Encino Personal Injury Attorneys
When someone else’s carelessness causes a serious injury in Encino, Burg & Brock can work out how it happened, identify who may be legally responsible, secure evidence before it disappears and document what the injury has actually cost you.
Encino is a district of the City of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, not a separate city. That single fact decides which agency takes the report, which public body a claim may have to be presented to, and how quickly that has to happen.
Encino · San Fernando Valley · City of Los Angeles
Being hurt is not, on its own, a claim. Four things generally have to line up: someone owed you a legal responsibility, they fell short of it, that failure caused your injury, and the injury produced losses the law recognizes.
Who that someone turns out to be depends entirely on the facts. It may be a driver, a building owner, a property manager, a homeowners association, a business, a contractor, a manufacturer or a public entity — and in Encino it is often more than one at once, because so much of the area is multi-unit residential and medical office space where ownership, management and maintenance sit with different companies.
You are not expected to have any of this worked out before you call. Most people who contact a firm are genuinely unsure whether what happened to them counts, and that uncertainty is ordinary rather than a reason to wait.
What must be shown
Legal responsibility
That the other party owed you a duty to act with reasonable care.
A failure to meet it
Something done, or left undone, that fell short of that duty.
Causation
That the failure produced the injury, rather than something unrelated to it.
Losses the law recognizes
Treatment, income, future care, or the effect on what you are able to do.
These elements are not identical in every type of claim, and how each one is proved depends on the facts.
Not every serious injury here happens on a road, and the most serious ones are rarely the simplest. Catastrophic injuries — brain, spinal cord and paralysis cases — are handled differently from the outset, because the largest part of the claim is care that has not happened yet. Each of these has a page explaining how that type of claim is handled.
EncinoSan Fernando Valley, City of Los Angeles
Who takes the report depends on where you were. It is worth knowing before you start chasing one.
Encino is a neighborhood within the City of Los Angeles rather than a city of its own, so there is no Encino police department. Incidents on the surface streets are generally handled by the Los Angeles Police Department, and Encino falls inside its West Valley Division.
The freeway is the exception, and it catches people out. A collision on the 101 through Encino is normally the California Highway Patrol’s, not the LAPD’s, even though the on-ramp and the crash site can be a few hundred yards apart. Two incidents on the same evening can therefore produce reports held by two different agencies. Asking the wrong one is one of the more common ways several weeks disappear at the start of a claim.
The other thing worth knowing about Encino is what it is built from. Ventura Boulevard is lined with medical and professional offices, and much of the residential area is mid-rise apartment and condominium buildings with shared stairwells, garages, walkways and pool areas. A large share of the serious injuries here happen in those buildings rather than on a road — and there, no police report exists at all. The useful evidence is whatever the owner, the management company or the security contractor recorded, and that is exactly the material that gets overwritten.
Who controls the building
often decides the claim.
You do not need any of this to call. Bring whatever you already have. Obtaining the rest is part of the work, and it is not something you are expected to assemble on your own while you are injured.
Camera systems overwrite themselves. Maintenance logs get archived. A damaged vehicle is repaired or sold. None of that stops a claim being built later — it simply means there is less left to find, which is the practical reason to ask early.
What to ask for, and who holds it
The report
Held by whichever agency attended: LAPD West Valley Division for the surface streets, the California Highway Patrol for the 101.
Building records
Maintenance logs, repair requests, prior complaints and incident reports — held by the owner or the management company, not by any public body.
Camera footage
Held by the business, the building or the security contractor. Many systems keep only days, not months.
What you already hold
Photographs, messages, names taken at the scene and the first medical notes. Usually the easiest evidence to lose track of.
If you do not know which agency attended, that is something we can establish for you.
Where something happened decides what can still be recovered afterwards: a police or CHP report, footage from a neighboring business, a building’s own camera system, dashcam video, witness details, the condition of the roadway or the walkway, and photographs taken at the time.
In a building it also decides something less obvious — who was responsible for the thing that caused the injury. A broken stair light in an Encino apartment building might be the owner’s, the management company’s, the homeowners association’s or a maintenance contractor’s, and which of those it is comes out of the paperwork rather than out of the accident itself.
None of this material is guaranteed to exist, and we will not pretend to know which cameras face a particular stairwell. Some systems overwrite automatically, so anything relevant is far better identified early than reconstructed late.
Depending on the facts, any of these may be responsible, and sometimes several at once. Appearing on this list does not make a party liable in any given case.
A driver
Where their driving caused or contributed to what happened.
A building owner
Where the condition of the property played a part in the injury.
A property manager
Where day-to-day control and maintenance sat with a management company.
A homeowners association
Where the hazard was in a common area the association is responsible for.
An employer or business
Where a vehicle or a worker was engaged in the work of the business.
A contractor
Where work on the site created or left the hazard.
A manufacturer
Where a defect in a product is supported by evidence.
A public entity
Where a road or property condition is legally attributable to one, such as the City of Los Angeles.
An animal’s owner
California treats responsibility for a dog bite differently from most claims.
Medical expenses
Future medical care
Lost earnings
Reduced earning capacity
Pain and suffering
Property damage
Other supported losses
Each of these is proved a different way. That is why the paperwork people think is irrelevant often turns out to matter.
What can be claimed depends on the facts and on the law that applies. The list is the categories that usually come up — it is not a menu, and it is not a prediction about any particular case.
Some of these are proved with paperwork: bills, pay records, tax returns. Others are not reducible to a receipt. Where an injury is serious enough to change what someone can do for the rest of their life, the two largest figures in the claim are usually the care still ahead and the earnings that will now never happen, and neither of those exists as a document yet. Both have to be built from medical and economic evidence.
A wrongful death claim is measured differently from an injured person’s own claim, and the people entitled to bring one are defined by statute. If a death is involved, that is a conversation to have directly rather than from a page.
No responsible case value can be worked out from a location or a diagnosis alone.
What can honestly be said, and when.
It depends on who is responsible and whether that is disputed, on any share of fault attributed to you, on the severity of the injury, on treatment already had and care still ahead, on income lost, on any effect on earning capacity, on the insurance and assets actually available to pay, and on how well the evidence holds up when it is tested.
That last one matters more than people expect in building cases. A claim against an apartment owner can turn on whether anyone had complained about the same hazard before, and the answer to that is either in the records or it is not.
Anyone who gives you a figure before those questions are answered is guessing, and a guess is worth nothing to you. What a firm can tell you early is which of them look straightforward and which look contested.
General guidance, not a checklist you have to complete before contacting anyone.
Five stages, in the order they happen.
Free consultation
What happened, what injuries resulted, and what has already been said to an insurer.
Investigation and evidence
Reports, footage, building records, witnesses and medical notes, gathered while they still exist.
Evaluating the losses
Treatment had, care still ahead, income affected, and what cannot be measured in receipts.
Negotiation
Presenting the claim to the insurers involved and answering what they dispute.
Litigation where appropriate
Filing suit where a claim cannot be resolved on acceptable terms. Whether a case resolves or is tried depends on its facts.
2 years*
California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 sets two years for an action for injury to, or the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another.
The asterisk is doing real work. Two years is not the only clock that can run on an injury, and in Encino one of the alternatives comes up more often than most people would guess.
Encino is part of the City of Los Angeles, and that matters here. Where a public entity may be responsible — a road surface, a sidewalk, a traffic signal, a city-owned property — Government Code section 911.2 requires a claim for death or injury to a person to be presented not later than six months after the cause of action accrues. Because Encino is city territory rather than its own municipality, the City of Los Angeles is the entity in question, and six months is substantially shorter than two years. It also applies before any lawsuit is filed, not instead of one.
Other situations can follow different timing again, including injuries to minors, injuries that are not discovered until later, and medical malpractice — which is worth noting on a street lined with medical offices. Which rule applies to a particular injury is a question about that injury’s facts, and it is one of the first things worth asking rather than assuming.
Worth asking before you sign anything. Any firm, not just this one.
The firm handles injury claims on a contingency fee. In plain terms, the attorney’s fee is a share of a recovery rather than an hourly bill, and if there is no recovery there is no attorney’s fee.
Fees and case costs are two different things, and it is worth being clear about that before you sign anything. Costs are the expenses of running a case — obtaining records, filing fees, expert work. Ask how costs are handled if a case does not resolve, and ask for the answer in writing.
The firm’s Valley office is on Sherman Oaks Avenue, a short distance east of Encino along Ventura Boulevard. Visiting details are on the office page.
Meet the lawyer
Cameron Yadidi Brock is the founding attorney of the Law Offices of Burg & Brock, A Professional Law Corporation, and is responsible for the content of this page. He has been licensed to practice law in California since June 1996.
His practice is injury work: motor vehicle collisions, premises injuries, catastrophic injury and wrongful death. Every California attorney has a public license record showing status, admission date and any discipline. You do not have to take a website’s word for it — on this firm or on any other.
Which attorney or staff member works on a particular matter depends on the case. Ask who your point of contact will be when you speak to the firm.
Generally it comes down to whether someone else’s failure to take reasonable care caused an injury that cost you something. You do not have to work that out for yourself; describing what happened is usually enough for a first conversation.
Encino is part of the City of Los Angeles, so there is no Encino police department. Incidents on the surface streets are generally handled by the Los Angeles Police Department, and Encino sits within its West Valley Division. A collision on the 101 is normally the California Highway Patrol’s instead. If you are not sure which agency attended, that is something we can find out.
It depends on who controlled the thing that caused the injury, which is not always the person you rent from. The owner, a management company, a homeowners association or a maintenance contractor can each be responsible for different parts of a building. Working out which one applies comes from the maintenance records, the repair requests and any earlier complaints about the same hazard.
Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 sets two years for an injury action, but it is not the only clock. Because Encino is City of Los Angeles territory, a claim involving a road, a sidewalk or other city property falls under Government Code section 911.2, which requires a claim to be presented within six months. Injuries to minors, injuries discovered later and medical malpractice can follow different timing again.
Injury claims are handled on a contingency fee, so the attorney’s fee comes out of a recovery rather than up front, and there is no attorney’s fee without one. Case costs are separate from fees — ask how those are treated before you sign anything.
California reduces a recovery by your share of responsibility rather than ending the claim. How that share gets decided depends on the evidence, and an insurer’s early view of it is not the final word.
Yes, and it is common. Most falls inside a building produce no police report at all, because no police attended. Obtaining whatever record does exist is part of the work.
No. A first conversation can happen entirely by phone, and a case can be handled without you traveling. The firm’s Valley office is on Sherman Oaks Avenue, a short distance east of Encino along Ventura Boulevard; visiting details are on the office page.
Mostly the medical picture. A claim is hard to value while treatment is ongoing and the full extent of an injury is still unclear, which is especially true of brain and spinal injuries. Disputed fault and multiple insurers add time as well. Nobody can honestly give you a date at the outset.
Tell us what happened and we can tell you whether there is a claim worth pursuing, what it would involve and what the next step is. There is no charge for the conversation and no obligation after it.
Submitting a form or calling does not create an attorney-client relationship. Please do not send confidential information until a relationship has been established in writing.
What happens when you get in touch
Prefer to speak to someone now? Call (888) 528-8595. You do not need a report, photographs or paperwork to have the first conversation.
Choose which categories of cookies and tracking technologies you allow on burgbrock.com. Strictly necessary cookies are always on so the site can function.
Required for the site to load, keep you signed in, and remember your preference choice. Always active.
Lets us see which pages people visit so we can improve the site. No personal data is sold.
Allows ad partners to measure the performance of ads you may have seen and show more relevant ads.
Powers extras like chat, embedded video, and remembered form fields. Turning these off may break some features.
