Pasadena Wrongful Death Lawyer

Someone you love left home for Lake Avenue, Colorado Boulevard, or the 210 and never came back. Now you are planning a funeral, and an insurance adjuster keeps calling for a statement. You should not have to handle both. Moe Abdallah Law, P.C. is a Los Angeles firm that takes only motor-vehicle injury cases, including wrongful death after a crash. If you need a wrongful death attorney in Pasadena, this page covers who can bring the claim, how long you have, where fatal crashes cluster in the city, and what Moe does in the first days. Call (323) 716-1992 any hour. The first conversation is free, and we ask nothing of you until you are ready.

Who has the right to sue when a Pasadena crash kills someone

California decides who can bring a wrongful death case, and you do not get to pick. Under Code of Civil Procedure 377.60, the surviving spouse or registered domestic partner and the children come first. So do the children of a child who has died. If the person left no children or grandchildren, the people who would inherit under California's intestate rules may sue, which can include parents or siblings. Some people qualify even with others ahead of them, as long as they relied on the person who died for support. That can include a putative spouse, stepchildren, and parents. A minor who lived in the household for the previous 180 days and got at least half of their support from the person who died can also qualify. In a blended family, or when a parent or stepchild depended on the person who died, the question of who stands first is not always simple. We sort it out early, before anyone in your Pasadena family signs anything. The court divides any wrongful death award among the heirs. A separate survival claim belongs to the estate. The person who steps in for the estate signs a sworn statement and attaches a certified death certificate. Moe walks you through both before we file anything.

Two clocks, and the shorter one catches families off guard

Against a private driver or company, you generally have two years to file suit (Code of Civil Procedure 335.1), and courts usually count from the date of death. Two years sounds long. It is not, because the evidence that proves fault disappears in weeks. Traffic camera footage, nearby business video, and vehicle data can be overwritten fast. The clock gets much shorter when a public agency may share the blame. A bad road design, a broken signal, a city vehicle, or a Pasadena Transit bus can bring in the government claim rules. You must present a written claim within six months of the death (Government Code 911.2). If the agency rejects it in writing, you have six months from that notice to file suit (Government Code 945.6). Miss the first window and you can ask to file a late claim. You must ask within a reasonable time and no later than one year after the death (Government Code 911.4), and approval is not automatic. In Pasadena, claims against the city go through the City Attorney's Liability and Claims office. The city's website would not load for our research tools, so confirm the filing method in a browser or let us handle it. Moe checks for a government angle on day one, so your family does not lose a case to a date nobody told you about.

Where deadly and serious crashes concentrate: Lake, Washington, Orange Grove, and Colorado

Pasadena's own safety work puts numbers on the problem. The city studied 2020 through 2024 collisions and found that 13 percent of its roads account for 80 percent of fatal and serious-injury crashes. Those safety corridors include Lake Avenue, Washington Boulevard, Orange Grove Boulevard, and Colorado Boulevard. Sunset Avenue, East Colorado Boulevard, and Allen Avenue were added as community-generated corridors among the plan's 15 priority projects, and the city set a goal of zero traffic deaths by 2035. State rankings point the same way. The 2023 California Office of Traffic Safety rankings placed Pasadena 7th of 62 similar-sized cities for total people killed or injured, 5th for pedestrian victims, and 1st for pedestrian victims aged 65 and older. Rankings like these do not prove fault in any one crash, but they show the risks on Pasadena streets are well documented. Freeway crashes are a separate group. The I-210, the SR-134, and the Arroyo Seco Parkway, whose freeway section ends at Glenarm Street, run through the city, and the CHP usually handles those scenes. Your loved one may have been driving, riding, walking, or biking. Either way, the first job is to pin down exactly where and how the crash happened, then find every camera and witness near that spot.

The police report, the medical examiner, and the first weeks

Two agencies may hold the story of what happened. On city streets, the Pasadena Police Department writes the collision report. You request a copy through the department's public records page on the city's website. On the 210, the 134, or the 110, the CHP is usually the agency on scene. A fatal crash often brings a traffic investigation team that takes measurements, photographs, and vehicle data, and its full report can take weeks or months to come out. The county medical examiner also reviews a death after a crash, and the death certificate and cause-of-death findings feed into the claim. Moe does not wait for any of those documents. In the first days he sends preservation letters to the other driver, the insurer, and any company involved. He canvasses Old Pasadena shops, parking structures, and transit stops along the route for video before someone erases it. If a trucking company or a rideshare app is involved, he asks for electronic logs, engine data, or trip records. He also tells you what to avoid. Do not give a recorded statement to the other side's insurance company. Do not sign a medical release or accept a quick check. Send those calls to us. A crash with injuries or over $1,000 in damage also triggers a DMV SR-1 report within 10 days, and we make sure it gets filed.

What a Pasadena family can recover, and the fault arguments to expect

A wrongful death claim covers what your family lost because the person is gone. That can include funeral and burial costs, the income and benefits the person would have provided, the loss of household help, and the loss of love, companionship, comfort, and guidance. The court decides what is just under all the circumstances and splits the award among the heirs. The survival claim works differently. It belongs to the estate and covers the person's own losses before death, such as hospital bills from Huntington Hospital or another emergency room, and lost wages. It can also seek punitive damages when the driver acted with a conscious disregard for safety, which can include some drunk-driving crashes. For survival claims filed on or after January 1, 2026, the person's pain and suffering is no longer recoverable. Expect the insurer to argue fault. California follows pure comparative negligence under Li v. Yellow Cab Co., so a family can still recover when the person who died was partly to blame, though the award drops by that percentage. Under Horwich v. Superior Court, that reduction applies to heirs too. Insurers push this hardest against pedestrians and cyclists, claiming a person crossed mid-block or was hard to see. When several defendants share fault, Proposition 51 makes each one pay noneconomic damages only in proportion to their own share, so finding every responsible party matters. Moe builds the case to answer those arguments before the insurer makes them.

Huntington Hospital, the courthouse, and how Moe runs a fatal-crash case

Huntington Hospital on West California Boulevard in Pasadena says it has the largest emergency department and the only Level II trauma center in the San Gabriel Valley. If your loved one was taken there or to another hospital and lived for hours or days after the crash, those chart notes, bills, and the trauma team's records become evidence for the survival claim and for fault. We request them early. Cases that go to court are heard by the Los Angeles County Superior Court. The Pasadena Courthouse sits at 300 East Walnut Street, but the court's own page does not say whether injury cases are filed there, so we confirm the filing location before any lawsuit goes in. Moe handles cases personally and updates you by call and text, so no case manager you never meet stands between you and your lawyer. He is a Southwestern Law School graduate, State Bar No. 348886, and the firm takes only motor-vehicle injury cases. We recovered $100,000 in a policy-limit uninsured motorist claim for a woman hit by a driver who fled, after other firms turned her down. Every case is different, and a past result is no promise of a similar outcome. You pay no fee unless we win, and Se Habla Español.

Talk to a Pasadena wrongful death 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 wrongful death representation →

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