Long Beach, California

Long Beach Personal Injury Lawyer

People get hurt in Long Beach struck by a port truck on the 710, hit crossing Anaheim Street, rear-ended on Pacific Coast Highway, or sideswiped on Willow Street. In all of those cases California generally gives you two years from the date of injury to file suit under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. When a public entity is involved (the City of Long Beach, Long Beach Transit, the Harbor Department, Los Angeles County, Cal State Long Beach, or Caltrans on the 710, the 405, or PCH), a written government claim must be presented within six months under Government Code section 911.2 before any lawsuit is possible. California applies pure comparative fault, so shared responsibility reduces a recovery instead of barring it. Wave Law Firm does not have a Long Beach office; we serve the city from our Southern California office in downtown Los Angeles and we travel to clients here and anywhere else in California.

Where the case goes

The South District and the Deukmejian Courthouse

Long Beach is part of Los Angeles County, but a Long Beach injury case does not go downtown. Los Angeles County Superior Court is divided into districts under Los Angeles County Court Rule 2.3, which requires a personal injury action to be filed in the judicial district where the incident arose. A Long Beach collision belongs to the court’s South District, and it is heard at the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse, 275 Magnolia Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90802.

The Deukmejian Courthouse is a five-story, thirty-one-courtroom building on a six-acre site, opened to replace the old Long Beach courthouse, which had been one of the worst-rated facilities in the state for security and overcrowding. Current hours, clerk’s office information, and public parking are published on the Los Angeles County Superior Court website. Practically speaking, litigating in the South District is different from litigating downtown: a different bench, a different local defense bar, and a jury pool drawn from Long Beach, Signal Hill, Lakewood, Bellflower, Paramount, and the harbor communities rather than from central Los Angeles. That jury composition is a real strategic factor in how a case is presented and valued.

The local roads

The 710, the port, and the streets it feeds

No other California city has Long Beach’s traffic problem. The Port of Long Beach sits at the bottom of the Interstate 710, and the 710 exists in large part to move containers: it carries drayage traffic from the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles north to the rail yards near the 710/I-5 interchange and beyond. At its southern end the freeway becomes the Seaside Freeway and meets Ocean Boulevard, with ramps carrying traffic over the Long Beach International Gateway Bridge, and the Terminal Island Freeway (SR-103) runs alongside it into the terminals. The result is that heavy tractor-trailers, many of them owner-operators on short-turn schedules, share the same lanes as commuters, and a passenger car loses that encounter badly.

A port truck case is not a car case with a bigger vehicle. It is a commercial trucking case, and it is usually a case against more than one defendant. The driver, the motor carrier whose authority the trip ran under, a freight broker, a terminal or warehouse operator, and the owner of the tractor or the chassis may all be in the chain, and sorting out who controlled what requires the bills of lading, the dispatch records, the electronic logging device data, and the tractor’s engine control module download. That electronic evidence is often overwritten or lost within weeks unless a preservation demand goes out immediately. If a truck was involved in your crash, that letter is the first thing that should happen. See our trucking accident page for how those cases are built.

Off the freeway, the city’s wide east-west arterials carry the same mix. Anaheim Street, Willow Street, Pacific Coast Highway, and 7th Street cross the whole city; Long Beach Boulevard, Atlantic Avenue, Cherry Avenue, and Bellflower Boulevard run north-south through dense residential neighborhoods, past Cal State Long Beach and Long Beach City College. Ocean Boulevard and Shoreline Drive fill up with visitors headed to the Aquarium, the Queen Mary, Shoreline Village, and the Grand Prix, while Second Street through Belmont Shore is a slow, crowded corridor of angled parking, patio dining, cyclists, and pedestrians, which is a classic setting for door-opening and backing collisions. Add the Long Beach Boulevard corridor, e-bikes, and shared scooters, and Long Beach generates a steady volume of vulnerable-road-user injuries.

The city has been working on this openly. The Long Beach City Council adopted the Safe Streets Long Beach Action Plan, the city’s Vision Zero plan, in July 2020. A city’s own adopted safety analysis of a corridor is exactly the kind of material that matters when road design or a known hazard is part of a claim.

On the medical side, Long Beach is better equipped than most cities its size. MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center is an adult and pediatric Level II trauma center verified by the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, and it was one of the original centers when Los Angeles County established its trauma system in 1983. Its emergency department treats more than 100,000 patients a year, more than 1,600 of whom are handled by the trauma center. If you were seriously hurt in Long Beach, that is very likely where you woke up, and the trauma activation records, imaging, and operative notes generated there are the spine of the damages case.

First steps

What to do after an accident in Long Beach

Identify the responding agency. Long Beach Police handle city streets; the CHP handles the 710, the 405, the 605, and the state highway segments; the Port of Long Beach Harbor Patrol and Los Angeles Port Police operate in the harbor complex, and a crash inside a terminal gate may involve them plus a private terminal operator. That distinction determines where the report lives and who the potential defendants are.

If a commercial truck was involved, photograph the tractor door, the trailer, the chassis, and the container. The USDOT number, the carrier name, the trailer number, and the container markings are what let us identify the motor carrier, its insurer, and everyone else in the chain. Get medical attention and keep the trail unbroken. Photograph the roadway, striping, signal timing, sightlines, and any construction. And do not give a recorded statement to the truck company’s adjuster; port carriers often have investigators on scene within hours, and they are not there to help you.

Deadlines that end cases

The two deadlines to know

Harbor-area crashes are especially prone to hidden public-entity issues, because port property, city streets, and state highway all interlock within a few blocks. Assume the six-month clock might be running until someone confirms it is not.

How we work here

Working with Wave Law Firm in Long Beach

To be clear about it: we do not have a Long Beach office. Our nearest office is our Southern California office at 355 S. Grand Ave, Suite 2450, Los Angeles, CA 90071, and we appear in the South District at the Deukmejian Courthouse. We travel to clients in Long Beach, whether in Belmont Shore, Bixby Knolls, North Long Beach, the Westside, or at MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center while you are still admitted, and anywhere else in California.

The consultation is free, we work on contingency so there is no fee unless we win, the phone is answered 24 hours a day, and hablamos español. Paymon A. Khatibi has been licensed in California since 2012. Learn more about the firm and our results, or read about trucking accidents, auto accidents, rideshare accidents, slip and fall, medical malpractice, and wrongful death claims.

Long Beach questions

Frequently asked

A port truck hit me on the 710. Who exactly do I have a claim against?

Frequently more than one party. The driver, the motor carrier operating under its own authority, a freight broker that arranged the load, the owner of the tractor or chassis, and a terminal or warehouse operator can each be in the picture, and each may carry separate insurance. Untangling that requires the dispatch and load documents and the truck’s electronic data, which is why an early preservation demand matters so much in harbor cases.

Will my case be heard downtown at Stanley Mosk?

Usually not. Under Los Angeles County Court Rule 2.3, a Long Beach injury case is generally assigned to the South District and heard at the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse at 275 Magnolia Avenue, not at the Central District courthouse downtown.

I was hurt on a Long Beach Transit bus. Is the deadline different?

Yes, and much shorter. A public entity claim requires a written claim presented within six months of the injury under Government Code section 911.2 before a lawsuit can be filed. The same is true of a City of Long Beach sidewalk or roadway condition and of Harbor Department vehicles. Do not wait to see how you heal.

Do you actually have an office in Long Beach?

No. Our Southern California office is on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. We appear at the Deukmejian Courthouse and we come to you in Long Beach, so having the office elsewhere costs you nothing.

Talk to a Long Beach injury lawyer today

If a truck was involved, call today, because the electronic evidence has a short life. Free consultation, no fee unless we win, phones answered any hour, and we come to you.