If you were injured by a city, a county, the state, a school district, or a transit agency, you probably have six months to act. Not two years.
That's the single most important thing on this page. Most personal injury claims in California allow two years to file suit. Claims against public entities are different, and the deadline for the first required step is generally six months from the date of injury. Miss it, and the case is usually over — no matter how badly you were hurt, no matter how clearly the entity was at fault, and no matter how sympathetic the circumstances are.
People lose these cases without ever learning they had one. They spend the first months treating, healing, and dealing with their life, which is what anyone would do, and by the time they think about a lawyer the door has already closed.
If something happened to you involving a public agency, the clock started the day it happened.
California's Government Claims Act requires that a claim be presented to the public entity before any lawsuit can be filed. Under Government Code section 911.2 (opens in new window), claims for personal injury, death, or damage to personal property must be presented within six months after the cause of action accrues. Certain other claims, including those involving real property and contracts, carry a one-year period.
Two things about this trip people up constantly.
It's a written notice presented to the agency itself, on its own procedures, containing specific required information. It is a prerequisite. Filing a lawsuit without having gone through it will generally get the case thrown out under Government Code section 945.4 (opens in new window).
Most people spend the first weeks after a serious injury in treatment and the following weeks trying to get back to normal. Half a year disappears quickly when you're hurt, and unlike the ordinary two-year limitations period, this one leaves almost no room for waiting to see how things develop.
The clock generally starts on the date of injury. In some circumstances, where an injury or its cause could not reasonably have been discovered right away, accrual may be later. Whether that applies to any particular case depends on facts that need to be looked at individually, which is a reason to ask rather than assume.
The category is much broader than most people picture, and a claim can be required in situations that don't feel like they involve the government at all.
Public entities in California include cities and counties, the State of California and its agencies, Caltrans, transit agencies including Los Angeles Metro and municipal bus operators, school districts including LAUSD, community college districts, public hospitals and health districts, water and utility districts, and police and fire departments.
If you were hurt in a collision with a city vehicle, on a public sidewalk, at a public school, on a transit bus, in a county building, or on a state highway, you're likely in this system.
Suing the individual driver, officer, or employee does not avoid the requirement.
If a federal employee or vehicle was involved — a postal truck, a VA hospital, a federal building — the Government Claims Act doesn't apply. Federal claims run through their own procedure with their own deadlines and their own rules. If there's any federal element to what happened to you, do not rely on the timeline described on this page.
The sequence matters, because each step has its own deadline and missing any of them can end the case.
Within six months of accrual, a written claim goes to the correct public entity, presented in the manner that entity requires and containing the information the statute requires.
Under Government Code section 912.4 (opens in new window), the agency has 45 days to act on the claim. It can accept it, reject it, or do nothing. If it does nothing within 45 days, the claim is deemed rejected by operation of law.
This is where it gets technical, and where the two possible answers differ enormously.
If the entity sends you a written rejection that complies with Government Code section 913 (opens in new window), you generally have six months from the date that notice was personally delivered or mailed to file your lawsuit, under Government Code section 945.6(a)(1) (opens in new window).
If no compliant written rejection is ever sent, you generally have two years from accrual under section 945.6(a)(2).
The practical consequence is that a defective or missing rejection notice can leave you with far more time than you thought, and a proper one can leave you with far less. This isn't something to work out from a website. It's one of the more common ways otherwise-viable cases are lost, and it's worth having someone read the actual notice you received.
There's a limited path, and it's worth pursuing quickly rather than assuming nothing can be done.
Under Government Code section 911.4 (opens in new window), someone who missed the six-month deadline may apply to the entity for leave to present a late claim. That application must be presented within a reasonable time, not to exceed one year from accrual. Past one year, relief is generally unavailable.
Under Government Code section 911.6 (opens in new window), the entity is required to grant the application on certain grounds, including mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect, and where the person injured was a minor or was incapacitated during the period.
If the entity denies the application, the next step is a petition to the superior court for relief under Government Code section 946.6 (opens in new window), filed within six months of the denial notice. Relief there is discretionary.
Courts have consistently held that not knowing the deadline existed is not excusable neglect. "Nobody told me" is the most common reason people miss this deadline and one of the least likely to succeed as a reason for relief. That is harsh, and it is the law.
Minors and people who were incapacitated are treated differently, under rules technical enough that nobody in either situation should be relying on a general description. If that's your circumstance, talk to a lawyer now rather than reading further.
Even with a timely claim, liability works differently against the government than against a private party.
A public entity is not liable for injuries the way a private person is. It is liable only where a statute makes it liable. There is no general common-law negligence claim against a public entity in California. Every viable claim has to be anchored to a specific statutory basis.
A public entity is generally liable for injuries caused by the acts or omissions of its employees acting within the scope of their employment, to the same extent the employee would be. This is the basis for most collision cases involving government vehicles.
A public entity may be liable where public property was in a dangerous condition at the time of injury, the condition created a reasonably foreseeable risk of the kind of injury that occurred, and either an employee's negligent or wrongful act created the condition, or the entity had actual or constructive notice of it long enough beforehand to have protected against it.
That notice element is where sidewalk, pothole, stairway, and roadway cases are won and lost. It is not enough that a hazard existed. The question is whether the entity knew or should have known, and for how long. Answering it means going after prior complaints, service requests, work orders, inspection records, and reports of earlier incidents at the same location — records the entity holds and does not volunteer.
A timely claim and a valid statutory basis still aren't the end of the analysis. California grants public entities a range of immunities, and they bar claims that would otherwise succeed.
Design immunity can protect an entity from liability arising out of a roadway, intersection, or facility built according to a design that was approved in advance by an authorized body, where there was substantial evidence supporting the reasonableness of that design. It's a frequent obstacle in dangerous-roadway cases, and it has requirements the entity has to establish rather than simply assert.
Discretionary act immunity protects public employees, and through them their entities, for injuries resulting from discretionary policy decisions, as distinguished from operational ones.
Natural condition immunity generally bars claims arising from the natural condition of unimproved public property, which affects injuries in parks, on beaches, and on open land.
Trail immunity covers injuries on trails used for recreational purposes.
These are defenses the entity raises, not automatic bars, and each has boundaries. Whether one applies to a particular case is a legal question with real room to argue, and it's a reason to have a case evaluated rather than abandoned because someone said the city can't be sued.
Knarik Boyadzhyan served as a Deputy Public Defender, representing people facing criminal charges at every stage, and that matters here in a specific way. Public entities are defended by government counsel and by firms that handle these cases in volume, and they evaluate opposing counsel the same way private insurers do. A file handled by a lawyer who is comfortable in a courtroom is assessed differently from one that is not.
You'll also be working with the attorney handling your case, not a case manager. At Boyadzhyan Legal Shield, from our office in Encino, that's simply how it works.
Here's what these cases involve.
More than one agency may be responsible for the same stretch of sidewalk or road, and a claim presented to the wrong body or the wrong office can fail on that basis alone. Getting this right in the first weeks is not administrative detail. It is the case.
Public entities fix hazards. A broken sidewalk, a missing sign, a damaged railing, or a pothole can be gone within days of an injury being reported, and once it's repaired, proving what it looked like becomes far harder. Photographs, measurements, and documentation need to happen now.
Prior complaints, 311 reports, service requests, work orders, inspection logs, and prior incidents at the same location. Under section 835, this is frequently the difference between a case and no case, and these records take time to obtain.
The claim has required contents and required procedures, and a deficient claim can be treated as no claim at all.
Whether the notice complied with section 913 determines whether the deadline to file suit is six months or two years. That determination should not be guessed at.
Government defendants don't negotiate the way private insurers do, and a case that isn't being prepared for court tends not to move.
Liability in these cases can be shared, and being partly at fault doesn't necessarily bar a recovery — that's covered on our bus accident page. How injuries and losses are proven and valued is covered on our traumatic brain injury page.
From several angles, with something in frame for scale, and get the wider location too. If it's a sidewalk, curb, stairway, or road defect, it may be repaired within the week.
Nearest address, cross streets, mile marker, room or building number. "Near the park" will not be enough later.
Including any employee who responded or who you spoke to afterward.
If an agency documented what happened, that record exists now.
Not to a risk management office, not to a claims administrator, not to an insurer for the entity.
This is the instinct that costs people these cases. The six-month clock is running while you're recovering, and the decision to talk to someone can't wait for your medical picture to become clear.
If your question is not answered here, call (310) 877-7770 to discuss your situation.
Boyadzhyan Legal Shield handles injury claims against public entities throughout Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties from our office in Encino. If a city, county, school district, transit agency, or state agency was involved in how you were hurt, the timeline is short enough that it's worth a conversation now rather than after you have finished treating.
How fees and costs work is set out in a written agreement we go through with you before you sign anything.
Initial consultations are free and confidential.
This page is general legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. California statute references link to the official California Legislative Information site.
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