A truck accident claim looks nothing like a standard car accident claim. The gap between the two — in terms of legal complexity, potential defendants, and the money at stake — is wide enough that treating them the same way is one of the most expensive mistakes an injured person can make. At Razavi Law Group | Who Hurt You?, we handle both types of cases, and the contrast between them shows up immediately, from the first phone call.

If you were hurt in a truck crash near West Hollywood, this 2026 guide covers the specific legal questions that come up most often — from partial fault to wrongful death, from underride accidents to independent contractor drivers. I’ll give you straight answers based on what I actually see in these cases, not generic summaries.

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What Is the Difference Between a Truck Accident Claim and a Car Accident Claim in California in West Hollywood?

The core difference comes down to two things: who you’re suing and how much your case is worth.

A car accident claim usually involves two private individuals, one insurance policy per vehicle, and a relatively contained investigation. A truck accident claim routinely pulls in multiple defendants — the driver, the trucking company, the freight broker, the cargo loader, and sometimes the truck manufacturer. Each of those parties may carry separate insurance policies. A fully loaded commercial semi can weigh up to 80,000 pounds under federal regulations. When that weight hits a passenger vehicle, the injuries tend to be severe and the medical costs substantial. Insurance coverage on commercial trucks in California can run from $750,000 to $5 million or more, depending on what the truck was carrying.

The evidence in a truck case is also fundamentally different. Commercial trucks operating in California are required to comply with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) regulations, which mandate the preservation of electronic logging device (ELD) data, driver qualification files, hours-of-service records, and inspection reports. None of that exists in a standard car accident. That data disappears fast — trucking companies are not required to keep some of it beyond six months — so we send preservation letters the day we’re retained.

California’s road layout around West Hollywood creates specific hazards. Santa Monica Boulevard, La Brea Avenue, and the stretch of Sunset Boulevard that cuts through the area see regular commercial truck traffic. These are not freeway conditions. They’re tight urban corridors where a large truck’s blind spots and turning radius create risks that simply don’t exist between two passenger cars.

The insurance adjustment process is different too. After a car accident, you’re typically dealing with a single adjuster and a relatively predictable negotiation. After a truck accident, the carrier’s insurer often dispatches an accident reconstruction team and defense attorneys to the scene within hours. If you’re calling us a week later without having preserved evidence or spoken to an attorney, you’re already behind.

For a broader overview of what California truck accident attorneys handle, including case types outside West Hollywood, that page is worth reviewing.

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Can I File a Truck Accident Claim if I Was Partially at Fault in California?

Yes. California follows a pure comparative fault rule under California Civil Code Section 1714. Under this system, your compensation is reduced by your percentage of fault, but it is not eliminated by it. If you were 30% at fault and your damages total $500,000, you recover $350,000.

That sounds straightforward. In practice, trucking company insurers work aggressively to inflate your fault percentage. They have accident reconstructionists and defense attorneys whose job is to shift blame from their driver to you. I’ve seen insurers open negotiations by claiming a client was 50% at fault when the evidence — once we obtained the truck’s black box data — showed driver fatigue was the primary cause.

This is why the investigation matters more than most people realize. Your fault percentage is not fixed. It gets argued, and the side that controls the evidence tends to win that argument. If the truck’s ELD data shows the driver had been on the road for 14 hours when federal law caps the limit at 11, that shifts the comparative fault calculation significantly in your favor. FindLaw’s overview of comparative negligence is a helpful starting point for understanding how California courts apply this doctrine.

Do not accept a low-ball settlement offer without having an attorney review the actual fault allocation. In my experience, the first offer after a truck accident almost always assumes a higher fault percentage for the injured person than the evidence actually supports.

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What Is an Underride Truck Accident and How Do I File a Claim in California?

An underride accident happens when a smaller vehicle slides beneath a truck’s trailer during a collision. The trailer rides over the front of the car, often destroying the passenger compartment at head height. These crashes are among the most deadly in California. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has documented underride accidents as a disproportionate cause of fatalities in truck-related crashes, and federal regulations require rear underride guards on most large trailers — though side underride guards remain inadequately regulated as of 2026.

Filing a claim after an underride accident follows the same general process as other truck claims, but there are additional defendants to examine. If the truck’s rear underride guard was defective, bent, or improperly maintained, you may have a product liability claim against the truck manufacturer or the company responsible for maintenance. If the guard was absent or non-compliant with FMCSA standards, the trucking company faces a regulatory violation that can be used as evidence of negligence per se under California law.

The investigation in an underride case needs to happen fast. Physical evidence — the condition of the guard, the point of impact, the guard’s mounting hardware — can be lost once the truck is repaired or destroyed. We photograph and document everything before that happens. We also subpoena the truck’s maintenance logs to determine when the guard was last inspected.

Damages in underride cases tend to be severe: traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord damage, and fatalities are common. That severity justifies pressing every available theory of liability, not just the one against the driver.

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Can a Truck Accident Claim Be Filed if the Driver Was an Independent Contractor in California?

This is a question I get regularly, and the answer requires some nuance.

Trucking companies have historically used independent contractor classification to insulate themselves from liability. The argument is simple: if the driver is not an employee, the company is not responsible for the driver’s negligence. California law does not accept that argument as easily as trucking companies would like.

California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5), which became law in 2020 and whose standards remain in effect in 2026, created a strict ABC test for determining whether a worker is truly an independent contractor. Under that test, a worker is presumed to be an employee unless the hiring company can prove all three of the following: the worker is free from the company’s control, the work is outside the company’s usual business, and the worker is independently established in that trade. Many trucking arrangements fail that test — especially when the company sets delivery schedules, dictates routes, requires specific equipment, or controls how the driver presents to customers.

Beyond AB 5, there’s the doctrine of negligent entrustment. Even if a driver is a genuine independent contractor, the company that hired them can be liable if it gave a dangerous vehicle or route to a driver with a known unsafe history. If we can show the company knew the driver had prior violations and hired them anyway, that is its own theory of liability.

The Justia legal database has California-specific case law on trucking liability that can help illustrate how courts have handled contractor classification disputes. We examine every layer of the employment relationship when building a truck accident case, because the company will use contractor status as a shield — and our job is to knock it down.

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Can I File a Wrongful Death Claim After a Fatal Truck Accident in California?

Yes. California Code of Civil Procedure Section 377.60 allows specific surviving family members — spouses, domestic partners, children, and in some cases parents or financial dependents — to file a wrongful death claim after a fatal accident. A separate action, the survival claim under Section 377.30, allows the estate to recover damages the deceased would have been able to claim had they survived.

Both claims can run simultaneously, and they cover different categories of loss. The wrongful death claim compensates the surviving family for their grief, loss of companionship, lost financial support, and funeral costs. The survival claim recovers for the pain and suffering the deceased experienced between the crash and death, as well as any medical bills incurred before death.

Truck accident wrongful death cases are particularly complex because the defendants are the same multiple-party structure described above — driver, carrier, broker, and potentially equipment manufacturers — and the damages are often enormous. A spouse who loses a 42-year-old primary earner has a wage-loss claim that stretches over two or more decades of projected income, plus household services, plus the full range of non-economic losses. Trucking company insurers fight these cases hard, which is why having experienced California personal injury attorneys on your side matters.

The statute of limitations for wrongful death in California is generally two years from the date of death, but there are exceptions that can shorten that window — particularly if a government entity is involved, where a claim may need to be filed within six months. Do not wait.

The American Bar Association’s resources on wrongful death claims provide useful background on how these cases are structured across jurisdictions, though California’s specific statutes govern what applies here.

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How Do Pre-Existing Injuries Affect a Truck Accident Claim in California?

They don’t eliminate your claim. California follows the “eggshell plaintiff” doctrine, which holds a defendant liable for the full extent of harm even if the plaintiff was more vulnerable than an average person due to a pre-existing condition. If a prior back injury made you more susceptible to a herniated disc, and the truck accident caused that herniation, the truck driver and company are responsible for the aggravated injury — not just for what would have happened to a healthy person.

The practical complication is proof. The defense will argue your injuries existed before the crash and that the accident didn’t cause them. They’ll subpoena your prior medical records looking for anything they can use. I always tell clients to be honest with me about their medical history upfront, because finding out about a pre-existing condition at deposition — rather than before — creates problems we can’t fix.

What we do is work with treating physicians and, when necessary, independent medical experts to document the specific change in your condition after the accident. A clean MRI from 18 months before the crash followed by a post-accident MRI showing disc herniation at the same level is powerful evidence. The comparison tells the story: something changed, and the accident caused it. That is the evidence we build toward.

Insurance adjusters routinely use pre-existing injuries to justify reducing settlement offers by 30–50%. In my experience, that reduction is often not supported by the actual medical evidence once you pull the full records and have them reviewed by a qualified physician. This is another area where accepting an early offer without legal representation costs people real money.

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Talk to a Truck Accident Attorney Before You Sign Anything

Truck accident cases involve multiple insurers, federal regulations, and evidence that disappears within months. The difference between a well-handled case and a poorly handled one often comes down to what happened in the first 30 days after the crash.

Razavi Law Group | Who Hurt You? represents clients in West Hollywood and throughout California on truck accident claims, including underride accidents, wrongful death, and cases involving independent contractor drivers. We also handle car accident cases and the full range of personal injury matters across the state.

Call us at (323)-612-8002 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation. You can also visit our West Hollywood office at 925 N La Brea Ave, West Hollywood, CA 90038, United States. We don’t charge anything unless we win your case.

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Written by Ali Razavi. Read more about the author.