California Catastrophic Injury Lawyer

The short answer

A catastrophic injury claim is a negligence claim with a lifetime inside it. The rule is the one every personal injury case rests on: everyone is responsible for an injury caused to another by a lack of ordinary care or skill in managing their property or person (Civil Code § 1714(a)). What changes when the injury is a brain or spinal cord injury, an amputation or a severe burn is what the claim has to account for: the care still to come, the work a person can no longer do, and the harm itself. The claim is built from the medical record forward.

SoCo Law Firm represents people with catastrophic injuries in Los Angeles, Orange County and throughout California. Its other personal injury pages cover car accidents, bicycle accidents, pedestrian accidents, slip and fall, dog bites and wrongful death.

What “catastrophic” means here

“Catastrophic injury” is not the name of a claim. It describes an injury that is permanent, or that changes how a person lives and works for years: a traumatic brain injury, a spinal cord injury with paralysis, the loss of a limb, severe burns, the loss of sight or hearing. Where a California statute uses the phrase, the examples it gives are loss of a limb, paralysis, severe burn and severe head injury (Labor Code § 4660.1(c)(2)(B), a workers’ compensation provision on impairment ratings, cited here only for the Legislature’s examples).

What has to be shown

Civil Code § 1714(a) frames the claim: that someone did not use ordinary care, and that this caused the injury. Who that someone is depends on what happened: a driver, the owner of the property where the injury occurred, a business, a public entity responsible for a road or a building. The duties on drivers are described on the car accident page. When more than one party is responsible, Civil Code § 1431.2(a) makes each defendant’s liability for non-economic damages several only, in proportion to its own share of fault.

The losses the law counts

For a wrong that does not arise from a contract, Civil Code § 3333 sets the measure of damages: the amount that will compensate for all the detriment proximately caused, whether it could have been anticipated or not.

Civil Code § 1431.2(b) sorts those losses into two kinds. Economic damages are objectively verifiable monetary losses, such as medical expenses, loss of earnings and the cost of substitute domestic services. Non-economic damages are subjective, non-monetary losses, such as pain, suffering, inconvenience, emotional distress and loss of consortium. In a catastrophic case a few of these carry most of the weight, and each has its own rule in the Judicial Council’s civil jury instructions.

Medical care, past and future

Under CACI No. 3903A, a person claiming past medical expenses must prove the reasonable cost of reasonably necessary medical care they have received, and a person claiming future medical expenses must prove the reasonable cost of reasonably necessary medical care they are reasonably certain to need. For a permanent injury the second half is the larger: the surgeries still to come, the equipment, the attendant care, the therapy, the changes to a home.

Earnings, and the ability to earn

CACI No. 3903C covers earnings lost to date and those a person is reasonably certain to lose in the future because of the injury. CACI No. 3903D covers something different: the loss of the ability to earn money. A person must prove that it is reasonably certain the injury will cause them to earn less in the future than they otherwise could have, and the reasonable value of that loss, found by comparing what they probably could have earned without the injury to what they can still earn with it. A work history is not required.

The injury itself

Physical pain, mental suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, physical impairment, inconvenience, anxiety and emotional distress are non-economic damages. CACI No. 3905A tells a jury that no fixed standard exists for deciding their amount, and that it must use its judgment to decide a reasonable amount based on the evidence and common sense; for future suffering, the person must prove they are reasonably certain to suffer that harm.

When fault is shared

California replaced the all-or-nothing rule of contributory negligence with comparative negligence (Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, as quoted in CACI No. 405’s Sources and Authority): a person’s own negligence is not a bar to recovery but a factor in measuring the amount. Under CACI No. 405 the defendant has to prove both that the injured person was negligent and that this negligence was a substantial factor in causing the harm; if it does, the damages are reduced by the person’s share of responsibility.

Where the money comes from

An injury that will need a lifetime of care usually exceeds what any one policy pays, so the sources are mapped early.

• Liability insurance. The minimum limits California requires for a policy to count as proof of financial responsibility are a floor, not a cap, and an at-fault driver’s policy may carry only that minimum.
• Every responsible party. When the condition of a road, a sidewalk or a public building was part of it, Government Code § 835 makes a public entity liable for an injury caused by a dangerous condition of its property, on the terms the section sets. Claims against a city, county or other public entity have their own requirements (Government Code § 945.4), which we go over in the first conversation.
• Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. Where a vehicle was involved, the coverage that Insurance Code § 11580.2 requires in a California auto bodily injury liability policy may answer, including after a hit-and-run by a driver who is never identified; the car accident page explains how it works. An umbrella policy or a business’s policy may answer too.

When the injured person cannot act for themselves

Code of Civil Procedure § 372(a)(1) provides that a person who lacks legal capacity to make decisions, or for whom a conservator has been appointed, appears in the case through a guardian or conservator of the estate, or through a guardian ad litem appointed by the court. Under § 372(a)(3) that representative may compromise the claim with the approval of the court, and money paid for the person’s benefit is handled as the Probate Code provides (Probate Code § 3600 and the sections that follow). We go over who that should be in the first conversation.

If the injury happened at work, or proves fatal

An injury at work can involve more than one body of law; the personal injury page describes the overlap. When a catastrophic injury leads to a death, the claim becomes a different one, explained on the wrongful death page.

How SoCo Law Firm builds a catastrophic injury case

The record is gathered early and kept current, because a claim of this kind is decided by what it shows about the years ahead.

• The medical record, from the first treatment on: the diagnosis, the surgeries, the rehabilitation, and the treating physicians’ and specialists’ views of the care still to come.
• The incident record. Where a vehicle was involved, the collision report, which Vehicle Code § 20012 requires the California Highway Patrol or the reporting agency to disclose to those with a proper interest in it, including a person named as injured and an attorney who declares under penalty of perjury that they represent one of them; otherwise the incident report.
• Video, photographs and witnesses, before anything is repaired, recorded over or forgotten.
• Work and earnings, and every insurance policy that may answer, read against its terms.

Talking to SoCo Law Firm

A first conversation covers what happened, what the medical record shows so far, and what a claim would need. Family members often make that first call for the person who was hurt, and that is fine. To arrange one, contact SoCo Law Firm.