Pasadena Car Accident Claim Guide

Start with the report. If the crash happened on a Pasadena city street, the Pasadena Police Department is the local agency to check first, and its listed phone number is (626) 744-4545. If it happened on a state highway, the California Highway Patrol may have taken the report instead, while incidents outside city policing can also involve the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department at (323) 526-5000.

The next step is getting the right record from the right agency. The claims data for Pasadena says CHP releases a crash report only to a party of interest, such as a driver, passenger, pedestrian, cyclist, vehicle owner, property owner, parent or guardian of a minor, legal representative, or insurer with a valid claim. That same source says the fastest route for a CHP report is the CHP Crash Portal, and otherwise form CHP 190 goes to the CHP Area office that filed the report; crashes on city streets are held by the local police department instead.

After you have the report, keep your timeline in view. California is listed here as an at-fault state, and the structured law data shows a 24-month personal injury deadline and a 6-month government claim deadline. The state-law sections on this page give the rule details, so the practical point is simple: do not wait to figure out whether a city vehicle or other public entity might be involved.

If your claim does not resolve informally, the trial court named for Pasadena is the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. That one-court setup is useful because you are not sorting through multiple county trial courts. Los Angeles County also recorded 777 fatal crashes and 840 fatalities in 2023, according to NHTSA FARS 2023, which helps explain why countywide crash litigation is active even though Pasadena itself, with a population of 137195, is only one part of the system.