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Reviewed by David Gammill, California trial attorney · Last reviewed: October 11, 2026
If an LAPD officer or a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy shot someone in your family, you have a civil case that belongs to you, not to the Medical Examiner, the District Attorney, or the Department of Justice. Under California law an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes it is necessary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, and the whole encounter, including what the officer did in the minutes before the shot, is judged. The deadline for the state-law claim is six months, and in Los Angeles it must go to the right office. Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers is a trial firm, led by a former Los Angeles County prosecutor, that handles police shooting and wrongful death cases across the city and the county. The firm has recovered more than $100 million for California clients across verdicts and settlements. Its results include a $21.1 million wrongful death verdict, a $16 million school sexual abuse verdict, and a $12 million whistleblower retaliation verdict; every case is different, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
If an officer shot you or someone you love, call 310-750-4149 now. The first conversation is free and confidential, and the clock on the evidence and on the claim is already running.
When the force was not necessary. Before 2020, California judged police shootings under the federal rule only: was the officer’s decision objectively reasonable, from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, under the circumstances the officer faced. Assembly Bill 392 rewrote Penal Code § 835a. Today an officer is justified in using deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes, based on the totality of the circumstances, that it is necessary for one of two reasons: to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or to another person, or to apprehend a fleeing person for a felony that threatened or resulted in death or serious bodily injury, when the officer reasonably believes that person will cause death or serious bodily injury to someone else unless immediately apprehended. In the second case, the officer must, where feasible, identify as a peace officer and warn that deadly force may be used. The statute defines “imminent” as a threat that, from appearances, must be instantly confronted, not a fear of future harm no matter how great. It defines “totality of the circumstances” to include the conduct of the officer and the subject leading up to the use of force. And it says an officer may not use deadly force against a person based only on the danger that person poses to themselves. Our guide to what excessive force is under California and federal law sets the statute’s text beside the federal cases.
The federal claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 runs on the Fourth Amendment rule from Graham v. Connor and Tennessee v. Garner: deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect is unreasonable unless the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury. In 2025 the Supreme Court decided Barnes v. Felix and rejected the “moment of threat” approach some courts had used, holding that the reasonableness inquiry looks at the totality of the circumstances and has no time limit, so what happened in the minutes before the shot is part of the federal case too.
Every California officer was trained on deadly force from a published workbook, and the workbook is evidence. The Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training publishes the student workbook for Learning Domain 20, Use of Force and De-escalation, revised in July 2025, and its chapter on deadly force tracks the statute. It teaches that fear alone does not justify deadly force and that there must be objective facts behind the officer’s belief; that an imminent threat means the person has the present ability, opportunity, and apparent intent to cause death or serious injury right now; that officers shall evaluate each situation in light of its own circumstances and use other available resources and techniques when it is reasonably safe to do so; that a homicide by an officer is not justified when the officer is pursuing a nonviolent felon, or a person who does not present a threat to life, or a misdemeanant; and, in an earlier chapter, that time, distance, and cover are tactics an officer should use to slow a situation down when it is safe to. The workbook also tells officers that a department’s own policy and training may be considered as part of the totality of the circumstances in judging whether the officer acted reasonably. That is the comparison we run first: the video and the dispatch audio against what the officer was taught, line by line.
Three official reviews follow a fatal shooting, and none of them decides whether the family recovers. First, the death investigation. In Los Angeles County the coroner is a separate county department, the Department of Medical Examiner, not part of the Sheriff, and it determines the cause and manner of death; its file, the autopsy, and the toxicology are evidence the family’s own experts will test. Second, the criminal review. The District Attorney decides whether to file charges against the officer, and that decision answers a different question under a different standard: whether a prosecutor can prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury. Third, when the person who was killed was unarmed, or there is a reasonable dispute about whether they were armed, Government Code § 12525.3 assigns the investigation to the state Attorney General, who must publish a written report with a statement of the facts and a conclusion on each issue, and must prosecute if charges are warranted. The statute says nothing about civil liability. A no-charge decision, a cause-of-death finding, and a Department of Justice report are all evidence we read closely, but the civil case is decided by a jury on a preponderance of the evidence, with discovery the criminal reviewers never had, and it goes forward whether or not anyone is charged.
When a police shooting takes a life, California law creates two claims. The wrongful death claim under Code of Civil Procedure § 377.60 belongs to the surviving spouse, domestic partner, and children, and to others the statute names when there are none; it recovers the family’s own loss, including the loss of the person’s love, companionship, guidance, and financial support. The survival claim belongs to the estate and recovers what the person who died could have claimed. Under California law, a survival claim filed in 2026 or later no longer includes the pain and suffering the person experienced before death, but when an officer’s violation of federal civil rights caused the death, the Ninth Circuit has held that limit does not apply to the federal claim (Chaudhry v. City of Los Angeles, 2014). Our explainer on who can file a wrongful death lawsuit in California walks through the standing rules. The federal § 1983 claim runs alongside both.
A police shooting case recovers the family’s economic and non-economic losses, and in a survival action the decedent’s own losses. Punitive damages, which exist to punish and deter, can be awarded against an individual officer whose conduct was malicious or oppressive, although California does not allow them against the City or the County itself. Both the Bane Act and the federal statute let the court order the defendants to pay the family’s attorney’s fees when they win. And under the California Supreme Court’s decision in B.B. v. County of Los Angeles, an officer found liable for an intentional tort cannot reduce the non-economic damages by pointing to the fault of others.
Six months, the right office, and a preservation letter this week. Under Government Code § 911.2, the state-law claims must be presented in writing within six months of the death, before any lawsuit, and the agency decides where it goes: an LAPD officer means a claim to the City, and a Sheriff’s deputy, including one at a station in any of the more than forty contract cities or in the jails, means a claim to the County. Our Los Angeles civil rights attorney page has the full agency map. The City of Los Angeles accepts a claim for damages only through the Office of the City Clerk, online, by mail, or in person at 200 North Spring Street; a claim sent to the police station or the City Attorney does not count. The County of Los Angeles takes its claims through the Executive Officer of the Board of Supervisors at 500 West Temple Street. Once the claim is rejected, or deemed rejected, the lawsuit on the state claims must be filed within six months of the rejection notice. Our guide to the California government claim deadline explains the form and the late-claim rules, and our guide to the wrongful death filing deadline in California explains how the six-month claim and the two-year statute fit together. The federal claim borrows the two-year period under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1.
The evidence has a shorter clock than either. California makes body camera and dash camera video of a police shooting public under Government Code § 7923.625 within 45 days, unless the agency shows that release would substantially interfere with an active investigation, and it gives the family of a person who was killed a right to see the video. Our guide to police body camera footage in California explains how to request it and how long agencies must keep it. Our first act in a shooting case is a written preservation demand to the agency covering every camera, the dispatch and radio traffic, the computer-aided dispatch log, the scene photographs, and any surveillance or doorbell video nearby, followed by our own canvass for witnesses while memories are fresh.
The honest answer is that it depends on what your family needs, and there are three things worth checking before you hire anyone. First, trial experience against public entities: the City and the County rarely pay fair value for a death until they believe a jury downtown will hear the case, and a lawyer who has tried cases to verdict is priced differently by the other side. Second, familiarity with how a shooting case is built: the government claim, the preservation demand, the 45-day video rule, the POST training materials, the use-of-force expert, and the qualified immunity defense officers raise in federal court are their own body of law. Third, the fee arrangement in writing: a contingency fee means the family pays nothing unless the case recovers. Ask any lawyer you are considering about all three.
We know the other side of the table. David Gammill, a former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney, has tried over 100 cases to verdict, and our attorneys bring more than 40 years of combined legal experience to every case we take. A former prosecutor has worked alongside police officers, read thousands of their reports, and knows how a use-of-force report is written and where it tends to diverge from the video. The firm’s results include a $1 million recovery in an excessive force case and a $21.1 million wrongful death verdict in a Los Angeles County jury trial against the State of California over a highway crash cushion. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. We prepare every shooting case for trial from the first call, because that is what moves the City or the County to settle. The consultation is free, there is no fee unless we win, and the firm answers calls in English and Spanish. Families across Los Angeles County have trusted this firm with cases against the agencies that police their own neighborhoods.
The state-law claims are filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, which assigns the courthouse by where the incident happened and the kind of case; for most incidents inside the city, that is the Central District in downtown Los Angeles at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, 111 North Hill Street. The federal § 1983 claim can be filed in state court or in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and for Los Angeles County that means the Western Division at the First Street Courthouse, 350 West First Street. Cases that plead both are often moved to federal court by the defendants. Which forum is better is a judgment call that depends on the facts, the agency, and the judge, and it is one of the first strategic decisions we make with you.
No. Fear alone does not justify deadly force under California law. The statute requires an imminent threat, which it defines as one that must be instantly confronted, and the officer’s belief has to be objectively reasonable on the facts the officer actually knew. The officer’s own training says the same thing: a statement of fear is not enough without objective factors behind it.
Often, yes. A weapon is one fact in the totality, not the end of the analysis. The questions are whether the threat was imminent at the moment of the shot, whether the officer’s own conduct created the confrontation, whether a warning was feasible and given, whether distance and cover were available, and whether the officer kept shooting after the threat had ended.
The public entity is the County of Los Angeles, because the Sheriff’s Department runs the jails, and the claim goes to the County within six months. The legal standard for force against a person in custody is its own body of law, and a death in custody also raises medical-care and failure-to-protect claims. The evidence clock is the same: jail video is overwritten on a schedule.
No. Findings by the Police Commission, the Sheriff’s civilian oversight body, or the Inspector General about whether a shooting was within policy are discipline decisions. They can be useful evidence, but they do not bar a civil case and do not decide it.
Nothing upfront and nothing unless we win. We work on a contingency fee, which means the fee is a percentage of the recovery and is paid only out of the recovery. Our page on what a personal injury lawyer costs explains the arrangement in detail.
If the force did not involve a firearm, our Los Angeles police brutality and excessive force lawyer page covers Tasers, batons, police dogs, and restraint cases. California’s Bane Act, Civil Code § 52.1, is the state statute behind most of these claims.
Gammill Law represents families in police shooting and wrongful death cases across Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. A free, confidential conversation will tell you whether you have a claim, which entity must receive it, and how much time you have. We work on a contingency fee under a written contingency fee agreement that complies with California law, so there is no fee unless we win.
Get your free case evaluation or call 310-750-4149. You will speak with people who handle these cases, and you will pay no fee unless we win.
This page is attorney advertising and general information, not legal advice for any specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes are fact-specific; consult a licensed California attorney about your own circumstances. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
