If you lost a family member in a preventable crash, you need to speak with a fatal car accident attorney as soon as possible. A fatal car accident attorney at Bojat Law Group can walk you through what comes next, because there is a lot to think about in the first weeks after a loss like this.
Everything has changed, and you know it. The last thing you should be carrying right now is pressure from an insurance company or worry about whether your family will be treated fairly. One of the few ways to close this chapter and move forward, while still honoring what your loved one meant to your family, is to consider a wrongful death claim. A wrongful death claim is handled by a fatal car accident attorney who can help you and your family pursue full compensation for what you lost.
Losing someone in a fatal car accident is one of the hardest things a family can go through. Recovering compensation will not undo it, but it can protect your family in the days, weeks, months, and years that follow, especially when the death was caused by someone else’s negligence or recklessness.
What causes fatal car accidents?
Roughly twelve people are killed on California roads every day, with 3,807 deaths recorded in 2024. Most deadly crashes are linked to a handful of preventable behaviors. Common causes of fatal car accidents include:
- Driving under the influence. Alcohol-impaired driving killed 1,355 people in California in 2023, 33.4% of all traffic fatalities. A fatal DUI creates two separate cases: criminal and civil. Your family does not need a conviction to recover.
- Excessive speed. A factor in roughly 26% of fatal California crashes in 2024. Cuts reaction time and multiplies impact force.
- Distracted driving. 158 California deaths in 2023, up 6.8% year over year. Cell records and infotainment data have to be preserved before they are overwritten.
- Reckless driving. Red light running, illegal lane changes, street racing. Often the cleanest liability cases, since the violation is documented and frequently caught on camera.
- Fatigue. Drowsy driving mimics alcohol impairment. Common in long-haul trucking and overnight rideshare, where hours of service logs become key evidence.
- Vehicle defects and dangerous roads. Tire failures, brake defects, broken signals, unsafe pavement. These become product liability claims against manufacturers or Government Code section 910 claims against public entities, which carry a six month deadline.
Who can file a wrongful death claim in California?
Under California law, certain surviving family members may have the right to pursue compensation after a fatal crash. This often includes:
- Spouses
- Children
- Domestic partners
- Financial dependents
- Sometimes parents or other relatives
Wrongful death claims are designed to compensate surviving family members for the emotional and financial impact of losing someone due to another party’s negligence.
What damages are available in a wrongful death claim?
California wrongful death recoveries fall into two main categories.
Economic damages cover the financial losses your family can quantify: the income your loved one would have earned, the value of their household services, lost benefits, and funeral and burial costs.
Non-economic damages cover the loss of love, companionship, comfort, care, moral support, and guidance. California does not cap these damages in a car accident wrongful death case, which matters because they often make up the larger share of a recovery.
A separate survival action under CCP section 377.30 compensates for what your loved one went through between the crash and death, including medical expenses, lost earnings, and, since 2022, pain and suffering before passing.
In cases of especially egregious conduct, such as drunk driving or a trucking company knowingly putting an unsafe driver on the road, punitive damages may also be available.
How a fatal car accident attorney can help?
Reaching out to an attorney in the days after a fatal crash can feel premature. It is not. Families who lost a loved one in a preventable crash should speak with a fatal car accident attorney sooner rather than later, even if the call is only a conversation, and there are real reasons why. You are not in a fair fight with the insurance company on your own. The adjuster who calls within hours of the crash is friendly, sympathetic, and trained. They also work for a company whose profit depends on paying your family as little as possible. They will ask for a recorded statement, request broad medical authorizations, and float an early settlement number that sounds substantial to a family in shock but rarely reflects what the case is actually worth. Once a fatal car accident attorney is involved, those tactics stop. Communication runs through the firm, your family is not pressured, and the case gets built on evidence rather than on emotional fatigue.
The financial weight of losing a family member is also much bigger than what is visible in the first few weeks. Funeral and burial costs hit immediately. The longer losses are the ones that catch families later: a mortgage built around two incomes, college funds without a contributor, the daily household work your loved one quietly carried, the retirement savings that will not be there. A settlement or verdict will not undo any of it. What it can do is keep your family from sliding into financial hardship on top of grief, and protect the people your loved one would have wanted protected. A civil case is also the most direct way to hold the driver, or the company behind them, accountable. Criminal cases punish the individual but rarely change the conditions that produced the crash. A civil case reaches the insurer, the employer, the trucking company, or the manufacturer whose decisions put an unsafe driver or vehicle on the road. Verdicts and settlements shift behavior. They are also a formal record that someone else’s negligence ended your loved one’s life, which matters for families who need it on paper.
Whether the crash involved a drunk driver, a speeding commercial truck, a distracted teenager, a rideshare vehicle, or a defective tire, the same principle applies. The earlier an attorney is on the case, the more options your family has. Evidence is still preserved. Witnesses still remember. Insurance companies still know they are dealing with a firm that understands what the case is worth. At Bojat Law Group, Sasha Bojat reviews fatal car accident cases personally and works on contingency, which means no fee unless we recover compensation for your family. Call us at (818) 877-4878 for a free, no obligation conversation.
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