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Gammill Law’s results include a $21.1 million wrongful death verdict, a $16 million school sexual abuse verdict, and a $12 million whistleblower retaliation verdict.
Reviewed by David Gammill, California trial attorney · Last reviewed: October 19, 2026
If you or a family member suffered a traumatic brain injury in Los Angeles, you are dealing with the most underestimated injury in California law. Brain injuries hide from X-rays, from insurance adjusters, and sometimes from the injured person themselves, while the costs, medical, cognitive, and financial, compound for years. Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers is a South Bay trial firm that builds brain injury cases across the City of Los Angeles to capture that full future, not just the emergency room bill. 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 a head injury from an accident is disrupting your life or your family’s, talk to a lawyer before you accept anything from an insurance company. Call 310-750-4149 for a free consultation, or reach us through our contact page.
The defining problem of a TBI case is proof of an injury that does not show up in a photograph. A broken leg is visible on an X-ray; a brain injury often is not. Standard emergency room imaging can be normal while the person goes on to struggle with memory, concentration, word-finding, mood changes, sleep disruption, headaches, and fatigue. Insurance companies exploit that gap by pointing to the clean scan and the walk-out discharge. The answer is documentation: consistent medical follow-up, neurological and neuropsychological evaluation, and the observations of the people who see the change day to day. In a brain injury case, spouses, coworkers, and friends are witnesses to the injury itself.
The second problem is that the person who was hurt is often the last to know. Brain injuries are frequently permanent, and the effects can take days, months, or even years to show fully. Even if you are not experiencing dramatic symptoms, a head injury from a crash, a fall or an assault calls for a medical evaluation and a conversation with a lawyer before any offer is signed, because an early settlement closes the case on an injury whose shape is not yet known.
Nationally, falls and motor vehicle crashes are the most common injuries leading to TBI-related hospitalization, according to the CDC. That matches what we see in this city: car and motorcycle crashes on the freeways and the wide arterials; pedestrians struck in crosswalks and mid-block; falls on unsafe property, from a broken stair in an apartment building to an unlit parking structure; and blows to the head in assaults that a property owner should have prevented. By LAPD’s count, crashes on city streets that killed someone or caused a suspected serious injury numbered 650 in the first four months of 2026, through May 2; those are LAPD-reported crashes, not the freeway crashes the Highway Patrol reports, and a serious injury in that count is often a head injury. A brain injury does not require a direct blow to the head or loss of consciousness; violent movement of the head, the whiplash motion of a rear-end crash, can injure the brain against the inside of the skull.
Each of those mechanisms is its own case with its own first steps. A head injury in a Los Angeles car crash turns on fault and on the insurance available. A rider’s head injury in a Los Angeles motorcycle crash turns on beating the assumption that the rider was at fault, and a missing helmet does not end the claim. A pedestrian’s head injury is covered on our Los Angeles pedestrian accident page. A fall or an assault on someone else’s property in Los Angeles turns on what the owner knew and what it did about it. This page covers what every one of those cases becomes when the injury is to the brain.
Three things carry a brain injury case: liability, causation, and the future. Liability is proving who caused the accident, the same as any injury claim. Causation is connecting the cognitive and emotional changes to the accident, which is where the defense fights hardest and where treating physicians, neurologists, and neuropsychological testing matter. The future is the piece untrained eyes miss: what treatment, therapy, supervision, and lost career trajectory look like over a lifetime, established through medical and economic analysis. Settling before the future is understood means settling for the emergency room bill and donating the rest.
The evidence for the first two is gathered early and disappears fast: the collision report, which the Los Angeles Police Department writes for a city street and the California Highway Patrol writes for a freeway; the ambulance and emergency department records, which fix the first account of the head injury in time; vehicle event data; camera footage from City signals, Metro buses and nearby businesses before it is overwritten; and the incident report and maintenance records when the injury happened on someone’s property. The evidence for the third is built over months, and it is why a brain injury case should not be rushed to a number.
A California brain injury claim can include past and future medical care, rehabilitation and cognitive therapy, attendant care where needed, lost wages and diminished earning capacity, and non-economic damages for the changes to memory, personality, relationships, and daily life. In serious TBI cases the future components routinely dwarf the past ones. Where the conduct that caused the injury was malicious, oppressive, or fraudulent, such as a drunk driver or a property owner who ignored a known hazard, Civil Code § 3294 allows punitive damages on clear and convincing proof; they are never guaranteed. When a brain injury is part of a larger catastrophic injury, our guide to spinal cord injury claims in California explains how lifetime-care cases are valued.
The insurance reality makes early strategy decisions matter. California requires drivers to carry only minimum liability coverage of $30,000 per injured person, $60,000 per accident, and $15,000 for property damage (Vehicle Code § 16451, for policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2025). A serious brain injury can exhaust those limits in the first hospital week, which is why identifying every source of recovery, additional defendants, employer liability, umbrella policies, and your own underinsured motorist coverage, is core work in a TBI case, not an afterthought.
A brain injury on public property or at the hands of a public employee adds a defendant and a deadline. A dangerous condition of a public road, sidewalk, park or building can be the basis of a claim under Government Code § 835; in Los Angeles the City owns the local streets, signals and sidewalks, Caltrans owns the freeways and state highways, and the County owns its roads, parks and facilities. A City or County vehicle in the crash, including a Metro bus, puts that entity in the case too. Every one of those claims runs on the six-month clock described below, and what the entity knew about the hazard, and when, is casework, never a conclusion drawn in advance.
Two years for most claims. Most California TBI lawsuits must be filed within two years of the injury under CCP § 335.1, the two-year statute of limitations. Brain injury symptoms that emerge gradually make people wait; the deadlines do not wait with them, and the discovery rule rarely helps when the crash or fall itself was known on the day it happened.
Six months when a public entity is involved. If the City of Los Angeles, the County, Caltrans, LA Metro or another public entity may share responsibility, a written claim must be presented to that entity within six months, before any lawsuit, under Government Code § 911.2. The City of Los Angeles accepts a claim only through the Office of the City Clerk, not the City Attorney. Our guide to the California government claim deadline walks through the sequence.
Where the case is heard. Most brain injury lawsuits arising inside the City of Los Angeles are filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Central District and assigned to an independent calendar judge at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, 111 North Hill Street, downtown; the court assigns the courthouse by where the injury happened, so an injury in the Harbor, the San Fernando Valley or the Westside can land in another district.
When a head injury proves fatal, whether at the scene or weeks later, the family’s claim becomes a wrongful death case, with its own rules on who may file and a deadline that runs from the date of death. Our Los Angeles wrongful death page explains who can bring the claim and what it covers.
Start with trial experience, because insurers price an invisible injury fairly only when the lawyer across the table will put the treating neurologist and the family in front of a jury. David Gammill has tried over 100 cases to verdict, first as a prosecutor during seven years as a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney and then as a trial lawyer for injured people. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Then ask two practical questions. Has this lawyer taken a brain injury case to a jury, or only settled one? And who will actually handle my file day to day? The firm’s record is set out below.
Trial reputation is leverage in every negotiation. The firm’s results include a $21.1 million wrongful death verdict and a $16 million school sexual abuse verdict, each a real jury verdict in a specific case; outcomes always depend on the facts. Insurers price a claim differently when they know the lawyer on the other side will finish the fight in front of a jury. See our case results.
We work on a contingency fee: nothing upfront, no hourly bills, and a fee only out of the recovery, under a written contingency fee agreement that complies with California law.
Brain injury cases take time to value correctly, and we do not push a family to a number before the medicine supports one. Our attorneys bring more than 40 years of combined legal experience to every case we take. An initial consultation can be held by Zoom video, and if travel is hard, we meet clients at the hospital, at a rehabilitation facility, at home, or wherever recovery requires. Our phones are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Possibly, yes. Standard emergency imaging often misses the injuries that matter most in these cases. What proves the injury is the medical course that follows: neurological and neuropsychological evaluation, consistent treatment, and the accounts of the people who see the change in you. A clean scan is the start of the defense’s argument, not the end of your claim.
It is common, and it does not defeat the claim. Delayed symptoms are part of how brain injuries present, and the medical record of when you first reported them is what the case is built on. What hurts a case is a gap: an injury that was never reported, or treatment that stopped. Report every symptom when it appears and keep the follow-up appointments.
Two years from the injury for most claims, under CCP § 335.1. If a public entity may be responsible, a written claim is due to that entity within six months under Gov. Code § 911.2, and for the City of Los Angeles it goes to the City Clerk. Courts rarely excuse a missed deadline.
“Mild” is a clinical label for how the injury presented at the hospital, not a measure of what it does to your life. Many people with a so-called mild TBI live with lasting changes to memory, mood and work capacity. The label does not set the value of the claim; the documented course of the injury does.
The claim survives. California follows a pure comparative negligence rule: the recovery is reduced by the injured person’s percentage of fault, never eliminated by it. Insurers exaggerate that share for exactly that reason, and we push back with evidence.
Nothing upfront and nothing out of pocket. Our fee is a percentage of the recovery, collected only if we win, and the consultation is free. The written contingency fee agreement linked above sets out the arrangement in detail.
Our office is in Torrance, and we represent brain injury clients across the City of Los Angeles, from San Pedro, Wilmington and the Harbor through South Los Angeles and downtown to the Westside and the San Fernando Valley, and throughout the South Bay, including Torrance, Gardena, Inglewood, Carson, Hawthorne, Lawndale, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Lomita, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. For every kind of injury case in the city, see our Los Angeles personal injury lawyer page.
The insurance company is pricing your injury by the emergency room bill; your family is living the rest of it. Your free case review includes a real evaluation with an experienced attorney, a clear explanation of your options, and an honest assessment of what your claim is worth. No obligation, and everything you share is confidential.
Call 310-750-4149 now. There are no upfront legal fees; a fee is collected only if 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.
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Left with few options
Stuck with bills you can’t pay
Anxious to put your injury behind you
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My name is David Gammill. I am a California trial lawyer and the founder of Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers. Our firm has recovered more than $100 million for California clients. Our results include a $21.1 million wrongful death verdict, a $16 million school sexual abuse verdict, and a $12 million whistleblower retaliation verdict. I learned to try cases in front of juries early in my career as a Deputy District Attorney, and trying cases remains the backbone of my practice.
