Two ideas sit under almost every Westside crash file, and they are easy to mix together. One is a calendar. The other is a percentage. The calendar is the two-year period for filing an injury or death lawsuit. The percentage is each person’s share of the wreck. Missing the date can end the claim. A large share of blame can shrink it. Neither idea waits for an adjuster to feel ready. Write the filing date on a paper calendar you can see, and keep the policy page with the report in one place you control.
The two-year lawsuit date
CCP 335.1 gives two years to file over a personal injury, or over a death brought about by another person’s wrongful act or neglectful conduct. For a typical Brentwood or 405 wreck, that period is counted from the crash, because that is when the injury happened. “Filing” means a lawsuit lodged with a court clerk. Settlement talks, a claim number or a stack of emails do not start a case and do not pause the date.
Damage to a car or other personal property has a different period. CCP 338 gives three years for a case over taking, holding or damaging personal property. A family can therefore have an injury date and a repair-bill date that are not the same. Official California Courts self-help pages repeat the two-year injury period and the three-year property period, and they warn that suing a government agency has earlier and different requirements.
CCP 352 keeps the time of certain disabilities from counting against the period for actions in that chapter, including when the person entitled to sue was under the age of majority when the claim accrued. A typical child’s own injury claim therefore does not start its two years until the child turns 18. That pause does not apply to a Government Claims Act case. The children’s guide and the government-claims guide explain the tighter public-entity calendar, including GOV 911.2 and GOV 945.6.
How fault is compared
Official Judicial Council instruction CACI 405, published in the 2025 civil jury instructions on the California Courts site, tells a jury what to do if the defendant proves that the injured person was negligent and that this the carelessness was a substantial cause of the harm. In that situation, the injured person’s damages are reduced by the jury’s determination of that person’s percentage of responsibility. The judge then calculates the actual reduction. The instruction does not set a cutoff at half the fault. A person who carries a share still has a reduced claim, rather than an automatic zero, under this official instruction.
The authorities printed with that instruction include the California Supreme Court’s decision in Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, which described comparative negligence as preferable to an all-or-nothing contributory rule. Read the official instruction as the working statement of the comparison, rather than an unofficial summary of later cases.
Proposition 51, economic and noneconomic shares
CIV 1431.2 adds a second idea when more than one defendant stands in the case. In an action for personal injury, property damage or wrongful death, based upon principles of comparative fault, each defendant’s liability for non-economic damages is several only, not joint. Each defendant is liable only for the amount of non-economic damages allocated to that defendant in direct proportion to that defendant’s percentage of fault. Economic damages, in the statute’s definition, are objectively verifiable monetary losses such as medical expenses, lost earnings and property repair. Non-economic damages are subjective non-monetary losses such as pain, suffering, inconvenience and loss of companionship.
In practical terms, a medical-bill number can still be collected in a different way from a pain-and-suffering number when several defendants share the wreck, including a truck case or a case with a driver and a public entity. The official text is the rule. The settlement worksheet can show, in rough figures, how a fault percentage changes a recovery. It is not a prediction and it is not legal advice.
Other rules that can change the number
CIV 3333.4 can remove non-economic losses entirely in the uninsured or DUI-conviction situations it names. Uninsured-motorist coverage has its own two-year hook and its own physical-contact rule under INS 11580.2. A government claim has the six-month presentation date. None of those rules extends the two-year lawsuit date against a private driver. Put the earliest date on a calendar in the first week, then work the evidence and the insurance.
If you talk with an attorney, bring the crash report, the declarations page and a simple timeline. Ask how that office sees both the date and the likely fault comparison, and confirm the person’s California license. The week-by-week guide is a practical companion to this one for the first month of the file.
Keep the declarations page in the same folder as the crash report and the filing deadline. Coverage, fault and calendar arguments are all easier to have when those three documents sit together, rather than in a misplaced message or a packet that left with the towed car.
- CACI 405
- The official Judicial Council instruction that reduces the injured person’s damages by that person’s percentage of responsibility, with no half-fault cutoff in the instruction itself.
- Several liability
- The CIV 1431.2 rule that each defendant pays only that defendant’s share of non-economic harm.
- Accrual
- The official starting point of a claim, which for a typical crash is the date of the wreck, and which can be different in less common delayed-discovery situations.