When a commercial vehicle kills someoneYou grieve. We deal with the company.

Commercial vehicle deaths

This page is for the family of someone killed in Southern California by a vehicle driven for a business or a public agency. That includes a tractor-trailer, a box truck, a delivery van, a bus, a city truck, or an employee's own car on a work errand. It covers what a company changes about a death case: testing, investigation, records, insurance, punitive damages, the coroner and the public-agency claim. It does not cover the general law of wrongful death, which is on our Los Angeles wrongful death lawyer page. It also does not cover a death at work where the person who died worked for the same company, which is on our page on fatal workplace deaths.

The company behind the driver

A wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family and pays for what they lost. A survival action is the claim the person who died would have had, brought for the estate. A commercial vehicle does not change either claim. It changes who can be named in them and what the family can prove.

The driver is the first defendant. The employer may answer for the driver as well. The California Supreme Court described the two main theories in Diaz v. Carcamo (2011) 51 Cal.4th 1148. Respondeat superior makes an employer liable, regardless of its own fault, for an employee's negligent driving in the scope of employment. Negligent entrustment makes an employer liable for its own negligence in choosing the employee to drive. Whether the driver was working at the moment of the crash is a question of fact, and our guide on suing the company sets out how courts decide it.

The two years come from Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. The $30,000 figure is the California minimum for policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2025, under Vehicle Code section 16056. The owner's limit for a borrowed car is in Vehicle Code section 17151, and it does not apply when the driver was the owner's employee. The $750,000 floor in 49 CFR 387.9 covers for-hire interstate carriers of non-hazardous property in vehicles of 10,001 pounds or more. Our guide to whose insurance pays explains how the layers stack.

Post-crash alcohol and drug tests

Federal rules require the employer to test a commercial driver after a crash that kills someone. Under 49 CFR 382.303, the employer must test each surviving driver for alcohol and controlled substances as soon as practicable when the accident involved the loss of human life. No citation is needed for that test. If the alcohol test is not given within two hours, the employer must record why, and it stops trying at eight hours. Attempts at a drug test stop at 32 hours.

The rule has a limit that matters for vans and smaller trucks. Section 382.103 applies the testing rules to drivers who must hold a commercial driver's license (CDL). Many delivery vans and smaller box trucks fall below the weight that requires one, so their drivers are outside these federal tests. When the rule does apply, the employer keeps the records: positive results for five years, documents on post-accident testing decisions for two years, and negative results for one year, under section 382.401. The test result, or the employer's written reason for not testing, is one of the first records we ask the company to keep.

CHP major collision investigators

The California Highway Patrol's Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Teams, known as MAIT, investigate major traffic collisions. The CHP's MAIT program page says the program began in 1978 and that teams are based in eight divisions, including the Southern Division in Los Angeles and the Inland Division in San Bernardino. Each team has a CHP sergeant, two or more officers, a Motor Carrier Specialist I and a senior transportation engineer from Caltrans. The Motor Carrier Specialist conducts in-depth mechanical inspections of the vehicles involved.

A MAIT team does not come to every fatal crash. The CHP says the workload depends on requests from the CHP and allied agencies and on the complexity of each investigation. Many fatal commercial vehicle crashes are investigated by a city police department, the sheriff or a CHP area office alone. The family can ask the investigating officer which agency has the case and whether MAIT was requested. Our post on getting an LAPD traffic collision report covers one common request route.

Many of these deaths happen off the freeways. By our count of NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System 2024 file, using NHTSA's large-truck body types, 62 people died in 61 crashes involving a large truck in Los Angeles County. Of those 61 crashes, 27 were on roads other than Interstate, U.S. or state highways. The same file shows 38 deaths in San Bernardino County, 27 in Riverside County and 12 in Orange County.

Coroner and medical examiner offices

Government Code section 27491 makes it the coroner's duty to determine the circumstances, manner and cause of deaths known or suspected to result from an accident or injury. A traffic death is one of them. In Los Angeles and Ventura counties, a medical examiner's office does that work. In Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, it is part of the sheriff's department. That office's findings later become part of the evidence of what caused the death.

Riverside County's bureau also has a facility in Indio for the eastern part of the county. For the civil claim, the family does not need to file anything with the coroner or medical examiner. The office's findings are requested once they are ready.

Punitive damages against a company

Punitive damages punish rather than compensate. Civil Code section 3294 allows them only on clear and convincing evidence of oppression, fraud or malice. Against an employer, subdivision (b) adds a stricter test. The employer must have known in advance that the employee was unfit and employed the employee with a conscious disregard of the rights or safety of others. Or it must have authorized or ratified the conduct, or been personally guilty of oppression, fraud or malice. For a corporation, that knowledge or conduct must belong to an officer, director or managing agent.

In White v. Ultramar, Inc. (1999) 21 Cal.4th 563, the Supreme Court held that a managing agent must exercise substantial discretionary authority over decisions that ultimately determine corporate policy. The court said the Legislature meant a managing agent to be more than a mere supervisory employee.

Companies sometimes admit the driver was working, which keeps their hiring record out of the case. Diaz held that once an employer admits vicarious liability for its employee's negligent driving, the plaintiff cannot also pursue negligent entrustment. CRST, Inc. v. Superior Court (2017) 11 Cal.App.5th 1255 then held that the admission does not bar recovery of punitive damages. The same opinion found no triable issue that could expose that trucking company to them, which shows how demanding the test is.

In a death case, punitive damages reach the case through the survival action. Code of Civil Procedure section 377.34(a) keeps any punitive damages the person who died could have recovered. A public entity does not pay them under Government Code section 818, and neither does the United States under 28 U.S.C. section 2674.

Survival actions filed in 2026

The estate's survival action recovers the loss the person who died sustained or incurred before death, such as medical bills and earnings lost between the crash and the death, plus punitive damages where the conduct supports them. For an action filed on or after January 1, 2026, it does not include the decedent's pain, suffering or disfigurement. Section 377.34(b) allowed those damages only for actions granted a trial preference, an order for an early trial date, before January 1, 2022, or filed on or after January 1, 2022 and before January 1, 2026. That window closed and was not extended.

The filing date controls, not the date of the crash or the death. A case filed this year is valued on the family's wrongful death claim and the estate's economic losses. Our page on survival actions walks through the statute, and our page on wrongful death damages explains how the family's own losses are measured.

Family members who may file

Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60 lists who may bring a wrongful death claim. The surviving spouse or domestic partner, the children, and the descendants of a child who died come first. If the person who died left no descendants, the people who would inherit under intestate succession, the default order when there is no will, may file. Parents, stepchildren and a putative spouse may also file if they were financially dependent on the person who died. So may a minor who lived in the household for the 180 days before the death and depended on the person for half or more of their support.

The family brings one case together, and the court divides any recovery. Our page on who can file a wrongful death claim applies these rules to real family situations.

Government and postal vehicles

If the vehicle belonged to a city, a county, a transit agency, a school district or the state, the family presents a written claim to that agency before any lawsuit. Government Code section 911.2 sets the deadline for a death claim at six months after the cause of action accrues. If the agency sends a written rejection, section 945.6 allows six months from that notice to sue.

A Postal Service vehicle follows federal law. Under 28 U.S.C. section 2401(b), the claim must be presented in writing to the agency within two years. The Postal Service's own rule, 39 CFR 912.6, lets the executor or administrator of the estate, or another person entitled under state law, present a death claim. Our guide to government and postal vehicle accidents lists where each Southern California claim goes.

The first two days

The family does not have to do any of the legal work in the first days. Our first 48 hours checklist lists the few practical steps that protect the claim, in the order they usually come up. A commercial vehicle adds a short list of its own, and our guide to finding the company behind the vehicle explains the markings.

Exceptions and edge cases

• The person who died worked for the same company. Workers' compensation death benefits are usually the remedy against the employer, while claims against other companies may remain. Our page on fatal workplace deaths covers both.
• The driver was in a personal car. The company may still be responsible if the driver was doing its work, and may not be if the driver was simply commuting. The facts of the trip decide it.
• The vehicle was a van or a smaller box truck. The driver may not need a CDL, so the federal post-crash testing rule may not apply. Our box truck guide covers that gap.
• The death came days or weeks after the crash. The cause of death becomes the central question, and the medical records between the crash and the death carry the case.
• A mail truck was run by a contractor. The Federal Tort Claims Act's definition of a federal agency excludes any contractor with the United States, so the claim may run against the contractor under ordinary state rules.
• The survival action was filed before 2026. An action filed from January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2025 keeps the pain and suffering rule in section 377.34(b).

Next steps for the family

When a commercial vehicle kills someone, the family's claims are the ones California gives every family after a fatal crash. The company adds a second source of insurance, a second set of records, and sometimes a public agency's six-month claim. When you are ready, the first conversation is about the date, the place and the vehicle. We handle the company, its insurer and any agency claim from there, and the commercial vehicle accident page explains the rest of the case.

Sources cited

• Code of Civil Procedure sections 335.1, 377.34 and 377.60
• Civil Code section 3294; Government Code sections 818, 911.2, 945.6 and 27491
• Vehicle Code sections 16056 and 17151
• 49 CFR 382.103, 382.303, 382.401 and 387.9; 39 CFR Part 912
• 28 U.S.C. sections 2401, 2671 and 2674
• Diaz v. Carcamo (2011), White v. Ultramar, Inc. (1999) and CRST, Inc. v. Superior Court (2017), on CourtListener
• CHP, Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Teams; NHTSA, FARS 2024 national file