:
- Any documentation you already have — police report, photos, medical records, bills
- Your own insurance information (declarations page if you have it)
- Whatever you know about the at-fault driver’s insurance
- A list of providers you’ve seen since the crash
If you don’t have any of that, call anyway. We’ll figure out what we need together.
A Final Word
I came to personal injury law several years into my legal career. I’d spent those years in transactional practice. Interesting work, challenging work, but not the work I became an attorney to do. Colleagues of mine were doing personal injury cases, and when they talked about what they were working on, what came through was purpose. They were helping people who had nowhere else to turn.
That’s the kind of lawyer I wanted to be.
I made the switch, and I haven’t looked back.
People come to BANA LAW at one of the hardest moments of their lives. They’re hurt. They’re in pain. They don’t know what to do. An insurance company is calling them, and the minute that company figures out they don’t have an attorney, it starts taking advantage of them. They don’t realize it’s happening. The adjuster sounds professional. The offer sounds reasonable. The forms look routine. By the time they figure out what’s actually going on, they’ve already lost leverage they’re not getting back.
That’s the work I do. I represent people who would be taken advantage of by insurance companies and their lawyers if they didn’t have real legal counsel. Because we work on contingency, no one is shut out of representation because they can’t afford it. Because we have access to physicians across California who treat injured patients on a lien basis, no client has to choose between getting the medical care they need and being able to afford it.
If you’ve been seriously injured in California and the crash wasn’t your fault, do what this guide tells you to do. Get medical care. Document everything. Don’t say anything to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. And call a personal injury lawyer before the insurance company on the other side takes advantage of you.
The consultation is free. What you get out of making it isn’t.
— Ryan Banafshe, Founder and Managing Attorney, BANA LAW, PC
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a personal injury claim in California?
In most cases, two years from the date of the injury, under California Code of Civil Procedure §335.1. Miss the deadline and the claim is barred. Talk to an attorney as soon as possible after the incident — certain situations have shorter deadlines or special procedural requirements that an attorney needs to evaluate at the start.
Should I talk to the other driver’s insurance company after a crash?
No. You have no legal obligation to speak with the at-fault driver’s insurance company, and doing it without an attorney is one of the most common ways claimants hurt their own cases. Adjusters are trained interviewers. Anything you say, especially on a recorded line, can be used to reduce or deny your claim. Decline politely and direct them to your attorney.
Do I need a lawyer for a minor car accident in California?
If you weren’t injured and only your car was damaged, your own insurance company can typically handle it. If you were injured — even in what seems like a minor crash — talk to a personal injury attorney before communicating with insurance carriers or signing anything. Injuries from low-speed crashes are often worse than they first appear, and early decisions after even a minor accident can significantly affect what you recover. Consultations are free and carry no obligation.
What if I didn’t go to the hospital right after the crash?
Get medical attention as soon as you recognize symptoms, even if it’s been a few days. Adrenaline can mask injuries for hours or days, and many serious conditions — soft-tissue injuries, concussions, internal injuries — don’t produce immediate symptoms. The longer the gap between the crash and your first medical evaluation, the more aggressively insurance companies will argue your injuries weren’t caused by the collision. Document what you can about the timeline and talk to an attorney about how the delay affects your case.
How much does it cost to hire a personal injury lawyer in California?
Personal injury attorneys typically work on contingency. No attorney’s fees unless the firm recovers compensation. No hourly bills, no retainer, no upfront payment. BANA LAW works this way and advances all case costs. If there’s no recovery, the client owes nothing.
What if the accident was partially my fault?
You can still recover. California follows pure comparative negligence, which means you can recover even when you were partially at fault — your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. A $100,000 claim where you’re found 25% at fault becomes a $75,000 recovery. That rule applies even at high percentages of fault. If you think fault has been wrongly assigned to you, or you’re not sure how fault would be apportioned in your case, talk to an attorney before accepting anyone else’s conclusion.
How much is my injury case worth?
No responsible attorney can give you an accurate case value at the initial consultation. Case value depends on how extensive your medical treatment ends up being, what injuries get diagnosed, how you respond to treatment over time, and several other factors that aren’t known at the start. Any firm that quotes a specific dollar amount at intake is marketing, not analyzing. A real valuation happens after you’ve completed treatment or reached maximum medical improvement.
What happens if I get into an accident I’m not at fault for, get injured, but don’t have car insurance?
You can still recover economic damages — past and future medical expenses, lost wages, and other out-of-pocket losses. But California’s Proposition 213, codified at Civil Code §3333.4, bars uninsured drivers and owners of uninsured vehicles from recovering non-economic damages like pain and suffering, even when the crash wasn’t their fault. Non-economic damages are usually the largest part of a serious injury claim, so the bar substantially reduces total recovery. Limited exceptions exist, including when the at-fault driver is convicted of DUI under Vehicle Code §23152 or §23153, and for passengers who don’t own the uninsured vehicle. Anyone in this situation should talk to a personal injury attorney about whether an exception applies.
What should I do if the at-fault driver was uninsured?
File a claim against your own uninsured motorist (UM) coverage. UM is designed exactly for this — it pays for injuries in a crash caused by an uninsured driver or in a hit-and-run where the at-fault driver can’t be identified. About 20.4% of California drivers were uninsured in 2023, the eighth-highest rate in the nation according to the Insurance Research Council’s 2025 study, which is why UM is one of the most important protections a California driver can carry. Using UM benefits doesn’t raise your rates in California — penalties are only allowed when the insured was at fault. A personal injury attorney can pursue the UM claim against your own carrier, which functions as the adversary in that context.
What if the at-fault driver fled the scene?
Call law enforcement immediately and get medical evaluation. For insurance purposes, a hit-and-run is treated as an uninsured motorist claim — your own UM coverage applies even without the at-fault driver being identified. California typically requires either independent corroboration of the incident (like witness statements) or physical contact between the vehicles for UM coverage in hit-and-run cases. Document everything — location, time, any vehicle description, witnesses, dashcam or nearby surveillance footage, debris from the other car. An attorney can investigate further and pursue the claim.
Can the insurance company raise my rates if I make a UM/UIM claim?
No. California insurance carriers can’t raise your premiums, refuse to renew your policy, or otherwise penalize you for using UM or UIM benefits. Rate increases and non-renewals in California require that the insured was at fault. If you weren’t at fault, use the coverage you paid for. The protection exists for exactly this purpose.
How long does a personal injury case take to settle in California?
There’s no standard timeline. How long a case takes depends on injury severity, treatment duration, how you respond to treatment, available coverage, how many parties are involved, how responsive the insurance carrier is, whether a lawsuit is filed, and the court’s docket if it is. Cases generally can’t resolve until you’ve completed treatment or reached maximum medical improvement, because the value of the case isn’t knowable before then. A case that takes longer to resolve almost always resolves for more than one that settles too early.
