Your Justice Is
Our Priority
Alpha Law PC represents injured people across Los Angeles. Founder Alexander Khoubian worked the insurance-defense side before he switched to representing plaintiffs, so he knows how carriers put a dollar figure on your claim, and how to move it.
You talk to the attorney, not a case manager. Free review of your case. You pay nothing unless there is a recovery.
Alpha Law PC is a personal injury firm in Beverly Hills led by Alexander Khoubian, California Bar #330918. The firm represents people hurt in car, truck, pedestrian, rideshare, dog-bite, and workplace accidents across Los Angeles County. Khoubian trained at Carpenter, Zuckerman & Rowley, one of California’s high-volume trial firms, and spent time on the defense side handling workers’ compensation claims before he moved to the plaintiff’s side. Call (323) 515-3666 for a free case review. The office sits at 9701 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90212.
The part no adjuster explains
How insurance companies decide what your claim is worth
Your settlement gets set by software and an internal number called a reserve, long before anyone measures how badly you were hurt.
Two things happen in the first days after a crash that no adjuster explains to you. First, the carrier assigns your file a reserve, a dollar amount it quietly sets aside to pay the claim. That number is never shared with you, and a low early reserve can cap what the adjuster is even allowed to offer later. Second, a claims program scores your medical records before a human ever picks up the phone to negotiate.
The best-known of those programs is Colossus, built by Computer Sciences Corporation and in use at major carriers since the early 1990s. An adjuster feeds it your diagnosis codes, treatment records, and injury details. It returns a settlement range drawn from hundreds of injury categories and thousands of value drivers. At many carriers, an adjuster cannot offer above that range without a supervisor’s sign-off.
Here is the part that matters for you. The software rewards documentation and punishes gaps. A three-week hole between your ER visit and your first follow-up reads, to the program, as an injury that wasn’t serious. Carriers also track lawyers. An attorney who files suit and tries cases moves the risk score up when the file crosses their desk; an attorney who always settles moves it down.
Carriers aren’t evil. They’re predictable. Every step above runs on a rule, and a rule is something you can plan around once you know it exists.
A named framework
The payout formula: four inputs your claim is scored on
Four things set the number on almost every personal injury claim in California. Injury severity is only part of one of them. This is the model Alpha Law uses to read a new case, and most injured people focus on the wrong input.
Coverage
The available insurance is the ceiling. A catastrophic injury against a $30,000 state-minimum policy can pay less than a moderate injury against a $1,000,000 umbrella. First question: what coverage is actually on the table, including your own underinsured-motorist policy?
Liability
Disputed fault drags value down, sometimes hard. Clean liability comes from evidence collected early: the police report, photos, named witnesses, and camera footage before it is overwritten on a roughly 30-day loop.
Documentation
The claims software discounts treatment gaps. Steady, connected care that ties every symptom back to the crash is what holds the number up.
Credibility
Carriers keep data on which attorneys file and which fold. Filing a lawsuit moves your claim from the pre-litigation queue, where offers are lower, into the litigation queue, where a real exposure number gets calculated.
Coverage, liability, documentation, credibility. Weak on any one and the number drops. That is the whole scoreboard.
Best California Injury Lawyer
You pay nothing upfront
You never pay out of pocket to bring a personal injury case. The fee comes from the recovery at the end, and only if there is one.
Representation runs on a contingency fee, so there is nothing to pay while your case is open. The firm advances the case expenses along the way, the medical records, filing fees, and the rest, then recovers them from the settlement. If there is no recovery, there is no fee.
When the case resolves, any medical liens and health-plan reimbursements are settled out of the proceeds. Getting those reduced is part of the work, and a lien negotiated down, often by 20 to 40 percent, is money that stays with you.
California law, not adjuster talk
Five California rules that decide cases before they start
Most people injured in California are told things by an adjuster that are wrong on the law. These five change outcomes, and the deadlines are unforgiving.
The 180-day government deadlineIf a city bus, a county vehicle, an MTA bus, or a Caltrans hazard is involved, you do not have two years. You have six months to file a formal government claim under Government Code section 911.2. A pedestrian hit by an MTA bus on Wilshire has 180 days, not two years. Miss it and the case is usually dead.
Partial fault does not end your claimCalifornia is a pure comparative negligence state (Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 1975). Damages of $200,000 with the jury putting you at 25 percent means you collect $150,000, not zero. Adjusters use “you were partly at fault” as a closing tactic. On California law, it is not one.
Driving uninsured costs you pain and sufferingUnder Proposition 213, a driver who was uninsured at the time of the crash cannot recover non-economic damages, even against a driver who was 100 percent at fault. Economic damages, the medical bills and lost wages, still stand. Passengers are not affected.
You recover what was paid, not what was billedIn Howell v. Hamilton Meats (2011), the California Supreme Court held that a plaintiff recovers the amount actually paid for treatment, not the billed figure. A $174,000 bill an insurer settled for $41,000 supports $41,000 in recoverable medical damages. This is why the lien decision belongs in a lawyer’s hands early.
You may already carry coverage you don’t know aboutMost California auto policies include $5,000 to $10,000 in medical-payments coverage that pays regardless of fault and does not reduce your injury recovery. Underinsured-motorist coverage is the lifeline when the at-fault driver carries only the state minimum.
The statute of limitations for a standard California injury claim is two years from the date of injury (Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1). Medical malpractice, minors, and government claims run on different clocks. The old idea that personal injury is “always two years” is how good cases get missed.
Personal injury cases Alpha Law handles
Every case here is against an insurer, and every one runs on the payout formula above.
Rear-end, intersection, and multi-car collisions across LA County, including the disputed-liability cases that need a suit filed.
Commercial-truck crashes bring higher coverage and more defendants: driver, carrier, and sometimes the loader. Evidence moves fast.
Crosswalk and distracted-driver cases, where a government vehicle or roadway defect can trigger the 180-day deadline.
California is a strict-liability state for dog bites (Civil Code section 3342). The owner is liable even with no history of aggression. Homeowner coverage usually pays.
Rideshare claims turn on which app phase the driver was in. A passenger is covered by a $1,000,000 policy; a driver waiting for a ping is not. The app data settles it.
Where a workplace injury involves a third party, not just your employer, there may be a personal injury claim on top of workers’ comp.
Beverly Hills and LA County
What changes your case here
Where your case is filed and who caused it can matter as much as the injury itself.
Los Angeles County courts are backed up. Civil filings have climbed sharply since 2008, and while the county rolled out a “One Year to Trial” target in 2025 to speed things along, exceptions and calendar congestion mean many litigated cases still take two to three years to reach a courtroom. That backlog is itself a negotiating factor; carriers know how long you may have to wait.
Government claims are the local trap. Beverly Hills and the surrounding area are dense with public vehicles and public property: MTA buses on Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevard, city and county fleets, Metro construction. Any of those pulls you into the 180-day government-claim deadline, not the two-year clock.
The office is at 9701 Wilshire Blvd, at the Beverly Hills end of the Wilshire corridor, and the firm handles cases across Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Century City, Westwood, and greater Los Angeles. E-scooter and e-bike injuries in this part of the city have grown, and they tend to be severe; adults are not required to wear helmets, and the coverage picture on a rented scooter is its own puzzle.
The first 48 hours after an accident in Los Angeles
What you do in the first two days shapes the claim more than almost anything later.
At the scene.
Call 911 if anyone is hurt, move to safety, and photograph everything, all vehicles, the road, signals, and any injuries. Get names and numbers for every witness. Do not say "I'm fine" and do not apologize; both get quoted back to you. California requires a police report when there are injuries.
In the first day.
See a doctor even if you feel okay, because adrenaline hides soft-tissue injuries that surface 24 to 72 hours later. Report the crash to your own insurer with plain facts, no speculation about fault. Do not give a recorded statement to the other driver's insurer.
By 48 hours.
Follow up with a doctor, stay off social media entirely about the crash, and ask anyone with camera footage to preserve it before the 30-day overwrite. Then talk to a lawyer before you talk to the other side's adjuster.
What clients say
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
It depends more on available insurance than on your injury. Coverage is the ceiling. After that, documentation and clear liability decide where in the range you land. Anyone who quotes a number on the first call without seeing your coverage and records is guessing.
Most straightforward cases resolve in 6 to 15 months, once treatment is far enough along to value the claim. Cases that require a lawsuit can run two to three years given LA County’s court backlog. Faster is not always better; settling before you know the full extent of an injury is how money gets left behind.
No. California personal injury firms typically work on contingency, so the fee comes out of the recovery and there is no fee if there is no recovery.
Yes. California is a pure comparative negligence state. Your recovery is reduced by your share of fault, but partial fault does not end the claim, whatever the adjuster tells you.
Your own uninsured and underinsured-motorist coverage can step in, and many drivers carry it without realizing. It is often the difference between a real recovery and nothing when the at-fault driver has the state minimum.
Not before you talk to a lawyer. Their adjuster is trained to ask questions that lock in a prior-injury defense or an admission. You are not required to give them a recorded statement.
Sometimes no. If there is no injury, the property damage is minor, and fault is clear, you can handle it through insurance yourself. When there is a real injury, a coverage question, or any dispute about fault, having a lawyer usually more than pays for itself. Alpha Law will tell you on the first call which situation you are in.
Ready To Assist You In Resolving Legal Issues You May Have
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