Don't know about California, but in PA blaming the plaintiff(s) in response to a personal injury/wrongful death lawsuit is routine. I worked for attorneys who defended such lawsuits. When a complaint was filed, I would prepare the response. The response consisted of answers to each individual paragraph in the complaint; then there would be a separate section called "New Matter" where the defendant could assert his/her/its own version of events, and possibly a section for a counterclaim against the plaintiff and/or a crossclaim against any other defendants named in the lawsuit. I had dozens of standardized paragraphs to use and I would plug into the whichever ones the attorney told me to use. This was one of those routine paragraphs.
