(626) 521-5402Free Consultation
The driver who hit you left. That does not mean nobody pays. Morales Law Firm in San Dimas handles hit-and-run injury claims across the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire, through your own uninsured motorist coverage and, when we can find the driver, through theirs. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. English and Spanish.
California requires a hit-and-run by an unidentified driver to be reported to police within 24 hours for an uninsured motorist claim to be valid. If you have not filed a report yet, do it today, then call us.
Call nowDrivers flee for a reason. They are uninsured, unlicensed, impaired, or already in trouble. So the case is rarely about the driver’s insurance. It is about yours, and about finding them anyway.
Under Insurance Code section 11580.2, a hit-and-run by an unidentified driver is treated as an uninsured motorist claim. Your own insurer stands in the driver’s shoes and must handle the claim in good faith. Most policies in California carry UM coverage; we read your declarations page on the first call.
Camera footage, a partial plate, debris that identifies the car, and the police investigation identify more drivers than people expect. Once identified, the claim proceeds against their insurer, and a criminal conviction under Vehicle Code 20001 becomes evidence.
Your own Med Pay coverage pays early bills regardless of fault. A resident relative’s policy may cover a pedestrian or cyclist. An employer’s policy applies if you were working. We open every one that exists.
The deadlines are shorter than in any other kind of crash, and the evidence that identifies the driver disappears fastest. Here is the order that protects the claim.
The 24-hour police report is a condition of the uninsured motorist claim. Give the description, direction of travel, any part of the plate, and the color and make. Ask for the report number.
Make, model, color, damage to the other car, anything about the driver, the direction they went. Memory of a plate fades within hours.
Paint transfer on your car identifies the color. Broken headlight glass and trim often carry part numbers that identify the make and model.
Gas stations, car washes, doorbells, transit buses and dash-cams. Note the addresses. We send preservation letters within days; most systems overwrite in one to two weeks.
Same day, even if you feel fine. The gap argument is used against hit-and-run victims exactly as it is against everyone else.
Report the hit-and-run to your carrier factually. Do not guess at fault or minimize your injuries. Then let us handle the rest of the contact.
People killed in hit-and-run crashes in California in 2022, the most of any state, according to NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System. Nationally, more than 70 percent of hit-and-run deaths are pedestrians and cyclists, and most happen at night.
Anywhere, but they cluster on the wide, fast streets with little foot traffic at night: Valley Boulevard through La Puente, Walnut and Industry; Arrow Highway from Baldwin Park to San Dimas; Garey Avenue and Mission Boulevard in Pomona; Sierra Avenue in Fontana; Ramona Boulevard in Baldwin Park; and every freeway, where a sideswipe at 65 miles per hour is followed by the other car simply driving on. Parking-lot hit-and-runs at Montclair Place, Puente Hills, Eastland Center and the Glendora Marketplace are constant, and the mall cameras usually solve them if someone asks in time.
The agency that takes the report depends on where it happened. City police in Covina, West Covina, Glendora, Azusa, Baldwin Park, Pomona, Claremont, La Verne, Upland, Montclair and Fontana. The Sheriff’s San Dimas Station for San Dimas and Charter Oak, the Walnut/Diamond Bar Station for those cities, and the Industry Station for La Puente. The CHP Baldwin Park Area office for the freeways in Los Angeles County and the Rancho Cucamonga Area office for the freeways in San Bernardino County. We know which desk to call at each of them.
Police departments are busy and hit-and-run investigations without a plate get little attention. We do our own. Within days of being hired we send preservation letters to every business, homeowner and transit agency with a camera facing the scene, request the CHP or police report and the dispatch log, canvass for witnesses and dash-cams, and identify the make and model from debris and paint transfer. A partial plate plus a make and color, run against DMV records through the police, identifies a surprising number of drivers. When it does, the claim proceeds against their insurance, the criminal case gives us a conviction to use, and your uninsured motorist claim covers anything their policy does not.
The same damages as any crash: the emergency visit and follow-up care, therapy, imaging, surgery and future treatment, lost wages and earning capacity, the car and the rental, and compensation for pain, suffering and the disruption to your life. In an uninsured motorist claim the recovery is capped at your UM policy limit, which is why the limit you chose matters and why we look for every other policy that might apply: a resident relative’s, an employer’s, an umbrella. If the driver is found and convicted, restitution can be ordered on top.
One warning: your insurer, in a UM claim, is your opponent, not your advocate. It has the same incentive to minimize the claim as any other carrier, and the same tools. The difference is that it also owes you a duty of good faith, and an insurer that lowballs its own policyholder can face bad-faith liability. We handle UM claims with that in mind.
Hit-and-run cases are won in the first two weeks by the firm that goes and gets the footage, and they are lost by the firms that wait for the police to call back. We are on Bonita Avenue in San Dimas, and we canvass the scene ourselves. Francisco Morales grew up in West Covina, graduated from UCLA and Loyola Law School, and worked as a certified automotive service consultant before law school, which is why paint transfer and part numbers mean something to him. He handles every case himself, in English or Spanish, and he answers his own phone. More about Francisco, or read our main car accident page and our uninsured motorist page.
Send a few details and an attorney, not a screener, will call you back, usually the same day. We will read your policy, calendar the 24-hour and 30-day deadlines, and start looking for the driver. No cost, no obligation, and no fee unless we recover money for you.
Tell us what happened. No cost, no obligation, and your information stays private.
Usually, yes, through your own uninsured motorist coverage. California treats a hit-and-run by an unidentified driver as an uninsured motorist claim under Insurance Code section 11580.2, as long as the crash is reported to police within 24 hours and to your insurer within 30 days. Your insurer then stands in the shoes of the driver who fled and must handle the claim in good faith.
Then the claim proceeds against that driver’s liability insurance like any other crash, and your uninsured motorist claim can cover any shortfall. Drivers who flee are often uninsured, unlicensed or impaired, which is why they fled, so your own coverage frequently ends up being the main source of recovery.
For an uninsured motorist claim involving an unidentified driver, California law requires a police report within 24 hours of the crash. Call 911 from the scene or file a counter report at the local station the same day. A late report gives the insurer a reason to deny.
For a California uninsured motorist claim against an unidentified driver, yes. The statute requires physical contact between the vehicles. A phantom driver who ran you off the road without touching you is a harder case and depends on independent witnesses and the exact policy language. Call us; we will read the policy.
You can still claim under your own auto policy’s uninsured motorist coverage, or a resident relative’s policy, even though you were not in a car. Pedestrians and cyclists are the majority of hit-and-run fatalities nationally, and these claims are common. See our pedestrian accident page as well.
It should not. California Insurance Code section 491 prohibits insurers from raising your rates for a crash in which you were not principally at fault, and that includes a hit-and-run you did not cause.
Camera footage from nearby businesses, doorbells and transit buses, dash-cam clips from witnesses, debris at the scene that identifies the make and model, a partial plate, and the police investigation. We send preservation letters within days because most footage is overwritten in a week or two.
Yes. Leaving the scene of a crash with injuries is a felony or misdemeanor under Vehicle Code section 20001, and leaving a property-damage crash is a misdemeanor under section 20002. The criminal case is separate from your injury claim, but a conviction is powerful evidence, and a restitution order can be part of the recovery.
Two years from the crash to file an injury lawsuit against the driver, if identified, under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. Uninsured motorist claims have their own deadlines: police report within 24 hours, notice to your insurer within 30 days, and a demand for arbitration or suit within two years. We calendar all of them on the first day.
Nothing up front. We work on a contingency fee, a percentage of the recovery paid only when the case resolves. No recovery, no attorney’s fee. The consultation is free, in English or Spanish.
Free consultation, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No fee unless we win. Two years to file under California law, and the evidence does not wait.