Every mile of California freeway belongs to somebody. When a missing guardrail, a washed-out shoulder, a flooded lane, or a sign nobody could read helps cause a crash, the owner of that road is a defendant, and on state routes the owner is usually the California Department of Transportation. These cases are winnable. They are also the easiest cases in California to lose on a calendar, because the claim is due in six months. The Vertanous Firm has recovered more than $60 Million for injured Californians, including a $22.6 Million jury verdict against the City of Los Angeles after a fourteen-day trial.
The Short Answer
People assume the freeway is nobody's property. It is somebody's property. Interstates and numbered state routes are built, maintained, signed, striped, drained, and patrolled by the California Department of Transportation, a public entity of the State of California. Government Code section 835 says a public entity is liable for injury caused by a dangerous condition of its property where the condition created a reasonably foreseeable risk of the kind of injury that happened, and the entity either created the condition or knew about it in time to fix it.
That statute does not carve out freeways. It covers them. This page is part of our complete guide: dangerous condition of public property.
The hard part is not the theory. The hard part is that suing the State of California is a claims process before it is a lawsuit, the process has a six-month front door under Government Code section 911.2, and almost nobody hurt on a freeway is thinking about government claim deadlines while they are still in a hospital bed. That is the trap this page exists to close.
Who Owns the Road
Ownership decides who gets the claim, and a corridor can change owners in the space of one block. The rough map:
When ownership is unclear on the facts we have, the safe answer is not to guess. Timely claims go to every entity that could plausibly be responsible, because a claim presented and later found unnecessary costs nothing, and a claim never presented costs the case.
Example: A driver loses control on a rain-slicked state route where the pavement edge drops several inches to bare dirt. The car catches the dropoff, snaps sideways, and hits a bridge rail. The family assumes it was a weather accident and does nothing for seven months, then learns that the maintenance responsibility for that segment belonged to the state.
Conclusion: The theory was strong from the first photograph. The problem is the calendar. The six-month claim window under section 911.2 ran while the family was told it was nobody's fault. Relief from a late claim exists in narrow circumstances, it is limited and uncertain, and it is not something to rely on. The correct move was a call in week one, when the shoulder could still be measured and photographed.
The Conditions
Highway cases are not vague complaints that a road felt unsafe. They are specific physical conditions, documented and measured:
Guardrail and barrier failures. Missing rail where the drop demands it, rail that ends in an untreated blunt terminal, damaged rail nobody replaced after the last crash, and barrier that was never extended when the roadway changed. Guardrail is a safety device. When it is absent or broken, the survivable crash becomes the fatal one.
Shoulder and pavement edge dropoffs. An unpaved shoulder that erodes below the asphalt lip is a known hazard with a known fix. Vehicles that drift a few inches right catch the edge, and the correction that follows sends them across the centerline.
Fixed objects in the clear zone. Poles, pylons, unprotected pillars, and hardware sitting inside the recovery area beside a travel lane, unshielded.
Drainage that fails. Water ponding in a travel lane at highway speed is a hydroplaning event waiting for a schedule. Clogged inlets and undersized drainage are maintenance conditions, and maintenance records tell the story.
Signs, striping, and sight lines. Faded or missing lane markings, advisory signage that no longer matches the geometry, warnings placed too late for the speed of the road, and vegetation that grows across a sign or a sight triangle for years while service requests pile up.
Work zones. Lane shifts without adequate taper, absent or misplaced channelizing devices, and equipment staged where traffic runs. Work zones also bring contractors into the case.
Told the freeway crash was just driver error? Get a second opinion from a firm that has taken a public entity to verdict.
Free Case ReviewThe Elements
Section 835 is not a general invitation to sue over a bad road. It has parts, and each one has to be proven:
Notice is where highway cases are usually won. Section 835.2 recognizes both actual notice, meaning the entity knew, and constructive notice, meaning the condition was obvious enough and present long enough that a reasonable inspection program would have found it. State agencies generate paper: maintenance logs, service requests, inspection records, collision histories at the same post mile, prior claims, and internal studies. A condition that injured people at the same location year after year is not a surprise to anyone, and the entity's own files say so.
The Deadline
Here is the sequence that decides these cases before anyone argues about guardrail. A claim against a public entity for personal injury generally must be presented in writing within six months of the injury under Government Code section 911.2. That is a prerequisite to filing suit. Once the entity acts on the claim, a separate and much shorter suit deadline under Government Code section 945.6 takes over.
Two things people get wrong, both fatal. First, they assume the two-year personal injury deadline in Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 is the deadline. Against a public entity it is not the operative one, and a claim filed at month seven is generally too late no matter how much time is left on the two-year statute. Second, they wait for the traffic collision report, the insurance investigation, or a doctor to finish treating. None of those events pause section 911.2.
The Defense
Expect design immunity in the answer. Government Code section 830.6 protects a public entity from liability for injury caused by an approved plan or design where the design received discretionary approval in advance and substantial evidence supported its reasonableness. On freeways the state raises it in nearly every case, and on freeways it frequently does not fit the facts.
Design immunity protects a decision. It does not protect a failure to maintain the thing that was decided. Rail damaged in a prior crash and never replaced is maintenance. Drainage that stopped draining is maintenance. Vegetation grown across a sign is maintenance. A dropoff that eroded over five years is maintenance. And where a design approved decades ago has been overtaken by changed conditions in actual use, with notice and a reasonable opportunity to fix or warn, the statute itself contemplates that the immunity can be lost.
Example: A motorcyclist is thrown into an unshielded signpost after clipping a pothole on a freeway on-ramp. The state pleads design immunity and produces interchange plans from the original construction. The plans predate the current ramp configuration, say nothing about the sign placement at issue, and the maintenance file shows eleven service requests about pavement failure at that ramp in two years.
Conclusion: The immunity does not reach these facts. The pothole is a maintenance condition, not an approved design, and the produced plan does not address the feature that caused the harm. The service requests are strong evidence of actual notice under section 835.2. The case belongs in front of a jury on whether the ramp was in a dangerous condition.
How We Work It
Highway evidence is perishable in a way that ordinary crash evidence is not. Roads get repaired. That is the point of a maintenance department, and it is also how the condition that hurt you disappears before anyone photographs it. Our sequence:
Right of way and jurisdiction, not assumptions. Claims go out to each entity that could own or control the location.
Measurements, elevations, sight distances, signage positions, and photographs at the same hour and the same weather as the crash.
Not on the last available day. Early, complete, and with proof of presentation.
Maintenance logs, service requests, inspection records, prior collisions at the same post mile, prior claims, and studies that were funded and shelved. This is the notice case under section 835.2.
Highway design, traffic engineering, and accident reconstruction, brought in while the physical evidence still exists rather than after the state's repair crew has closed the issue.
Public entities settle cases they expect to lose in a courtroom. We have taken a city to verdict, and we prepare these files accordingly.
If the crash also involved a government vehicle rather than the road itself, our car accident silo covers that scenario in crashes with government vehicles, and the general road analysis lives on our Pasadena car accident page. Where the crash was fatal, the family's claim runs through wrongful death and the same six-month rule applies.
If you are referring counsel holding a highway case with a short claim deadline and a design immunity defense in it, this is precisely the category we co-counsel. Start at our referral page, or call (626) 888-2223 and talk to Tom directly. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
If we don't win, you don't pay.
The consultation is free. The representation is on contingency. If there is no recovery, you owe no attorney fee.
Questions We Hear Every Week
Yes. The California Department of Transportation is a public entity, and public entities can be liable under Government Code section 835 when property they own or control is in a dangerous condition that causes injury. State routes, freeways, on-ramps, shoulders, medians, and the fixtures along them are public property. The claim has strict prerequisites and a short deadline, so the case has to start immediately.
Generally six months from the date of injury to present a written government claim under Government Code section 911.2. That is a prerequisite to suing, not the lawsuit itself. After the claim is acted on, a separate and shorter suit deadline under Government Code section 945.6 applies. The two-year personal injury statute in Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 does not rescue a claim that missed six months.
Faster than most people think, and it matters because the six-month clock does not wait for you to figure it out. Numbered state routes and interstates are generally Caltrans. City streets belong to the city, unincorporated roads to the county, and a single corridor can change hands at an intersection. When ownership is genuinely unclear, the safe move is presenting timely claims to every entity that could be responsible.
A physical condition of the property that creates a substantial risk of injury when the road is used with due care. On highways that includes missing or damaged guardrail, dropoffs at the pavement edge, fixed objects in the clear zone, failed drainage that ponds water in a travel lane, obscured or missing signs, sight lines swallowed by vegetation, and work zones set up without adequate traffic control.
No. Design immunity under Government Code section 830.6 is a defense the entity must plead and prove, and it protects approved design decisions, not neglect of what was built. It does not cover maintenance failures, it does not cover features the approved plan never addressed, and the statute itself contemplates that immunity can be lost when changed conditions make a design dangerous in actual use.
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