California Casualty Study Guide

California casualty splits cleanly into two bodies of law that behave nothing like each other: auto liability, governed by the Vehicle and Insurance Codes and a fifty-year-old Supreme Court case, and workers’ compensation, governed by the Labor Code and a chain of numbers worth memorising in order. Both departed from the national baseline, and one of them changed very recently.

Auto — fault-based, with the minimums that just moved

California is fault-based (tort). It is not a no-fault state, and it has no PIP. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage must be offered, but the insured may reject or waive it in writing (§ 11580.2) — offered and rejectable, not mandatory.

The financial responsibility minimums are the fact most likely to be stale in whatever you studied. California sat at 15/30/5 for decades, among the lowest limits in the country. SB 1107 moved them to 30/60/15 for policies issued or renewed on or after 1 January 2025 (Veh. Code § 16056).

Pure comparative fault, and the case behind it

California applies pure comparative fault, established in Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975). A claimant’s recovery is reduced in proportion to their own fault, with no percentage bar — a claimant found 99% responsible still recovers 1%.

That word pure is doing real work. Most states run a modified comparative system that cuts off recovery at 50% or 51%. California does not, which is why fact patterns testing this deliberately make the claimant mostly at fault: the modified-rule answer is “recovers nothing,” and it is wrong here.

For drivers who cannot obtain coverage in the standard market, the California Automobile Assigned Risk Plan (CAARP) is the residual mechanism — and it also administers the California Low Cost Automobile Insurance Program for income-eligible drivers (§ 11629.7).

Workers’ compensation — a chain of numbers

California’s workers’ compensation mandate is effectively universal. Every employer must secure the payment of compensation (Lab. Code § 3700), and the threshold is one employee — coverage is required from the first hire, with no small-employer exemption of the kind many states provide.

Learn the rest as a sequence:

• Temporary total disability pays two-thirds (66⅔%) of average weekly earnings, subject to a statutory minimum and maximum (§ 4653).
• TTD is capped at 104 compensable weeks within 5 years of the date of injury for most post-2008 injuries; certain severe conditions extend to 240 weeks (§ 4656).
• The claimant has 1 year from the date of injury — or from the last date benefits were furnished — to commence a proceeding (§ 5405).

An employer may comply in one of three ways: insure with a licensed carrier, qualify as an approved self-insurer, or obtain coverage from the State Compensation Insurance Fund, California’s public workers’ compensation insurer of last resort. Administration sits with the Division of Workers’ Compensation inside the Department of Industrial Relations.