Public Safety | Daily Report

Flickr photo by LorE Denizen

Personal injury attorneys nearly always start their TV ads with two questions.

1. Have you been injured in an auto accident?
2. Are you struggling to pay medical bills and other expenses as a result of your injuries?

Far fewer Californians are answering, “Yes.”

Civil lawsuits for personal injury, property damage and wrongful death involving motor vehicles plunged 46 percent between fiscal years 2001-02 and 2007-08 (the most recent data available). That decline is an anomaly within the sprawling system of California’s Superior Courts, where the annual total of civil lawsuits has remained steady at about 1.5 million.

Other personal injury cases had dropped in number slightly, but nowhere near as dramatically as the shrunken population of auto-accident lawsuits. In 2001-02, California drivers, passengers and pedestrians filed 52,809 cases claiming various injuries, damage and death. By 2007-08, that figure was only 28,414.

The decline likely has multiple causes. One of them is a change in state law in 2002 that gave plaintiffs in personal injury cases an extra year under the statute of limitations to file their lawsuits. In an e-mail response to California Watch’s questions, Philip R. Carrizosa, spokesman for the Administrative Office of the Courts, wrote:

The purpose of SB 668 was to allow more time for people (to) attempt to settle their claims without filing a lawsuit, and to allow more time for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack to decide whether to file suits against the airlines. The two-year statute of limitations brought California into line with the majority of other states that allow two to four years for filing suit. At the time, California was one of just four states with a one-year statute of limitations.

Outside of the courts, the state’s roadways have witnessed far less loss of life and limb the past decade.

Data collected by the California Highway Patrol shows injury collisions and total injuries peaked in 2002 at 205,223 and 310,689, respectively. By 2008, such collisions dropped 16 percent and injuries by 22 percent.

Thomas Brandi, a personal injury attorney in San Francisco, attributed the improved safety (and decline in business for lawyers) to seat belt use. Also important are upgrades in vehicle safety equipment, Brandi said, “many the result of product liability cases.”

Californians are good about buckling up, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Seat belt use in the state increased from 91 percent in 2002 to 95 percent in 2008.

California was one of the first states to pass a mandatory seat belt law, with the Legislature and governor taking action in 1986. NHTSA has found such statutes make a major difference. As the agency’s Traffic Safety Facts report from May states:

Jurisdictions with stronger seat belt-enforcement laws continue to exhibit generally higher use rates than those with weaker laws. Arkansas strengthened its seat belt law to a ‘primary’ enforcement law, effective June 2009. This state saw a jump in use rate from 70.4 percent in 2008 to 74.4 percent in 2009. Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin also passed primary laws that took effect in 2009.