Long Beach Hit and Run Attorney

The driver is gone. You are hurt, maybe lying in the street on Pacific Coast Highway or sitting in a wrecked car on Orange Avenue, and all you have left is a few seconds of memory. A Long Beach hit and run feels hopeless. Often it is not. California law gives you two paths: a claim against the driver if anyone can identify them, and a claim against your own uninsured motorist coverage if no one can. Both run on short clocks, and one of them runs out 24 hours after the crash. Moe Abdallah Law, P.C. works hit-and-run cases for people hurt in Long Beach and across Los Angeles County. Your review is free at any hour, Moe takes the calls himself, and you pay no fee unless we win.

What the law required the driver to do before leaving

Fleeing a crash is a crime in California, and the duty is plain. A driver in a crash that injures or kills someone must stop right away. They must give their name, address, vehicle registration number and owner information to the person they hit and to any officer. They must also give reasonable help, including getting an injured person to medical care (Vehicle Code sections 20001 and 20003). A driver who leaves after an injury crash can be charged with a felony or a misdemeanor, with up to a year in county jail or a state prison term and a fine of $1,000 to $10,000. If the crash caused death or permanent, serious injury, the possible prison term rises to two, three or four years. Leaving a crash that damaged only property is a misdemeanor with up to six months in county jail. That criminal case belongs to the prosecutor, and it does not pay your medical bills. Your civil claim is separate, and you can pursue it whether or not the driver is ever charged. If the Long Beach Police Department identifies the driver and charges follow, the criminal case may land at the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse at 275 Magnolia Ave., which handles criminal, traffic and civil matters. Our civil case does not wait for that one. If the driver is caught, the flight helps you. A jury hears that the driver knew the law, saw what happened and chose to leave instead of calling for help.

Report it within 24 hours, then file the sworn statement

If the driver is never identified, your own uninsured motorist coverage is usually where the money comes from. California treats an unknown hit-and-run vehicle as uninsured only when three things are true. First, your injury must come from physical contact with the vehicle that fled. Second, you must report the crash within 24 hours to the city police, or to the sheriff or CHP if it happened outside city limits. Third, you must file a sworn statement with your own insurer within 30 days after that report (Insurance Code section 11580.2(b)). The 24-hour report is a legal requirement, not a suggestion, and missing it can kill the coverage. For a crash on a Long Beach city street, you report to the Long Beach Police Department. The statute lets someone report on your behalf, so if an ambulance took you away before you could call, ask a relative or friend to contact the Long Beach Police Department for you. Write down the date, the time and the name of whoever took it. Then call us. We help you word the sworn statement so it matches the police report, because insurers compare the two line by line and hunt for gaps. UM coverage pays for your injuries, not your property damage. A wrecked car goes through your collision coverage instead.

Getting the Long Beach Police Department report

Long Beach runs its own police department, so your collision report comes from the Long Beach Police Department, not LAPD or the Sheriff. The department takes requests by mail. Send the Application for Release of Traffic Collision and/or Crime Report to Long Beach Police Department, 400 W. Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90802, ATTN: Information Management Division, along with a copy of your photo ID. The fee is $30 and non-refundable, though crime victims are exempt, and the department says processing can take up to about six months. You cannot sit and wait that long. Insurers, the DMV and your own carrier want facts now, and the formal report may not exist for weeks. Meanwhile, keep the officer's name, the report or incident number, and any card they handed you. Law offices and insurers can ask about a request's status at PD-RequestStatus@longbeach.gov. If you were a driver in a crash with injury or more than $1,000 in property damage, you also have 10 days to file an SR-1 with the DMV (Vehicle Code section 16000). We track these deadlines for clients so nothing slips while you recover. If the report names the wrong person, leaves out the plate fragment you remembered or misstates how you were hit, we push to fix it early.

Finding a driver who fled: video, debris and witnesses

Most Long Beach hit-and-run drivers are not found by luck. Evidence gathered in the first days finds them, so we move fast. Businesses along Pacific Coast Highway, Orange Avenue, Artesia Boulevard and the streets around Downtown, Belmont Shore and Bixby Knolls often have cameras that record over their footage within days or weeks. Residential doorbell cameras do the same. We send preservation requests quickly and canvass the blocks around the crash. We also study what the car left behind: paint transfer, headlight pieces, bumper trim and the pattern of your injuries or damage, which can point to a make and model. A partial plate matters more than most people think. Even three characters, plus a color and body style, can narrow a search. We talk to 911 callers and bystanders, because witnesses often remember a detail they never told the officer. If the driver later turns up, the case changes. An identified driver with insurance means a normal liability claim, and that driver's policy becomes the first place to look for payment. Either way, photograph your injuries, the scene and the lighting as soon as you can. Do not repair your car until we have documented it.

When no one is ever found, your own policy steps in

Many hit-and-run cases never produce a name. That is exactly what UM coverage is for. Your insurer stands in the shoes of the missing driver, and it may fight you as if it were the stranger's insurer. Adjusters ask whether there really was contact, whether you reported on time and whether you were partly to blame. California follows pure comparative negligence, so partial fault reduces your award but does not erase it (Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804). You also face a second deadline. For a UM claim, within two years of the crash you must sue the uninsured motorist, reach an agreement with your insurer on the amount, or start arbitration by certified mail, return receipt requested (Insurance Code section 11580.2(i)). Miss that step and the claim can end. We once obtained a $100,000 policy-limit UM recovery for a woman rear-ended by a driver who fled, with no police report, after other firms turned her down. Past results do not predict a similar outcome, and every case turns on its own facts. Still, it shows that thin evidence does not always mean a lost case. If your UM limits are low, we check whether a spouse or relative you live with carries a policy with higher limits. California does not let you stack several policies together, so the question is which policy applies. If the driver is identified and a lawsuit is needed, the Los Angeles Superior Court hears civil cases at the Deukmejian Courthouse in Long Beach.

Injuries, Long Beach hospitals and why night crashes matter

When the person hit was on foot, on a bike or on a motorcycle, the injuries are often serious: fractures, head and spine trauma, road rash that needs grafts, and internal bleeding. Long Beach has two Level II trauma centers, MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center and St. Mary Medical Center, and your records from either one become the backbone of the claim. The state's traffic safety office ranked Long Beach 1st of 15 comparable cities for fatal and injury crash victims in 2023, and 1st for crashes between 9pm and 3am, with 485 of them. The city also recorded 53 fatal traffic collisions in 2025, its most in more than a decade. Those numbers do not break out hit-and-runs, so we do not claim a count. They do show how much traffic and risk sits on these streets after dark. When you call Moe Abdallah Law, P.C., you reach Moe himself. He explains what the 24-hour and 30-day rules mean for your case, starts the evidence search the same day and keeps you updated by call and text. We take hit-and-run cases on contingency, so you pay nothing unless we win.

Talk to a Long Beach hit-and-run accident lawyer

Call (323) 716-1992 for a free, no-obligation case review. You pay nothing unless we win, and we'll handle the insurance companies for you. Learn more about our hit-and-run representation →

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