Los Angeles Train Accident Lawyer

Los Angeles Train Accident Lawyer

DK Law represents people hurt in train and rail crashes across Los Angeles County. Metro rail, Metrolink, Amtrak, and the freight lines that cut through the region. There is no fee unless we win your case, and the consultation is free.

Who you can sue after a train accident depends on which train was involved, and so does your deadline to file.

Metro and Metrolink are public agencies, so a claim against either one must be filed within six months. Amtrak and the freight railroads, on the other hand, are private companies, giving you the standard two years to file. Railroad employees injured on the job fall under a separate federal law, the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, which allows three years.

Filing under the wrong deadline can end an otherwise strong case on procedure alone, before the facts of the case are ever considered.

Quick Answers

• What it costs to ask: Nothing. We work on contingency, so you owe no fee unless we recover for you.
• If a public agency was involved, you may have six months. Not two years. That includes Metro Rail and Metrolink.
• Amtrak and freight are different. They are private corporations, and the ordinary two-year deadline applies.
• You cannot collect punitive damages from a public agency in California, no matter how bad the conduct was.
• Railroad workers have their own law. FELA gives rail employees three years and a lower bar on proving cause. DK Law handles these claims.
• Fatal crashes are handled as wrongful death claims, which have their own rules about who can file.

Why the Six-Month Deadline Catches People

California’s government claims deadline requires a written claim within six months of the injury before you can sue a public agency. Metro and Metrolink both fall under it.

Six months sounds like plenty of time. It isn’t, for a specific reason: serious rail injuries often mean weeks in the hospital and months of surgeries and follow-up appointments. Records requests to a transit agency take time to come back. People understandably focus on getting better first and paperwork second.

Then there’s a second deadline underneath the first. Once the agency formally rejects your claim in writing, you generally have six more months to file suit, which is far shorter than most people assume. Miss the notice and the rejection window, and a case that was worth pursuing is simply over.

If no public agency is involved, California’s ordinary two-year deadline applies instead. That covers Amtrak and the freight carriers.

Key Takeaways

• The operator determines your deadline. Six months for Metro and Metrolink, two years for Amtrak and freight, three years for railroad employees under FELA.
• You must present a government claim against Metro by mail or in person, and a rejection starts a second six-month clock to file suit.
• Punitive damages are unavailable against a public agency in California, though every category of compensatory damages remains available.
• Being on the tracks does not automatically defeat a claim.
• Rail evidence, especially video and recorder data, has a shelf life, so early requests matter more here than in an ordinary crash.

Which Train Was Involved? Your Deadline Depends on the Answer

The operator determines the defendant, the procedure, and the deadline.

If you don’t know which agency operated the train, that is a normal thing not to know, and it is one of the first questions we answer for you.

What This Means For Your Case

Common Train Accident Claim Factors

Severity of Injury

How serious the injury is and whether long-term care is needed.

Liability & Fault

Who caused or contributed to the injury and to what degree.

Timing of Your Claim

Deadlines, early evidence, and how quickly the case is acted on.

Evidence Quality

Medical records, imaging, accident reports, and proof of lost income.

Talk to an attorney about your claim factors

What DK Law Does for Your Case

Rail cases look different from car cases, mostly because the evidence lives inside the operator’s systems and the clock runs out faster.

• We identify the correct entity before the clock runs. On a Metro line that means LACMTA. On Metrolink, it means the Southern California Regional Rail Authority. On a freight corridor, it may be Union Pacific or BNSF. This sounds procedural, and it decides whether your claim is filed on time or filed against the wrong party.
• We file the government claim properly. Metro accepts claims for damages by mail or in person, not by email. That single detail catches people who send an email, assume they’ve filed, and find out otherwise months later.
• We move to preserve the operator’s data. Event recorders, signal and dispatch records, crew logs, maintenance history, and platform or onboard video. Video in particular gets overwritten on a cycle, so the request has to go out early.
• We gather evidence and consult engineers and other experts to understand what actually happened mechanically, and we present that case to the operator’s insurer or to a jury.
• We handle the medical bills and lien side so you aren’t fielding collection calls while you’re recovering, and we bring in the specialists needed to document what the injury will cost you over a lifetime.

Injuries We See in Train and Rail Cases

Rail crashes tend to produce injuries at the severe end because of the mass involved. The ones that come up most:

• Traumatic brain injuries, from impact inside a rail car or from being struck. These often need long-term care and are frequently underdocumented in the first days after a crash.
• Spinal cord injuries and paralysis, where the question quickly becomes what a lifetime of care costs rather than what a few months of treatment costs.
• Crush injuries and amputations, common in crossing collisions and in cases involving people struck on or near the tracks.
• Fractures, internal injuries, and burns, including the orthopedic injuries that come from being thrown inside a moving rail car.
• Psychological injury, including PTSD, which is real and compensable and often the part clients hesitate to bring up.

Can You Sue LA Metro or Metrolink?

Yes. Public agencies in California are not immune from injury claims. There are three things worth understanding about how those claims work.

They are responsible for their employees. If an operator ran a signal or a bus driver turned into a crosswalk, the agency answers for it.

They are responsible for dangerous conditions on their property, which covers things like a poorly designed crossing or an unguarded platform edge. You have to show the agency knew about the condition or should have, which is a real hurdle and a solvable one.

You can’t recover punitive damages from a public entity. California law bars them entirely in these cases. But your compensatory damages, medical costs, lost earnings, future care, and pain and suffering, remain fully available.

Agencies also often raise a design immunity defense in crossing and layout cases, arguing that an approved design shields them from liability. This defense can be beaten, but doing so requires engineering evidence, not just argument.

What if You Were Hit at a Crossing or on the Tracks?

At-grade crossings, where the track crosses a street at street level, are governed by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has jurisdiction over rail crossings and sets the standards for warning devices. Metro’s A Line runs at street level through long stretches of South LA and Long Beach. Crossing collisions are a recurring problem there.

Responsibility at a crossing usually gets shared. The railroad or transit agency, the city or county that owns the road, and sometimes the state all have a piece of it.

If you were on the tracks when it happened, do not assume that ends your claim. California doesn’t automatically bar recovery because someone was somewhere they shouldn’t have been. The question is what was reasonably foreseeable and what the railroad did about it.

Federal law does limit some claims. If a train was traveling within federal speed limits, you generally can’t argue it was going too fast. But a railroad that violated its own safety rules is a different situation, and that is often where these cases actually live. Our guide on proving liability in a train accident goes deeper on the evidence side.

Were You Working for the Railroad When It Happened?

If so, you’re probably not filing a workers’ compensation claim. Railroad employees are covered instead by the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, which works differently, in ways that mostly work in your favor.

• You have three years to file, longer than California’s two-year injury deadline.
• You can recover full damages, including pain and suffering, which workers’ compensation does not pay.
• The causation standard is lower. You need to show the railroad’s negligence played any part in causing the injury, not that it was the main cause.
• Your own carelessness reduces your recovery rather than ending it, so a partial mistake on your part doesn’t close the door.

FELA covers employees of railroads operating in interstate commerce, which includes Amtrak, Metrolink, and the freight carriers. Whether it covers a Metro light rail employee is a closer question that turns on the specific facts of the job, and it’s worth asking rather than assuming. DK Law handles FELA claims.

Helpful Resources

• Metro publishes its claim form and filing instructions through its legal services office, which receives claims for damages.
• If the injury was a head injury, our Los Angeles brain injury team handles those cases specifically.
• Severe and permanent injuries sit within our catastrophic injury practice, and our catastrophic injury guide covers what these cases involve.
• If someone died in the crash, our wrongful death practice explains who is able to bring a claim.

Talk to DK Law

Which agency operated the train, whether a public entity claim applies, and how much time you have left are questions answered by reviewing the facts of your specific crash. 

If you were hurt on or by a train anywhere in Los Angeles, tell us what happened, and we will tell you honestly where you stand and whether we can help.

There is no fee unless we win. Call DK Law today for a free consultation.

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