Personal Injury Lawyer in Wilmington

You were hit on Anaheim Street, or on Avalon Boulevard, or on the Harbor Freeway headed home from a shift. Now your neck hurts, your car sits at a tow yard, and an adjuster keeps calling. If you need a personal injury lawyer in Wilmington, start here. Moe Abdallah Law, P.C. is a Los Angeles firm that takes one kind of case: people hurt, or families who lost someone, in motor-vehicle crashes. We do not handle workplace injuries, property-damage-only claims, product defects, dog bites or slip-and-falls. Attorney Moe Abdallah handles your case himself and keeps you updated by call and text. We are available 24/7, and Se Habla Español. You pay nothing unless he wins. Here is what sets a Wilmington crash apart: the streets, the Harbor police station that writes your report, the hospitals, the city claims office, and a courthouse that is not downtown. Call (323) 716-1992 when you are ready.

How we help injured people in Wilmington

We handle every motor-vehicle injury case type for Wilmington residents, dealing with the insurers directly while you focus on recovery.

A port-side neighborhood with its own traffic mix

Wilmington is part of the City of Los Angeles, in the Harbor area, and it has been since 1909. It is not a separate city, so Los Angeles rules, Los Angeles claims offices and the LAPD apply. Wikipedia lists about 53,800 residents from the 2010 Census across roughly nine square miles, and says refineries take up nearly a fifth of the land. You get a mix you rarely see in LA: homes and schools a few blocks from heavy industry, with cars, buses, bikes and people on foot sharing the same streets. The Harbor Freeway (I-110) serves the area, and SR-47 reaches Terminal Island by way of Henry Ford Avenue and the Schuyler Heim Bridge. The main surface streets are Pacific Coast Highway, Alameda Street, Anaheim Street, Avalon Boulevard, Figueroa Street, Harry Bridges Boulevard, Wilmington Boulevard, Neptune Avenue and Banning Boulevard. We found no official crash counts for Wilmington alone, because the state ranks cities, not neighborhoods, and we will not hand you a made-up number. Several of these streets do show up on the city's own list of dangerous corridors, which the next section covers.

Anaheim Street, Avalon Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway

The City of Los Angeles keeps a High Injury Network, a map of streets where a large share of deadly and serious crashes happen. LADOT's published layer lists Anaheim Street between Wilmington Boulevard and Banning Boulevard, two stretches of Avalon Boulevard (N Street to Pacific Coast Highway, and G Street to I Street), and Pacific Coast Highway between Western Avenue and Broad Avenue, which crosses Harbor City and Wilmington. That layer dates from 2015, and a newer version may differ. Anaheim Street made the news in 2023, when Streetsblog LA reported speeding, cut-through traffic and deaths and serious injuries there, and a local safety promotora said Anaheim was seeing more than three or four crashes a week. LADOT added about two miles of road-diet bike lanes from Figueroa Street to Alameda Street, and the city won a $32 million state grant to build permanent upgrades on Anaheim, Neptune and nearby streets. If you were hurt on one of these corridors, write down the exact block, the lane and the signal. Cities change streets after crashes, and the old layout can matter to your claim. Photograph it now, before the paint and the curbs move.

Who writes your report: the LAPD Harbor Station

LAPD's Harbor Community Police Station, at 2175 John S. Gibson Blvd. in San Pedro, serves Wilmington along with San Pedro, Harbor City, Harbor Gateway and Terminal Island. The main number is 310-726-7700, and the Records Unit is 310-726-7790. LAPD refers traffic matters to its South Traffic Division. You can request a traffic collision report on LAPD's Request a Traffic Report page, and the department says to wait at least 45 days after the crash. Reports that involve an arrest, a death or a juvenile, and reports from before February 2016, have to be requested by mail with a $19 check or money order. If the Highway Patrol handled your crash on the freeway, that agency holds the report instead, so check which uniform showed up. Read the report the day you get it. Officers often arrive after the cars have moved, so the diagram and fault box can be wrong. A wrong note does not end your claim. Photos, video and witnesses can fix it, and we ask the other side to correct mistakes. If anyone was hurt, the driver also has 10 days to file an SR-1 with the DMV, and we can help with that.

Hospitals near Wilmington and why the paper trail matters

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, at 1000 W. Carson St. in West Carson, appears on the state's designated trauma center list as a Level I trauma center, the state's highest trauma level. Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center San Pedro, at 1300 W. 7th St., runs a 24-hour emergency department and is a certified stroke center, though it is not on the state trauma list. Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center, at 25825 S. Vermont Ave. in Harbor City, also has a 24-hour emergency department, and again is not on the state trauma list. Whichever door you went through, the records they create become the backbone of your case. Tell every provider you were hurt in a car or truck crash. Go to follow-up visits, because gaps let an adjuster say you healed or got hurt somewhere else. Keep bills, discharge sheets and a short daily note on pain, sleep and missed work. Never sign a broad medical release for the other side's insurer. It lets them dig through years of unrelated records and blame an old condition for your new injury.

Buses, public vehicles and the six-month claim rule

Wilmington is served by LA Metro Local Line 232, which runs between Long Beach and LAX along Anaheim Street and Pacific Coast Highway, with a Wilmington stop at Anaheim and Avalon. Local Line 205 runs between the Willowbrook/Rosa Parks Station and San Pedro, and LADOT operates the DASH Wilmington shuttle. If a city vehicle, such as a DASH bus, a city truck or a police car, caused your crash, the rules change. You must present a written claim to the public entity within six months of the crash (Government Code section 911.2). For the City of Los Angeles, that means the Los Angeles City Clerk's Claims Department at 200 North Spring Street, Room 395, City Hall, filed by mail, in person or through the city's online portal. The City Clerk's help line is 213-978-1133. The City Attorney's office does not take new claims. If the city rejects the claim in writing, you generally have six months from that notice to sue (Government Code section 945.6). Metro and county claims follow their own procedures, and we confirm the right office before the clock runs out. A late claim can sometimes be saved, but do not count on it. If a public vehicle may be involved, call us within days.

Where a Wilmington injury case is filed and how long you have

Most people expect a Wilmington injury lawsuit to land in the downtown courthouse. It does not. Los Angeles Superior Court Local Rule 2.3 requires an unlimited civil bodily-injury case, meaning one worth more than $35,000, to be filed in the district where the crash happened. The court's Filing Court Locator sends ZIP codes 90744 and 90748 to the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse at 275 Magnolia Ave. in Long Beach. Smaller limited civil cases from those ZIP codes go to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse at 111 N. Hill St. in downtown Los Angeles. Most cases settle without a trial, but we prepare each one as if a Long Beach jury could decide it. The deadline to sue a private driver or company for injury is two years from the crash (Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1). Three years applies to vehicle damage. California also uses pure comparative negligence, so if you share some blame, you can still recover, and your award drops by your percentage of fault (Li v. Yellow Cab Co.). A missed deadline can end your case, so do not wait until the last month.

The crashes we handle for Wilmington drivers, riders and walkers

Moe Abdallah Law, P.C. handles motor-vehicle injury cases only. That includes car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle crashes, pedestrian and bicycle collisions, Uber and Lyft crashes, bus accidents, hit-and-run cases, uninsured and underinsured motorist claims, drunk-driving crashes, and the brain injuries and wrongful death cases that come from them. Where buses, bikes and people on foot share the same blocks, those categories overlap. A pedestrian hit near Avalon, a cyclist on the Anaheim Street bike lanes, a passenger in a rideshare on the Harbor Freeway, and a driver rear-ended on Pacific Coast Highway all have different evidence and different insurance. We work each one differently. Past results do not predict a similar outcome, but recent cases include a $105,000 recovery for an uninsured client with a broken sternum and a $100,000 policy-limit uninsured motorist recovery for a woman rear-ended by a driver who fled, with no police report, after other firms turned her down. You pay no fee unless we win, the first call is free, and Moe keeps you updated by call and text. Call (323) 716-1992, or open the page for the crash type that fits you.

Frequently Asked Questions