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By David Gammill · Last reviewed: August 20, 2026
If a drunk driver hit you in Torrance, California law is firmly on your side. You can pursue full compensation for your injuries through the driver’s insurance or a lawsuit, and because courts treat drunk driving as more than ordinary carelessness, many victims can also seek punitive damages against the driver personally. The criminal DUI case is separate from your claim, you do not need to wait for it, and your own deadlines start running immediately.
If this happened to you or someone in your family, talk to a lawyer before you accept anything from the insurance company. Call Gammill Law at 310-750-4149 for a free consultation, or reach us through our contact page.
When someone drives drunk and injures another person in California, prosecutors typically charge DUI causing injury under Vehicle Code § 23153. That case belongs to the state. It can put the driver in jail and order some restitution, but it exists to punish crime, not to make you whole. Your civil claim is the vehicle for your medical bills, lost income, and pain, and it runs on its own track with a lower burden of proof. You can win your civil case even if the criminal case ends in a plea to a lesser charge, and a conviction, when it comes, strengthens your claim considerably.
Practical point: do not wait for the criminal case to finish before getting legal help. The DA’s file, the arrest report, and the chemical test results become key civil evidence, and an attorney who is engaged early can preserve them and put the insurer on notice while the record is fresh.
In most crash cases you recover compensatory damages only. Drunk driving changes the analysis. The California Supreme Court held in Taylor v. Superior Court (1979) 24 Cal.3d 890 that driving while intoxicated can amount to malice under Civil Code § 3294, California’s punitive damages law, when the circumstances show a conscious disregard of the probable dangerous consequences. Punitive damages are never automatic: you must prove malice by clear and convincing evidence, and since 1987 the conduct must also qualify as despicable. In practice, the facts that carry these claims are the ugly ones: a high blood alcohol level, prior DUI convictions, drinking with a planned drive ahead, extreme speed, or fleeing the scene.
Two honest caveats belong here. First, insurance generally does not pay punitive damages, so their real value depends on the defendant. Second, a punitive claim raises the stakes of the whole case, which often pushes insurers toward fair settlement of the compensatory claim. An experienced lawyer uses the punitive claim as leverage while building the compensation case that actually pays your bills. Our § 3294 explainer covers the standard, the burden of proof, and the wrongful death twist in detail.
The compensatory side of a drunk driving injury claim is the same full measure as any serious crash case: emergency care, surgeries, and future medical treatment; lost wages and reduced earning capacity; vehicle and property damage; and non-economic damages for pain, anxiety, and the ways the injuries change your daily life. If a family member was killed by a drunk driver, the family’s wrongful death claim and a survival claim can run together, and the survival claim can carry the punitive damages request. Our wrongful death explainer covers who can file.
This is the hard reality in many DUI cases: the worst drivers often carry the smallest policies. California’s minimum liability limits for policies issued or renewed since January 1, 2025 are $30,000 per person, $60,000 per accident, and $15,000 for property damage, and serious injuries exhaust those numbers quickly. Three places your lawyer looks next:
Expect the attempt. California’s pure comparative negligence rule reduces recovery by a victim’s own share of fault, so insurers look for one: they argue you were speeding, that you could have avoided the drunk driver, or that a passenger knowingly rode with an intoxicated person. Do not accept the framing. Fault is assigned on evidence, the drunk driver starts from a terrible position, and even a passenger injured while riding with a drunk driver can still recover, reduced only by any share of fault actually proven against them. Give no recorded statement before you have counsel.
Our step-by-step guide on what to do immediately after a car accident covers the first days in detail.
Free guide: Crash Course: A California Car Accident Guide (2026). Every deadline, the insurance realities, and the first steps that protect your claim, in one plain-English PDF.
Most California injury lawsuits must be filed within two years of the crash under CCP § 335.1, the two-year statute of limitations, and a wrongful death claim runs on its own two-year clock. If a public entity is involved in any way, a government claim is due within six months. The criminal case does not pause any of these deadlines. Insurance policies also impose their own prompt-notice requirements for UM/UIM claims, which is one more reason not to sit on a DUI case while the prosecution plays out.
This is not a rare event here. In 2023, Torrance police made 123 DUI arrests, and traffic crashes in the city killed or injured 647 people that year (California Office of Traffic Safety, Torrance 2023 crash rankings). DUI collisions inside Torrance are investigated by the Torrance Police Department, while crashes on the 405, the 110, and PCH’s state-highway stretches belong to the CHP, and that detail matters because your lawyer requests the investigating agency’s file, chemical test records, and any bodycam footage from the right source, fast. Our Torrance car accident attorney page covers how we build South Bay crash cases from day one.
Drunk driving cases carry moral weight with juries, and insurers know it. The victims who recover fully are the ones whose evidence was preserved early and whose claims were built to use that leverage. If a drunk or impaired driver injured you or someone you love in Torrance or the South Bay, get your free case evaluation or call 310-750-4149. There are no upfront legal fees; a fee is collected only if we win, under a written contingency fee agreement that complies with California law.
Disclaimer: This article is educational and informational in nature. It does not constitute legal advice for any specific situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case turns on its own facts, and no result is guaranteed; consult a licensed California attorney about your own circumstances.
