California Medi-Cal benefits and your personal injury case. Yes, you may know have known this, but if you are a California Medi-Cal recipient and you use your Medi-Cal benefits to pay for some of or all of your medical care, and you receive a settlement from a personal injury case, you have both a contractual and statutory duty to pay back Medi-Cal what they paid out in your medical care. In fact, if you have an attorney on your personal injury case, he or she shares that same duty to contact Medi-Cal and ascertain their lien amount so they can get paid back. This is governed under the California Welfare Institutions code since it deals with public funds. See what Mark says about what a good California personal injury attorney can do in these types of cases - it is all not doom and gloom.