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Reviewed by David Gammill, California trial attorney · Last reviewed: September 24, 2026
A truck crash in Manhattan Beach is decided by the carrier’s records and by who else stands behind the driver: the company that hired the driver, the company that loaded the trailer, the shop that serviced the brakes. California law gives you two years to file suit, and only six months to file a written claim if a public entity is involved. Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers is a Torrance trial firm that handles truck cases across the South Bay. 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 truck hit you or someone you love in Manhattan Beach, call 310-750-4149 and tell us what happened before the carrier’s records start to disappear.
A loaded commercial truck can weigh twenty times what a passenger car weighs, and the physics decide the injuries. A fender bender between two cars becomes a crushed cabin, a spinal injury, or a death when one vehicle is a delivery truck or a tractor-trailer. The second difference is money: commercial carriers insure in layers, a primary policy and often excess policies above it, each with its own adjuster and lawyer working to keep the payout small.
The third difference is the rulebook. Commercial trucking runs under federal safety rules that ordinary drivers never face: limits on how many hours a driver may be behind the wheel, qualification files the carrier must keep on every driver, inspection and maintenance records for every vehicle, drug-and-alcohol testing programs, and the electronic logging device and engine control module that record what the truck was doing. Every one of those rules creates a record, and every record is a place where a careless carrier can be caught, if your lawyer knows to ask for it.
The driver is rarely the only defendant, and often not the one who can pay. Finding every responsible party is what separates a policy-limits offer from full compensation:
In Manhattan Beach, the truck that hit you is more likely to be a box truck, a moving van, a construction truck, or a van from one of the delivery fleets serving the beach and the downtown blocks than a long-haul rig. Those companies are commercial carriers all the same, with the same records and insurance layers.
The carrier knows what its records show before you do, and it has no duty to volunteer them. The electronic logging device and the engine control module record speed, braking, and hours in the minutes before the crash. The maintenance file shows whether the brakes were checked. Dispatch records show whether the driver was pushed to make a delivery window and where the truck was supposed to be, which in Manhattan Beach also answers whether it was on a designated truck route or on Sepulveda at all, and if it was on a residential street, why. The qualification file and testing history show what the carrier knew about the driver.
Retention windows for some of these records are short, and a carrier that expects a claim has every incentive to let them expire. A written preservation letter in the first week puts the carrier on notice that destroying records will be held against it. We also obtain the Manhattan Beach Police Department report and move fast on any City traffic-signal or business security footage, because those recordings are overwritten on a schedule too.
Manhattan Beach is a residential beach city with a lighter commercial-truck profile than its industrial neighbor to the north, so a truck case here usually arises from a delivery, service, construction, or moving truck on the arterials rather than from freight traffic. The city still tells trucks where they may drive. Under its municipal code, a commercial truck over three tons must stay on the City’s designated truck routes and off every other city street except to make a pickup or delivery. The routes Los Angeles County’s permit record lists for the city are Sepulveda Boulevard, Rosecrans Avenue, Artesia Boulevard, Aviation Boulevard, Manhattan Beach Boulevard east of Sepulveda, and Highland Avenue north of Rosecrans. Read as a map, that list traces the city’s edges and its one state highway; west of Sepulveda, the only route on it is the north end of Highland, so a heavy truck deep in the beach neighborhoods is usually there for a delivery or should not be there at all.
Sepulveda Boulevard is State Route 1 through the city, a six-lane state highway and the one corridor Caltrans designates for the largest through-trucks. Caltrans’ 2024 traffic census counted about 58,000 vehicles a day on Sepulveda Boulevard just north of Manhattan Beach Boulevard and about 48,000 at Artesia Boulevard; those are all-vehicle counts, not truck counts, and no crash figure attaches to either of them. No freeway passes through the city; the 405 lies to the east. The beach neighborhoods are laid out around walk streets, pedestrian streets where no vehicle is allowed, so the beach and the downtown blocks take their deliveries on the arterials around them. That does not make any one place responsible for a crash. Whatever the road, the Manhattan Beach Police Department, 420 15th Street, writes the collision report for a crash inside the city.
California law allows two kinds of damages. Economic damages are the losses with a receipt: medical bills, future care, lost wages, and lost earning capacity. Non-economic damages are the losses without one: pain, disability, disfigurement, and the loss of the life you had. Where a carrier’s conduct went beyond carelessness, such as knowingly keeping an impaired driver on the road, Civil Code § 3294 allows punitive damages on clear and convincing proof of malice, oppression, or fraud; they are never guaranteed, and we evaluate them case by case. When a truck crash takes a life, the family’s claim is a wrongful death case, and our wrongful death page explains who can bring it and what it covers.
Most California truck accident lawsuits must be filed within two years of the crash. Our plain-English guide to CCP § 335.1, California’s two-year statute of limitations, covers the rule and its narrow exceptions. If a public entity may be liable, whether the City of Manhattan Beach for a local street or signal, Caltrans for Sepulveda Boulevard, or the County of Los Angeles for a county road or county-run facility, a written claim must be presented to that entity within six months under Government Code § 911.2, before any lawsuit can be filed; the two-year rule does not rescue a missed claim. Once the entity rejects the claim, Government Code § 945.6 gives six months from the rejection notice to file suit. Our guide to the California government claim deadline walks through the sequence. Most Manhattan Beach truck accident lawsuits are filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Southwest District, at either the Torrance Courthouse or the Inglewood Courthouse. Manhattan Beach has no courthouse of its own.
Start with trial experience, because carriers and their insurers settle fairly only with lawyers they expect to see in a courtroom. David Gammill has tried over 100 cases to verdict. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Before founding the firm he spent seven years as a Deputy District Attorney, which is where he learned to put a case in front of twelve strangers and win it. Then ask two practical questions. Has this lawyer taken a trucking carrier to verdict, or only settled with one? And who will actually handle my file day to day? The firm’s record is set out below.
The firm has recovered more than $100 million for California clients across verdicts and settlements. Separately, its trial results include a $21.1 million wrongful death verdict in a roadway-danger case against a public entity; that case turned on its own facts, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. See our case results.
Truck cases are won in the records. We send preservation letters early, subpoena the logging and maintenance data, and put carrier witnesses under oath about what their own files show. When a carrier says a record does not exist, we know which rule required it to.
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.
You will know the attorney handling your case, and our attorneys bring more than 40 years of combined legal experience to every case we take. Our phones are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. An initial consultation can be held by Zoom video, and if you are injured and cannot travel, we meet clients at the hospital, at home, or wherever recovery requires.
Two years from the crash for a claim against a private driver or carrier, under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. If a public entity is involved, a written claim is due within six months, and missing it usually ends the case against that entity.
The motor carrier, the shipper or loader responsible for the cargo, any maintenance contractor whose work failed, the manufacturer of a defective part, and a public entity whose roadway condition contributed. We investigate every one before deciding whom to name.
Partial fault does not bar your claim. California follows a pure comparative negligence rule: your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, never eliminated by it. Insurers exaggerate your share for exactly that reason, and we push back with evidence.
The electronic logging data and engine control module readout, the maintenance and inspection file, dispatch records, the driver qualification file, and the police report. The carrier’s records are the most valuable and the quickest to vanish, so preservation letters go out in the first week.
Possibly. The City’s code confines heavier trucks to its designated routes except for a pickup or delivery, and west of Sepulveda those routes are few, so where the truck was and why is one of the first facts to establish. A route violation is evidence of negligence, not an automatic finding of fault; the carrier will say the driver was making a delivery, and its dispatch records will show whether that is true. The Manhattan Beach Police Department report and those records are where the answer usually sits.
Nothing upfront. We work on a contingency fee, paid only out of the recovery, and the consultation is free. Our page on what a personal injury lawyer costs explains how the fee works and what it covers.
Our office is in Torrance, and we represent truck crash victims from Manhattan Beach and across the South Bay: Torrance, Gardena, Inglewood, Carson, Hawthorne, Lawndale, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Lomita, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. For every kind of injury case in the city, see our Manhattan Beach personal injury page; for the trucking-law material in more depth, see our Torrance truck accident page.
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.
Get your free case evaluation or 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.
