Most people hurt in Bakersfield spend the first week on the wrong question. They want to know what the case is worth, and the answer that actually decides it is duller and more urgent: who is on the other side. A private driver, a trucking company, a store, a school district, the county, the city, or a transit district that is none of those things. That answer sets your deadline, and in Kern County it is genuinely hard to work out from the scene.
Here is the example that catches people. The buses in Bakersfield are run by Golden Empire Transit District, which is not a department of the City of Bakersfield and not a department of Kern County. It is an independent district with its own board, two members appointed by the city council, two by the county board of supervisors, and one chosen by those four. It is still a public entity, so a claim against it must be presented in writing within six months, not the two years almost everyone assumes. Nothing on the side of the bus tells you that.
Culver Legal has recovered $200 Million and counting for injured people in California. We work on contingency, we advance the costs of the case, and there is no fee unless we win. If there is no recovery, you are not charged those costs either. Call (310) 600-7881 at any hour, including tonight.
Who Are You Actually Making a Claim Against?
In an ordinary Bakersfield crash the defendant is a driver and their insurer, and Code of Civil Procedure 335.1 gives you two years. The moment a public body is anywhere in the story, a different rule takes over. Government Code 911.2 requires a written claim to be presented to that entity within six months of the injury, and until that has happened there is no lawsuit to file.
Kern County gives you more ways to land in that second category than most places.
The bus. Golden Empire Transit District, as above. Its status is not a matter of opinion. It has been sued as a public entity in published Court of Appeal decisions, including Perez v. Golden Empire Transit District (2012) 209 Cal.App.4th 1228, brought by a passenger injured while getting off a GET bus.
The other bus. Kern Transit is not GET. It is a division of the Kern County Public Works Department, so a claim from one of its routes runs against the County of Kern. It carries the Bakersfield connections to Delano, Taft, Tehachapi, Mojave and Lancaster, which is exactly the trip where somebody assumes they are dealing with the city.
The school bus. A district-operated bus puts a school district on the other side, which is a public entity in its own right and on its own six-month clock.
The road. State Route 58, Highway 99 and Interstate 5 are state highways, so a claim arising from the roadway itself runs against Caltrans rather than the city. City streets and county roads each belong to a different body again.
The vehicle with a seal on the door. City and county fleets are the obvious case and the one people do usually spot.
So three different buses run through this city and they answer to three different public bodies. None of the three is the City of Bakersfield. That matters more than it sounds, because the City Clerk’s counter is where a person naturally takes a claim against a bus, and for all three of these it is the wrong counter and the six months keeps running while you find that out.
There is a second, kinder point buried in Perez. The plaintiff’s written claim was missing detail the statute requires, and the Court of Appeal still let the case go forward, holding she had adequately alleged compliance and reversing the dismissal. A claim with a gap in it is not automatically the end. But that is a rescue, not a plan, and it took an appeal to get there.
We Handle All Types of Personal Injury Cases in Bakersfield
Freight shapes the caseload here. Highway 99, Interstate 5 and State Route 58 move commercial traffic through the county in volume, and the cases that follow tend to involve a company rather than only a driver.
Car Accidents
The largest category, and the one where an adjuster reaches you first. Identifying every policy that might respond usually matters more than arguing about who had the light.
Truck Accidents
A carrier’s electronic logs, maintenance files and driver qualification records answer most of the questions in a case. They are also kept on a retention schedule, which means they have an expiry date.
Motorcycle Accidents
Riders are blamed before anyone has looked at the evidence. Lane splitting is not prohibited in California, which is not the same thing as being at fault for it.
Bicycle Accidents
A driver passing a cyclist owes three feet of clearance. Passing closer than that is a violation rather than a matter of opinion.
Pedestrian Accidents
Crossing outside a crosswalk changes the share of fault. It does not relieve a driver of the duty to exercise due care, and the Vehicle Code says so in terms.
Bus Accidents
A carrier owes its passengers utmost care rather than ordinary care. If the operator was Golden Empire Transit or a school district, the claim runs on six months instead of two years.
Rideshare Accidents
Which insurance applies to an Uber or Lyft crash depends on what the driver was doing at that moment: app off, waiting, on the way to a passenger, or carrying one. The cover changes at each step.
Truck and Warehouse Work Injuries
Workers compensation does not pay for pain and suffering. Where a company other than your employer caused the injury, a second claim runs alongside it and does.
Construction Accidents
The company that injured you on a site is often not the company that employs you, and that second claim is usually where the recovery sits.
Slip and Fall
These turn on notice: whether the owner knew, or should have known, about the hazard. Inspection logs and prior complaints prove it, and both get discarded on a schedule.
Dog Bites
California holds an owner strictly liable for a bite, with no free first bite. The rule covers bites specifically, and it requires that you were lawfully where you were. Inside the city limits the investigation is a police matter: Bakersfield Animal Control is a unit of the police department, so the bite file is a police record rather than a separate animal services file.
Brain Injuries
A normal scan answers the emergency question rather than every question. The injuries that change how somebody thinks and sleeps are often the ones nobody wrote down on the day.
Wrongful Death
California limits who may bring a claim and how long they have, and the rules are stricter than most families expect.
Employment Matters
For a claim about a wage, a termination or treatment at work rather than an injury, we will review it and tell you plainly whether we handle it or refer it to a firm that does.
We also take premises claims against commercial property, and catastrophic injury cases arising from any of the above. If you are unsure which of these describes what happened, that is not something you need to resolve before calling.
Case Results
- $4,000,000Auto Accident
- $3,550,000Personal Injury
- $3,550,000Auto Accident
- $3,000,000Truck Accident
- $2,500,000Commercial Accident
- $2,250,000Motorcycle Accident
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case turns on its own facts.
California Law and Your Right to Recover
Three rules do most of the work in a Bakersfield injury claim.
Negligence. Under Civil Code 1714, everyone is responsible for injury caused to another by their want of ordinary care. That sits under almost every claim on this page.
Comparative fault. California reduces your recovery by your share of the blame rather than barring it. If a claim is worth $1,000,000 and you are found 25 percent at fault, you recover $750,000. Adjusters push fault onto injured people because every percentage point is money off their side of the ledger. A fault figure offered by an adjuster is a negotiating position, not a finding.
Who you are suing changes the deadline. That is the whole of the section above, and it is the first question in a Kern County case rather than a detail to sort out later.
Do you know which clock your claim is on?
Two years, or six months. It depends on who owned the vehicle, the road or the property, and that is rarely obvious.
How Much Is My Bakersfield Injury Case Worth?
A claim is not one number, it is a set of them, and the ones people leave out are usually the largest.
- Medical costs already incurred, including the ambulance, emergency room, imaging and follow-up
- Future care, where an injury needs surgery, therapy or attendant care that has not happened yet
- Lost income for the time you could not work
- Lost earning capacity, a separate item covering work you can no longer do at all
- Pain and suffering, valued against the medical record rather than asserted
- Scarring and disfigurement, valued separately where it is permanent and visible
- Property damage, and the cost of being without a vehicle in a county this spread out
An early offer usually prices the first item and ignores the rest, which is how it arrives before treatment has finished and still sounds generous.
How Long Do I Have to File a Claim in Bakersfield?
Two years from the date of injury for most personal injury claims, under Code of Civil Procedure 335.1.
Six months to present a written claim to a public entity, under Government Code 911.2, before any lawsuit is possible. In Bakersfield this reaches further than people expect, because it covers the transit district, school districts, the city, the county and Caltrans.
Injured children are treated differently. Code of Civil Procedure 352 pauses the ordinary limitation period while an injured person is under 18. The six-month government claim rule is not paused in the same way, so a child hurt on a school bus or by a public vehicle still needs somebody acting quickly.
Has an adjuster already put a number in front of you?
That offer was priced before your treatment finished. Find out what it left out before you answer it.
Where Will My Bakersfield Injury Case Be Filed?
Kern County splits its civil work by the amount in dispute, and the two main courthouses are two blocks apart on the same street, which is how people end up at the wrong one.
A personal injury case seeking more than $35,000 is an unlimited civil case, and it is filed at the Metro Justice Building, 1215 Truxtun Avenue, Bakersfield, CA 93301. The court’s own instruction is to file there if damages sought are over $35,000.
Limited civil cases up to $35,000, and small claims up to $12,500, are handled at the Metropolitan Division and at the regional courts in Delano, Lamont, Mojave, Ridgecrest and Shafter. Any injury case worth bringing is normally an unlimited civil case, so 1215 Truxtun is usually the answer.
The detail that matters more than the address is who hears it. A Bakersfield case is tried in Kern County, to a Kern County jury, and not to a panel drawn from Los Angeles. That shapes what an insurer thinks the case is worth long before anyone sets foot in a courtroom, which is why it is worth having somebody involved who knows the difference.
Where Does the Paperwork Actually Go?
Onto one street, mostly. Four of the places a Bakersfield injury claim touches sit on Truxtun Avenue, and three of those are within a block of each other.
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| The lawsuit, if it is worth more than $35,000 | Metro Justice Building, 1215 Truxtun Avenue |
| A written claim against the city, within six months | City Clerk, 1600 Truxtun Avenue, 1st floor |
| The city department that answers that claim | Risk Management, 1600 Truxtun Avenue, 5th floor |
| The collision report | Police Records Unit, 1601 Truxtun Avenue |
You file the six-month claim on the first floor of 1600 and it is answered from the fifth floor of the same building. The police report is bought across the street. Remember the limit, though: that City Clerk counter is the right address for a claim against the City of Bakersfield, and not for a claim against GET, Kern Transit, the county or a school district.
How Do I Get the Police Report, and What If There Isn’t One?
Collision reports come from the Bakersfield Police Department Records Unit at 1601 Truxtun Avenue, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. A traffic collision report is a flat $7. Crime and incident reports are free. The traffic report request line is (661) 326-3883, and there is an online option through a third-party service that adds its own fee.
Expect the worst crash to produce the slowest report. The department says traffic reports usually take five to seven business days and some take ten, but that injury and fatal collision investigations take several days to weeks. That is the opposite of what people assume, and it is the case where the adjuster is pressing hardest for a document that does not exist yet. Waiting for it is not the same as doing nothing, and it is not a reason to give a recorded statement in the meantime.
The officers are not at the same address as the file. The department’s Traffic Section works out of the Westside Substation at 1301 Buena Vista Road, on the other side of the city from the Records counter on Truxtun.
If you filed online, read this twice. Bakersfield accepts some reports online, including hit and run. The department is explicit that an online report is for documentation and insurance purposes only and will not bring an officer to the scene. You get a case number. You do not get an officer’s observations, scene measurements or photographs, and those are the parts of a report that carry weight later. If that is what happened to you, the evidence has to be rebuilt from other sources, and the sooner somebody starts, the more of it still exists.
Where Should I Get Treated After an Accident in Bakersfield?
Kern Medical, at 1700 Mount Vernon Avenue, is a Level II trauma center, designated in 2001 and re-verified by the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma. It is where the most serious injuries in the county are taken. Ridgecrest Regional was designated a Level IV trauma center in 2016, covering the east of the county.
If you were treated anywhere at all, including an urgent care clinic, keep the paperwork. A gap between the crash and the first medical record is the first thing an adjuster will point at.
How Dangerous Are Bakersfield Roads?
The California Office of Traffic Safety publishes crash rankings for every city, drawn from statewide collision data. Bakersfield is measured against the 15 California cities with populations over 250,000, and in these tables a rank of 1 is the worst.
In 2023, 2,073 people were killed or injured in crashes in Bakersfield, ranking the city 8th of those 15. On that headline number Bakersfield sits in the middle of its group rather than at the top of it, and any page telling you otherwise has not looked.
Two categories are a different story.
Alcohol. 340 people were killed or injured in crashes involving alcohol, ranking Bakersfield 3rd of 15. In the narrower category of drivers under 21 who had been drinking, 36 victims put the city 1st of 15, meaning worst in the group. That has been true in two of the last four years.
Vulnerable road users. 170 pedestrians and 71 cyclists were killed or injured in the same year, ranking 7th and 12th respectively. Pedestrian victims have risen every year since 2020.
That last figure needs one thing said about it, because almost nobody says it. It counts people killed and people injured in the same total. The police department reported that pedestrian deaths in the city fell 53% in 2023 against the year before, alongside a 17% drop in fatal crashes overall. Both things are true at once: more people are being hurt on foot, and fewer are dying. Anyone quoting one of those numbers at you without the other is giving you half of it.
Hit and run. 238 people were killed or injured in hit-and-run crashes in 2023, ranking Bakersfield 8th of the 15. This is the one category where the city has a unit dedicated to it: officers on the department’s Hit and Run Detail follow up on every hit-and-run collision in the city and review every hit-and-run report written by the traffic and motorcycle officers. If a driver left, the file does not simply sit there, and that is worth knowing before you decide the case is hopeless.
Figures are for 2023, the most recent year published. They come from the California Office of Traffic Safety, drawn from statewide collision data, and they count people killed and people injured together.
Why Bakersfield Clients Choose Culver Legal
We come to you. If you are in the hospital, at home and unable to drive, or a long way out in the county, we will meet you where you are. Distance is not a reason to put off starting a claim.
Our team speaks Spanish, Farsi, Filipino, Hindi, Mandarin and Korean. Explaining your own accident in your own words is not a convenience.
The economics are simple. The firm works on contingency and advances the costs of the case, so there is nothing to pay up front and no fee unless we win. We advance the case costs, and if there is no recovery you are not charged those costs either. Culver Legal has recovered $200 Million and counting, and answers the phone 24 hours a day.
Bakersfield Personal Injury FAQs
I was hurt on a GET bus. Is my deadline really six months?
Treat it as six months and act now. Golden Empire Transit District is a public entity, so Government Code 911.2 requires a written claim to be presented to it before any lawsuit, within six months of the injury. The fact that GET is an independent district rather than part of the city or the county does not change that.
How long do I have to file a personal injury claim in Bakersfield?
Two years from the date of injury under Code of Civil Procedure 335.1. If a public entity is involved, a written claim must be presented within six months under Government Code 911.2, which is a separate and much earlier deadline. Code of Civil Procedure 352 pauses the ordinary period for injured children, though the government claim rule is not paused the same way.
Which courthouse will my case go to?
If you are seeking more than $35,000, which covers most injury cases, it is filed as an unlimited civil case at the Metro Justice Building, 1215 Truxtun Avenue. Smaller claims are heard at the Metropolitan Division and at the regional courts around the county.
Nobody gave me a police report. Do I still have a case?
Usually yes. A report is evidence, not a requirement, and a claim does not depend on one existing. In Bakersfield a traffic collision report costs $7 from the Records Unit at 1601 Truxtun Avenue and normally takes five to seven business days, though injury and fatal investigations take longer. If your incident was filed online rather than at the scene, you have a case number without an officer’s observations behind it, and the missing evidence has to come from elsewhere: cameras, witnesses, vehicle damage and medical records. All of those have shelf lives, which is the reason to start now rather than when the report arrives.
The insurance company says I was partly at fault. Does that end it?
No. California reduces recovery in proportion to fault rather than barring it, so being partly to blame lowers the figure without removing the claim. An adjuster’s assessment of fault is an opening position, not a finding.
I am undocumented. Can I bring a claim without putting myself at risk?
Yes, and the protection is stronger than most people expect. Under Evidence Code 351.2, added by AB 2159, evidence of a person’s immigration status is not admissible in a civil action for personal injury or wrongful death, and discovery into it is not permitted either. It cannot be raised at trial and it cannot be asked about beforehand. It is not a question we ask you, and it is not a question the other side gets to ask.
Contact a Culver Legal Bakersfield Personal Injury Lawyer
Evidence in an injury case has a shelf life. Vehicles get repaired, camera footage is overwritten on a loop measured in days, and a carrier’s driver records reach the end of their retention period. If you were hurt anywhere in Bakersfield or Kern County, reach us at (310) 600-7881, at any hour. The review costs nothing.
Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Culver Legal, LLP is a California law firm. The information on this page is for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice.
