ATV Accidents

All-terrain vehicles, also known as "ATVs," are off-road vehicles with three or four wheels. They are often used for fun and recreation in California, and they may be able to travel at more than 100 miles per hour. However, ATVs are also associated with a high number of injuries and deaths. One common type of ATV accident is a rollover crash caused by its narrow wheelbase and high center of gravity. These rollovers can result in brain trauma, paralysis, amputation, and even death. If you or your child is hurt in a car accident involving an ATV in the Los Angeles area, you can consult the Los Angeles ATV accident lawyers at Sharifi Firm.

You may be able to recover compensation for an ATV accident if you can prove that someone else's negligence or a vehicle defect caused the crash. To establish negligence, you would need to show the duty of the defendant to exercise a certain level of care, a breach of duty, causation, and actual damages. In general, anyone operating a motor vehicle in California owes a duty of reasonable care to others in the vicinity. This means refraining from behavior that would create a foreseeable risk of harm.

Sometimes ATV accidents are the result of a dangerous condition on the land, such as an unmarked ditch. In that case, you may be able to recover damages from the landowner or occupier if your Los Angeles ATV accident attorney can show that it knew or had reason to know of the ditch and failed to provide warnings about the hazardous situation or make repairs.

In some cases, a vehicle defect is to blame for an ATV accident. If there is a manufacturing or design flaw, you may be able to hold the manufacturer responsible for your losses through a product liability case. This usually is based on a theory of strict liability, which means that you would need to prove that there was a manufacturing, design, or marketing defect in the vehicle, you were injured because of the defect, and you were using the vehicle as intended. An ATV accident lawyer in Los Angeles can help you prove these elements.

An ATV is defectively designed if it is built according to intended specifications, but the design is itself inherently defective and makes the ATV unsafe. Generally, if there is a design defect, it exists in every vehicle that is manufactured in a particular line. Manufacturing defects are usually individual incidents that deviate from what the manufacturer intended and from other units that are meant to be identical in the same product line. Less common in the context of an ATV accident is a failure to warn or marketing defect, which may arise when a manufacturer provides inadequate instructions for using its product.

If you have been hurt or lost a loved one because of a careless driver in Los Angeles or the surrounding cities, our motor vehicle collision lawyers may be able to assert your right to compensation from any party at fault for your injuries. Sharifi Firm also represents accident victims in San Bernardino, Riverside, Temecula, and Rancho Cucamonga, among other areas of Southern California. Contact us at (866) 422-7222 or via our online form for a free, no-obligation consultation.