Written and reviewed by Josh Kohanim, Esq., California Bar No. 328609 · Reviewed
In this guide
Losing an arm, a leg, a hand, a foot, or part of one in an accident in Los Angeles County produces a claim with its own mechanism, its own defendants, and a damages picture measured in decades. For the wider picture, start with our Los Angeles catastrophic injury lawyer page.
Lost at the scene or in surgery
A traumatic amputation is a limb severed at the moment of the injury. A surgical amputation is one a surgeon removes afterward, because the blood supply cannot be restored, the tissue is not viable, or infection is spreading. Insurers occasionally treat the second as a break in the chain of causation. It is not. The question is whether the defendant's negligence was a substantial factor in causing the harm, and a surgeon removing a limb to save a life is doing what the injury required.
Two other terms run through the medical records. Replantation is the attempt to reattach a severed limb, which is only possible for a narrow set of injuries and time windows. The residual limb is what remains after the amputation, and it is the part of the body that decides how the rest of the person's life works: whether a socket fits, whether the skin holds up, whether walking hurts.
The National Library of Medicine's StatPearls chapter on upper limb amputation reports that trauma is the leading cause of acquired upper limb amputation, accounting for 80 percent, most often in men aged 15 to 45, and cites an estimated 1.6 million people living with limb loss in the United States in 2005, projected to double by 2050. Its other figure belongs in any conversation about damages: as many as 33.75 percent of patients with proximal upper limb amputations rejected their prostheses, for reasons of fit, comfort, ease, and appearance.
How limb loss happens in Los Angeles
Mechanism decides the defendant. Four patterns produce most of the limb loss cases in this county, and each one points at a different set of policies.
| How it happened | Who may be liable | What decides it |
|---|---|---|
| Industrial machine, press, saw, or conveyor | Machine manufacturer, maintenance contractor, equipment owner | Guarding, lockout procedure, and whether a safety device was removed |
| Crush injury in a truck or motorcycle crash | Driver, employer, vehicle owner, trucking company | Reconstruction, vehicle data downloads, and the employment relationship |
| Construction site collapse or heavy equipment | General contractor, subcontractor, equipment lessor (the company that leased it) | Retained control over the work and site safety duties |
| Vascular injury treated late | The party that caused the original trauma | Whether the delay was foreseeable and part of the same chain |
California treats these injuries as serious by statute. Labor Code section 6302 defines a "serious injury or illness" to include amputation and loss of an eye, along with any serious degree of permanent disfigurement, which is what triggers an employer's duty to report to Cal/OSHA, the state workplace safety agency. That report, and the inspection that follows it, is often the first independent record of what the machine was doing when it took the hand. Our attorneys ask for it early. Our construction accident page covers the job site version of this claim.
What an amputation claim is made of
Past medical bills in these cases are large and easy to prove. They are also the smallest number in the file. The claim is built out of what has not happened yet, and each item below needs a witness who can put a price and a replacement interval on it.
| Item | What it covers | Who proves it |
|---|---|---|
| Prosthetic devices | The initial fitting, sockets, liners, repairs, and every replacement device for life | Prosthetist and life care planner |
| Revision surgery | Reshaping the residual limb, neuroma excision, skin grafting | Treating surgeon |
| Attendant and household help | Tasks the person can no longer do at home | Life care planner, under jury instruction CACI No. 3903E |
| Home and vehicle modification | Ramps, bathroom changes, hand controls | Life care planner and contractor pricing |
| Lost earning capacity | What the person could have earned against what they can earn now | Vocational rehabilitation expert and economist |
| Pain, disfigurement, impairment | The noneconomic side, including phantom limb pain | The client, the treating physicians, and the people who knew them before |
Phantom limb pain is real, though defense doctors still treat it as subjective. MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine's patient resource on limb loss, describes it plainly: "Some amputees have phantom pain, which is the feeling of pain in the missing limb." It is a recognized consequence of amputation, it is treated, and it belongs in the record from the first pain-management visit rather than being raised for the first time at a deposition, the sworn questioning before trial.
Future medical care has to meet the standard in CACI No. 3903A: the reasonable cost of reasonably necessary care the person is reasonably certain to need. For a prosthesis that means device pricing and a documented replacement interval rather than a round number. Our guide to life care plans and future medical costs walks through how the plan is built and how the defense takes it apart.
The work you can no longer do
Two questions decide the earnings side. Can this person do their old job, and if not, what work is realistically available to them at what pay? A vocational rehabilitation expert answers both by testing, by labor market data, and by talking to the person about what a day now costs them.
CACI No. 3903D puts that comparison to the jury directly, earnings without the injury against earnings with it, and adds that a work history is not required. That matters for apprentices and young tradespeople whose earnings had not started yet. It cuts the other way too: a defense that points to a return-to-work statistic has to meet the specific person, the specific residual limb, and the specific job.
When the usual rule changes
- The machine that took the limb belonged to your employer. Labor Code section 3602 keeps you in the workers' compensation system against the employer itself. The claim against the machine's maker, a maintenance company, or a contractor on the site is separate and is not blocked by it.
- The employer never carried coverage. Labor Code section 3706 lets an injured worker sue an uninsured employer in court for damages instead.
- Diabetes or vascular disease was already in the chart. Expect the argument that the limb was going to be lost anyway. It is answered with the surgical record and with CACI No. 3928, the instruction that refuses to discount an award because this particular body was fragile.
- A safety guard had been removed before the day of the injury. This helps the claim against whoever removed it and complicates the claim against the manufacturer. Photographs of the machine before anyone repairs it decide that question, which is why the inspection request goes out in the first week.
What to do now
Ask the hospital for the operative reports and keep every device receipt, including the ones insurance covered. Photograph the machine, the vehicle, or the site before it is repaired, and write down the names of everyone who was there. If a Cal/OSHA inspector came, note the date. Then let our attorneys deal with the insurance adjuster, who will call early and will ask how the accident happened before you have the medical answers.
An amputation case is a forty-year math problem attached to a negligence claim, and the math only works if the medical record supports it. If you also have burns from the same event, our guide to severe burn injuries covers that side, and if the available policies look too small for the plan, read what happens when the insurance is not enough.