Orange office

Four miles from the courthouse

Orange County centralizes its civil matters at the Central Justice Center, 700 Civic Center Drive West in Santa Ana. This office is the closer of the two to it, which matters more than it sounds once a case is filed: ex parte applications, case management conferences, motion hearings and depositions all become short trips rather than half-day expeditions.

It also means the judges hearing Orange County injury cases are the ones we appear in front of regularly, and that familiarity is worth something real when a case needs a hearing at short notice.

The Orange Crush

The interchange where the 5, the 22 and the 57 meet is one of the busiest in the United States, and it is a few hundred yards from this office. Heavy weaving traffic across short distances produces merging and lane-change collisions in volume, and they are CHP-investigated rather than handled by a city department.

Where a collision there is serious, the CHP may deploy a specialist investigation team, which produces a far more detailed reconstruction than a routine report. Knowing whether that happened, and obtaining the full file rather than the summary, is an early and worthwhile step.

The hospital corridor

The City Drive runs past UCI Medical Center, the county's level I trauma center, and Providence St. Joseph Hospital is a short distance away. Most seriously injured people in Orange County pass through one of them.

Two practical consequences. The records from a trauma admission are extensive and form the backbone of a serious claim, so obtaining them complete and early matters. And a hospital that treats an injured person has a statutory lien against any third-party recovery under Civil Code section 3045.1 — ordinary, frequently negotiable, and something that must be resolved before a settlement is distributed. See medical liens and your settlement.

If you are being treated at either hospital and cannot travel, say so. We come to you.