Train Accident Lawyer Los Angeles: The 6-Month Deadline

A Metro A Line train and a Metrolink commuter train look identical from a Union Station platform. They are not the same defendant, and they do not share the same deadline. If you are looking for a train accident lawyer in Los Angeles, start with who owns the train. That answer decides whether you have six months to act or two years.

Key Takeaway: Most Los Angeles rail injury claims run against public entities. Metro Rail (LACMTA) and Metrolink are government agencies, so you must present a written government tort claim within six months under Government Code § 911.2 before you are allowed to sue. Claims against Amtrak, Union Pacific, or BNSF get the standard two years under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1.

Who Do You Actually Sue After a Los Angeles Train Accident?

The defendant depends on which system you were riding, walking near, or driving across. Los Angeles rail is unusual because public agencies dominate it in a way they do not dominate the roads.

Metro Rail is operated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a public entity. That covers the A, B, C, D, E, and K lines, plus every station platform and escalator in the system. Metrolink is run by the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, a joint powers authority formed by five counties, and it is also a public entity.

Amtrak is a federally chartered corporation, not a government agency. Union Pacific and BNSF are private freight railroads that own much of the track Metrolink runs on, which is why one crash often produces two defendants on two different clocks.

Contractors complicate it further. Metrolink has historically contracted train operations out to private companies, and those contractors do not get the six month protection. In our experience handling public entity injury claims across LA County, the contractor is the defendant most people never think to name, and it is frequently the one with the most insurance behind it.

Why Is the Deadline Six Months Instead of Two Years?

Because the California Government Claims Act requires it. Under Government Code § 911.2, a claim for personal injury or death against a public entity must be presented to that entity within six months of the date of injury. Skip that step and your lawsuit gets thrown out no matter how clear the liability is.

The claim is a formal written document. It is not a phone call to Metro customer service, and it is not the incident report you signed on the platform. The agency then has 45 days to accept or reject it. If it sends a written rejection, Government Code § 945.6 gives you six months from that rejection to file suit. If it never responds in writing, you get two years from the date the claim accrued.

This is the most common way a strong rail case dies in Los Angeles. We walked through the same trap for buses in our guide to the six-month deadline in Los Angeles bus accident claims. Rail works the same way, with one added wrinkle: a Metrolink crash can pull in a public agency, a private contractor, and a freight railroad at once, each on its own clock.

Government Code § 911.4 allows a late claim application within one year of the injury, but the agency can refuse it, and it routinely does. Treat the six month date as the real deadline.

What Duty of Care Does a Train Operator Owe Its Passengers?

A higher one than a regular driver owes you. California Civil Code § 2100 provides that a carrier of persons for reward must use the utmost care and diligence for their safe carriage and must provide everything necessary for that purpose. Metro, Metrolink, and Amtrak all qualify as common carriers when they are moving fare paying passengers.

That standard changes the case. An ordinary negligence defendant only has to behave reasonably. A common carrier has to exercise the highest degree of care consistent with actually operating a railroad, so the defense that a hazard was just an unfortunate accident carries much less weight.

The duty reaches past the moving train. It covers the boarding gap between car and platform, sudden unannounced braking that throws standing riders, malfunctioning doors, and the condition of station stairs and escalators. It does not apply to someone struck at a crossing or walking on the right of way, because that person is not a passenger. Ordinary negligence governs there.

How Does Liability Work at a Railroad Grade Crossing?

Grade crossing cases turn on whether the warning devices were adequate and working. Those questions sit under a layered set of state and federal rules.

In California, the Public Utilities Commission holds exclusive authority over the design, alteration, and protection of rail highway crossings under the Public Utilities Code. A crossing carrying only crossbucks when traffic volume and sight distance called for gates and flashing lights is a CPUC problem, and evidence of prior complaints or prior collisions at that crossing becomes central proof.

Federal rules sit on top. The Federal Railroad Administration regulates grade crossing signal systems under 49 C.F.R. Part 234, including the requirement that a warning device activate for a minimum time before the train arrives and that malfunctions be reported and flagged. A signal that failed, or one a railroad knew was intermittent and did not repair, is strong evidence of negligence.

One theory usually will not work. In CSX Transportation, Inc. v. Easterwood (1993) 507 U.S. 658, the Supreme Court held that federal track class speed regulations preempt state law claims that a train was going too fast, as long as the train was within its authorized federal speed limit. The claims that survive are the ones federal law does not cover: inadequate warning devices, failure to sound the horn, sightlines obstructed by untrimmed vegetation, and a crew that saw a vehicle stalled on the tracks and did not brake.

California adds its own rules. Vehicle Code § 22451 requires drivers to stop when a crossing signal, gate, or flagger indicates a train is approaching, and Vehicle Code § 22452 requires buses, school buses, and hazardous materials carriers to stop at every crossing regardless. A violation by the motorist does not end the case, because California uses pure comparative negligence.

Does Being Partly at Fault Bar Your Recovery?

No. California abandoned contributory negligence in Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804 and adopted pure comparative negligence, so your damages are reduced by your percentage of fault and nothing more. A jury that finds you 60 percent responsible for driving around a lowered gate still awards you 40 percent of your damages.

This comes up in almost every rail case, because railroads defend crossing and pedestrian claims by arguing the injured person caused it. On a $3 million damages finding, being assigned 60 percent of the fault still produces a $1.2 million judgment.

Is Amtrak Treated Differently From Metro and Metrolink?

Yes, and the difference favors you. Amtrak is the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, and 49 U.S.C. § 24301(a)(3) states plainly that Amtrak is not a department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States Government. The Federal Tort Claims Act does not cover it, and there is no six month administrative claim requirement.

You sue Amtrak the way you sue any corporation, in state or federal court, within the ordinary two year window under CCP § 335.1. Passengers hurt on the Pacific Surfliner or Coast Starlight often assume a federal agency is involved and that some special procedure applies. The filing procedure is ordinary. The damages ceiling below is the part that is unusual, and it applies to Amtrak, Metrolink, and Metro alike.

Does Federal Law Cap What Rail Passengers Can Recover?

It does. Under 49 U.S.C. § 28103(a)(2), the aggregate allowable awards to all rail passengers, against all defendants, for all claims arising from a single accident, including punitive damages, are capped by statute. The cap applies to passenger rail generally, not only to Amtrak.

The statutory text still reads $200,000,000, but section 11415(b) of the 2015 FAST Act requires the Secretary of Transportation to index that figure to inflation every five years. The current cap is $322,864,228. On August 5, 2026, the Department of Transportation published a notice at 91 FR 50601 raising it to $401,900,000, effective September 4, 2026.

That number is not academic, and Los Angeles has already tested it. On September 12, 2008, Metrolink train 111 ran a red signal in Chatsworth and hit a Union Pacific freight train head on. Twenty five people died and more than 130 were injured. Metrolink and its operations contractor deposited the full $200 million cap then in effect. Judge Peter Lichtman spent three months hearing from 122 claimants and issued individual awards ranging from $12,000 to $9 million, and he wrote that the cap left him at least $64 million short of what he believed the victims were owed.

In a mass casualty rail event, the cap is a shared pool, and claimants who file late walk into a proceeding where the money has already been allocated. In a single passenger case, which is the overwhelming majority of what we see, the cap never comes close to binding, and your recovery is limited only by your proof.

What If You Were Struck While Walking on or Near the Tracks?

These claims are harder, and you should hear that at the first meeting rather than the last. California abolished the rigid trespasser, licensee, and invitee categories in Rowland v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108 and replaced them with a general duty of ordinary care measured by foreseeability. A railroad is not automatically off the hook because someone was on the right of way.

The fight is over foreseeability. Where a railroad knows people regularly cross at a particular spot, because there is a worn footpath, a gap in a fence it never repaired, or a school on one side and housing on the other, a jury can find the railroad should have anticipated pedestrians and taken precautions. Where the track is fenced, posted, and remote, the claim is very difficult.

A public entity opens another route. Under Government Code § 835, a public agency is liable for injury caused by a dangerous condition of its property when it had actual or constructive notice and failed to act. A station platform with no tactile edge warning, a crossing with a broken pedestrian gate, or a fence the agency documented as breached and never fixed can support that claim. The six month deadline still applies.

Pedestrian rail fatalities usually generate a companion claim for the family. Our guide to wrongful death claims in Los Angeles explains who has standing under CCP § 377.60 and how the survival action under CCP § 377.30 works alongside it. The mechanism of injury resembles what we handle in our Los Angeles pedestrian accident practice, though the defendants and the deadlines differ sharply.

What About Railroad Employees Who Get Hurt on the Job?

They fall under a different statute entirely. Railroad workers employed by an interstate carrier are covered by the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, 45 U.S.C. § 51 and following, not by California workers’ compensation and not by ordinary tort law. FELA requires the worker to prove employer negligence, but the causation standard is far more forgiving than in a standard negligence case, and the limitations period is three years under 45 U.S.C. § 56.

Section 28103(d) makes clear that the rail passenger damages cap does not touch FELA recoveries. Borna Houman Law handles the tort side of rail injury cases: passengers, motorists, pedestrians, and their families. If you are a railroad employee injured on duty, you need a dedicated FELA practitioner, and we will tell you that instead of taking a case that belongs somewhere else.

What Damages Can You Recover in a California Train Injury Case?

California places no cap on non-economic damages in ordinary personal injury cases, which matters in rail litigation because rail crashes produce severe injuries at high rates. A train carries far more mass than a car, and a collision or derailment transfers energy that routinely produces spinal fractures, closed head injuries, crush injuries, and amputations.

Punitive damages against a rail defendant are possible but deliberately hard to win. Section 28103(a)(1) requires clear and convincing evidence that the harm resulted from conduct carried out with a conscious, flagrant indifference to the rights or safety of others, which is a tougher standard than the malice, oppression, or fraud test in California Civil Code § 3294. Public entities are separately immune from punitive damages under Government Code § 818.

Cases involving permanent neurological or spinal damage get valued through a completely different process than a soft tissue claim. We walk through that build in our guide to how catastrophic injury damages are constructed.

What Should You Do in the First 30 Days After a Rail Injury?

Move faster than you would after a car crash. The six month clock may already be running, and rail evidence gets overwritten on a fixed schedule.

Get the incident number from the agency at the scene and photograph the platform, crossing, signal, or car interior before anything is repaired. Locomotive event recorders capture speed, throttle, brake application, and horn activation. Inward and outward facing cameras capture the seconds before impact. That data is preserved for a limited period and then overwritten unless someone demands preservation in writing.

Send a spoliation letter to every potential defendant within days, not months. Ask specifically for event recorder downloads, cab video, dispatch and radio recordings, crew duty records, signal maintenance logs for the crossing, and the agency’s own incident investigation file. If the National Transportation Safety Board opens an investigation, its docket eventually becomes public and is a meaningful evidentiary source, though the NTSB’s probable cause finding itself is not admissible under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(b).

Do not give a recorded statement to a railroad claims representative before you have counsel. Rail claims departments move quickly, and their first contact usually comes while you are still in a hospital bed.

Frequently Asked Questions About Los Angeles Train Accidents

Who is liable in a train accident in Los Angeles?

Liability depends on the cause and can attach to the transit agency, the private operations contractor, the freight railroad that owns the track, the equipment manufacturer, a motorist who entered a crossing, or a city responsible for the crossing approach. Most LA rail cases involve at least two defendants. Naming all of them early matters, because the six month public entity deadline runs independently of the two year deadline for private defendants.

Can you sue for getting hit by a train?

Yes, though these claims are harder than passenger claims. Under Rowland v. Christian, a railroad owes a duty of ordinary care measured by foreseeability, so the claim is strongest where the railroad knew people regularly crossed at that location and failed to fence, warn, or slow. A public agency can also be liable under Government Code § 835 for a dangerous condition it knew about and did not fix.

What is the time limit for filing a train accident claim in California?

Six months against a public entity such as Metro Rail or Metrolink under Government Code § 911.2, and two years against a private defendant such as Amtrak, Union Pacific, or BNSF under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. If the agency rejects your claim in writing, Government Code § 945.6 gives you six months from that rejection to file suit.

Is a train collision always the driver’s fault at a crossing?

No. Railroads argue that reflexively, but a crossing case turns on whether the warning devices were adequate, functioning, and visible. Missing gates, a signal that failed to activate, vegetation blocking sightlines, or a documented history of prior collisions at the same crossing all shift fault. California’s pure comparative negligence rule means a partially at fault driver still recovers a proportional share.

How much is a train accident case worth in Los Angeles?

There is no meaningful average, because value tracks injury severity, lost earning capacity, and the strength of the liability proof. California caps neither economic nor non-economic damages in ordinary injury cases. The one ceiling that exists is the federal aggregate cap under 49 U.S.C. § 28103, currently $322,864,228 and rising to $401,900,000 on September 4, 2026, and it only becomes relevant in a mass casualty event.

Do I need a lawyer if Metro already offered to pay my medical bills?

An early offer to cover treatment almost always comes paired with a release, and signing it ends every claim you have, including for injuries that have not fully declared themselves. Herniated discs and post concussive symptoms frequently take weeks to become clear. Have counsel review any document a transit agency asks you to sign.

Talk to a Los Angeles Train Accident Lawyer Before the Six-Month Deadline Passes

If a Metro, Metrolink, Amtrak, or freight train injured you or killed someone in your family, the clock started the day it happened. Borna Houman Law prepares and presents government tort claims, sends preservation demands for event recorder and cab video data before it is overwritten, and builds the damages record with life care planners and forensic economists when the injuries are permanent. We work on contingency, so you owe nothing unless we recover for you.

Call (888) 42-BORNA for a free consultation, or reach our Los Angeles personal injury team online. You can also review the full range of our Los Angeles personal injury practice areas.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Every train accident case is different, and the deadlines change with the identity of the defendant. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Consult an attorney about your specific situation.