Personal injury lawyers serving Oakland

Truck cases involve more insurance, more regulations, and more evidence — driver hours-of-service logs, maintenance records, onboard data — and the trucking company's insurer typically starts building its defense immediately. That evidence can be lost or overwritten if no one demands its preservation. It is one of the clearest situations where talking to a lawyer early changes what is possible later.

Two years from the date of injury for most claims, under California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. Claims involving public entities — an AC Transit bus, a city vehicle, a dangerous condition of public property — generally require a government claim within six months. Oakland cases touch public entities more often than people expect, so check your deadlines early.

During an active ride, rideshare companies carry substantial liability coverage, and the drivers involved have their own policies too. Sorting out which policy pays — and preventing each insurer from pointing at the other — is most of the early work in these cases. As a passenger, you are almost never at fault, and you should not absorb the cost of their finger-pointing.

No. A police officer's fault assessment is one piece of evidence, not a final ruling, and California's pure comparative negligence rule means even genuine partial fault only reduces your recovery proportionally. We regularly work with evidence the responding officer never saw — camera footage, vehicle data, witness follow-ups.

Nothing up front and nothing unless we win. Injury cases are handled on a contingency fee — a percentage of the recovery, set out in writing before we begin. The case review itself is free, whether or not we end up working together.