Personal Injury Law Since 1992
Bakersfield, California
Craig E. Johnson
A career spent learning what these cases are actually worth.
Craig Johnson began in 1989 at Borton, Petrini & Conron — founded in Bakersfield in 1899, and at the time he joined it, the fourteenth largest law firm in California. He handled large-loss oil and gas matters, energy litigation, and mass casualty cases. Three years of that work taught him how the other side builds a defense, values a claim, and decides what to pay.
In 1992 he left to open his own practice and has represented injured plaintiffs ever since. He has never taken the defense side again.
What clients tend to mention first is that he speaks Spanish — fluently, learned on a two-year service mission to Ecuador before law school that also taught him the value of hard work. Not a staff member who translates. The attorney handling the case.
Read the full background →
The wheels of the law grind slowly. He has never been in a hurry.
Craig Johnson arrived in Bakersfield in 1989 and has built his family and his life here ever since.
He began practicing in an era before the mass adoption of computers and electronic filing. A complaint was filed by driving downtown, carrying the papers into the clerk's office, and standing there while they were stamped. He has worked through every change since — recessions, a pandemic that shut the courthouse doors and changed how a case gets tried, every revision to how Kern County moves a file. The practice did not stop.
In those same years he raised five children in this city, and he is a grandfather now. The patience that takes is the patience a case takes. A claim worth having is rarely a claim resolved quickly, and a client is owed a lawyer who will still be here when it finally is.
Our focus is personal injury. Period.
A personal injury case can arise or manifest in many different forms. These are some of the kinds of cases we handle. Because every file we take is an injury file, there is no learning curve on yours.
The timeline of a case.
Consultation
You talk to the attorney, not an intake screener. It is free, and if we do not think the case is worth bringing, we will tell you so plainly.
Investigation
We gather the collision report, photographs, witnesses, video, and the scene itself, while the evidence still exists and memories are fresh.
Treatment and records
You focus on getting well. We collect every record and bill, because an injury that goes undocumented goes uncompensated.
The demand
We present the claim to the insurer in writing, with the proof behind it — what happened, why its insured is responsible, and what the harm is worth.
Negotiation
Offer and counteroffer. This is where three decades of knowing what a file is actually worth shows up as money.
Filing suit
Some carriers only move once a complaint is on file. We file, which starts the litigation clock and puts the case in front of a judge.
Discovery and depositions
Written questions, document demands, and sworn testimony on both sides. You will be deposed once, and we will prepare you for it beforehand.
Mediation or trial
Most cases resolve at mediation. The ones that do not, we try — which is precisely why the ones that settle, settle for more.
Tell us what happened.
There is no charge to talk, and no fee unless we recover. If the case belongs somewhere else, we will tell you that too.