Section 835 is the only door into a lawsuit over unsafe public property in California, and it opens only for the person who proves every element it lists. This guide walks the statute the way a trial lawyer does: element by element, with the notice rules, the design immunity defense, and the claim deadlines that decide these cases long before a jury does. 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 Starting Point
Start with the rule that shapes everything else. In California, a public entity is not liable for an injury the way a private person is. It is liable only where a statute creates the liability. For injuries caused by unsafe public property, that statute is Government Code section 835. There is no general negligence claim against a city for a broken sidewalk, a dark crosswalk, or a falling limb. There is section 835, and there is nothing else.
That has two consequences. First, the elements are not suggestions. The injured person carries the burden of proving each one, and a missing element ends the case no matter how badly the person was hurt. Second, the statute is a map. Once you know what it requires, you know what evidence to gather, what the entity will attack, and where the case will be won or lost. This guide is written to that map. For the practice overview, see our California dangerous condition of public property attorney page.
In plain English, section 835 makes a public entity liable for an injury caused by a dangerous condition of its property when the injured person establishes four things:
Not before, not after. At the moment the injury happened, and on property the entity owned or controlled.
The condition must be a legal cause of the harm, not a coincidence at the scene.
A defect that invites a trip must cause a trip injury; the risk and the harm must match in kind.
Either a public employee, acting within the scope of employment, negligently or wrongfully created the condition, or the entity had actual or constructive notice of it under section 835.2 in time to protect against it.
Every section below takes one piece of that list and shows how it is actually proven.
Element One
A dangerous condition is a condition of property that creates a substantial risk of injury, as opposed to a minor, trivial, or insignificant risk, when the property is used with due care in a way that it is reasonably foreseeable it will be used. Three ideas live inside that sentence, and the entity will attack each of them.
The condition must also be on property the entity owned or controlled at the time. That sounds simple, and it often is not. A sidewalk, the parkway strip beside it, the street, the median, and the signal overhead can belong to different entities, and each must be identified early because each needs its own claim.
Example: A pedestrian walking home at dusk catches her toe on a raised sidewalk slab under a dead streetlight. The city measures the lip after the fact and calls it trivial. The lip is modest, but it sits in deep shadow at the edge of a busy crossing where pedestrians look up for turning cars.
Conclusion: Height alone does not settle the question. The darkness, the crossing, and where a careful pedestrian's eyes are pointed at that spot all bear on whether the risk was substantial. A defect that is easy to see at noon can be a trap at dusk, and the case is built around the conditions at the moment of the fall, not the photograph taken at noon a month later.
Elements Two and Three
The second and third elements travel together. The injured person must prove that the dangerous condition actually caused the injury, and that the condition created a reasonably foreseeable risk of the kind of injury that occurred.
Causation is where the entity reaches for other explanations: the driver was speeding, the pedestrian was on a phone, the fall would have happened anyway. A dangerous condition does not have to be the only cause. It has to be a cause. When a driver's mistake combines with a road that hid the danger, both can be responsible, and the question becomes how the fault is divided, not whether the road is excused.
The kind-of-injury element keeps the claim honest. A missing guardrail creates a foreseeable risk that a vehicle leaves the roadway. A dark crosswalk creates a foreseeable risk that a driver fails to see a pedestrian. A loose fixture overhead creates a foreseeable risk that something falls on someone below. We build the case so that the risk the condition created and the injury the client suffered are visibly the same story.
Hurt on public property? The claim clock is measured in months.
Free Case ReviewElement Four
The fourth element is where most section 835 cases are decided, and the statute gives two separate paths. The injured person needs only one.
Path one: a public employee created the condition. When an employee acting within the scope of employment negligently or wrongfully created the dangerous condition, notice is not required. The entity cannot claim it did not know about a hazard its own crew built. A trench left unmarked, a sign installed where it blocks the view of oncoming traffic, a repair that left a lip higher than the defect it replaced: these are creation cases, and the proof runs through work orders, crew records, and the people who did the work.
Path two: notice. When the entity did not create the condition, the injured person must prove the entity had notice of it under Government Code section 835.2, and had it long enough before the injury to have taken measures to protect against it. Section 835.2 defines two kinds of notice.
Constructive notice is where these cases are usually won, because public entities rarely admit they knew. An inspection program that exists on paper but never reaches the street is not a defense. It is evidence. And historical street imagery can show, month by month, how long a defect sat in plain view.
The timing piece matters too. Notice must come early enough that the entity could have repaired the condition, guarded it, or warned about it before the injury. A hazard reported the morning of the injury may not satisfy the statute. A hazard reported repeatedly over two years almost always does.
Example: A cyclist is thrown when his front wheel drops into a deep, widening pothole on a city street. The city says no one reported it. Records produced in the case show a street-maintenance crew patched a smaller hole at the same spot the prior year, and historical imagery shows the current hole growing for months beside a bus stop that city employees pass daily.
Conclusion: The absence of a complaint is not the absence of notice. A condition that was visible, growing, and located where the entity's own employees regularly worked supports constructive notice under section 835.2, and the prior patch shows the entity knew this spot failed. The question becomes what a reasonable inspection system would have found, and the city's own records answer it.
The Defense
Public entities have a defense private property owners do not: design immunity under Government Code section 830.6. It is pleaded in almost every roadway, intersection, and signal case, and it has ended cases that were never evaluated carefully. Understanding its structure is how it gets beaten.
In general terms, section 830.6 protects a public entity from liability for an injury caused by the plan or design of a construction or improvement to public property where the plan or design was approved in advance of construction by the legislative body or by an employee exercising discretionary authority to approve it, or was prepared in conformity with standards previously approved that way. The immunity applies only if the trial or appellate court determines there is substantial evidence on which a reasonable public employee could have adopted the plan, or a reasonable legislative body or employee could have approved it.
Read that carefully and the limits appear:
Where design immunity is asserted, discovery into what was actually approved, by whom, with what analysis, and what changed afterward is where the defense starts to come apart. We evaluate it before we file, not after. The full treatment lives on our spoke page: design immunity, real, narrow, and beatable.
The Deadlines
More section 835 cases die on the calendar than in the courtroom. Before anyone can sue a public entity for damages, the Government Claims Act requires a written claim to the entity, and the timelines are nothing like the two-year statute most people know.
City, county, state, school district, transit agency, water or utility district. Ownership and control are not always obvious, and each entity that may be responsible needs its own claim.
Under Government Code section 911.2, a claim for death or for injury to a person must be presented no later than six months after the cause of action accrues, which in most injury cases is the day of the injury. The claim has required contents and must go to the right entity. This is not a lawsuit, and it is not optional.
The entity may reject the claim in writing, or it may simply fail to act, in which case the law treats the claim as rejected after a fixed period. Rejection is the norm, and it is not defeat. It starts the next clock.
Under Government Code section 945.6, when the entity gives written notice of rejection, suit generally must be filed within six months after the notice is personally delivered or deposited in the mail. When no written notice is given, the period is generally two years from the date the cause of action accrued. Another short clock, and another place cases quietly die.
Missed the six-month claim deadline? The law allows an application for leave to present a late claim in limited circumstances, and it must be made promptly. Relief is limited and uncertain. The only reliable strategy is to call early. We explain the whole sequence, with the traps at each step, in the six-month government claim deadline, step by step, and the crash-specific version in crashes with government vehicles and dangerous roads.
The Proof
Public entities generate paper, and the paper is where these cases are won. Evidence disappears on a schedule, so the investigation starts the week we are retained:
Section 835 reaches every kind of public property: sidewalks, streetlights and signals, state highways and freeways, trees, parks, playgrounds, and public buildings. The statute stays the same. The proof changes with the property.
Let us start the investigation before the scene is repaired.
Free Case ReviewWhy It Takes a Trial Firm
Public entities defend differently. There is no adjuster under pressure to close files. There are government lawyers, immunity motions, and a budget that can outlast almost any plaintiff. A city pays serious money for one reason: it believes a jury will make it pay more.
In our signature case, a pedestrian was struck on the head by a falling municipal light-pole cap. We tried the case against the City of Los Angeles for fourteen days, and the jury returned a $22.6 Million verdict. TopVerdict ranked it the No. 1 verdict in California and in Los Angeles County for 2023 in its category, Falling Object and Public Premises Liability. Read how that case was built. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome, but they tell the entity on the other side that the trial is not a bluff.
For referring counsel: if you are holding a section 835 matter with a claim clock running, notice fights ahead, and design immunity on the horizon, we co-counsel and accept referrals throughout California. Start at our referral page, or call (626) 888-2223 and talk to Tom directly.
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
It makes a California public entity liable for injuries caused by a dangerous condition of its property, but only when the injured person proves each element the statute lists. Because public entities are liable only where a statute says so, section 835 is the doorway for nearly every claim over an unsafe sidewalk, roadway, streetlight, tree, or park. No element, no case.
Only on one of the two paths. If a public employee created the condition, notice is not required. Otherwise, you must prove notice under Government Code section 835.2: actual notice, meaning the entity knew, or constructive notice, meaning the condition was obvious and existed long enough that a reasonable inspection would have found it, with time left to fix or guard it.
For personal injury, a written government claim must be presented within six months of the injury under Government Code section 911.2. After a written rejection, Government Code section 945.6 generally allows six months to file suit. If no written rejection notice is given, the suit period is generally two years from the injury. The six-month claim comes first, and it is the deadline that ends the most cases.
No. Design immunity under Government Code section 830.6 requires the entity to prove that the plan was approved in advance by someone with authority to approve it, and a court must find substantial evidence that a reasonable official could have approved it. The approval must cover the feature that caused the harm. It does not excuse poor maintenance, and it can erode when conditions change.
Usually not. The dangerous-condition question asks whether the property posed a substantial risk to people using it with due care, not whether you were perfect. If you were partly careless, California reduces your recovery by your share of fault rather than eliminating it. The entity will argue your conduct at every stage; the evidence decides how much it matters.
Measurements and photographs of the condition taken early, before repair. Service requests, complaint logs, work orders, and inspection records obtained from the entity. Prior claims and lawsuits about the same location. Historical street imagery showing how long the defect existed. Witnesses to the lighting, traffic, and conditions at the time of injury. Most of it sits in public files and must be requested quickly.
No. It reaches any public property: sidewalks and streets, but also streetlights, traffic signals, trees, parks, playgrounds, public buildings, and fixtures attached to public structures. Our $22.6 Million verdict against the City of Los Angeles involved a light-pole cap that fell onto a pedestrian's head. The statute is the same; the proof changes with the property.
Client Reviews
Ani A., Glendalevia Yelp"The guy who hit me had a low max coverage. I don't know what magic Vertanous Firm worked, but I got paid for my damages less than a year out from my accident, and was paid three times more than the policy limit."
Tony K., Burbankvia Yelp"Tom is the absolute best. He knows the law and he also knows medicine. One meeting with Tom and he was able to understand the medicine behind my condition and find the appropriate doctors."
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Where We Work
From our office in Pasadena, we handle dangerous condition of public property cases throughout California, and we represent injured people across the San Gabriel Valley and all of Los Angeles County, in English, Armenian, and Farsi.
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