If a government vehicle or a dangerous public road was part of your crash, the ordinary two-year clock is not your clock. In most cases a written government claim must be presented within six months, and waiting can kill a case that liability never could. The Vertanous Firm has recovered more than $60 Million for injured Californians, including a $22.6 Million jury verdict for a pedestrian struck on the head by a falling municipal light-pole cap, won in a fourteen-day jury trial against the City of Los Angeles. We know how to sue the government, because we have beaten it.
Read This First
Most California injury cases run on a two-year statute of limitations under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. Cases against the government do not. If a city, county, the State, or another public entity is on the other side of your crash, Government Code section 911.2 generally requires a written claim, presented to the entity itself, within six months of the injury. Not a lawsuit. A claim, on the entity's terms, delivered to the entity's own office, before you ever see a courtroom. Miss it and the strongest case in Pasadena can be over before it begins. This page is part of our complete guide: Pasadena car accident lawyer.
Six months is shorter than it sounds. It is roughly the time it takes to finish a first round of physical therapy, or to receive a police report you were told to wait for. Families spend those months healing. The calendar spends them running. So here is the one instruction this page exists to deliver: if the government touched your crash in any way, call a lawyer now. Not after the report. Not after the treatment. Now.
Two Kinds of Cases
Government crash cases come in two flavors, and the first job is telling them apart.
Flavor one: a public employee driving negligently on the job. The city utility truck that rear-ends you on Fair Oaks. The transit bus that changes lanes into your car on Colorado Boulevard. When a public employee negligently operates a motor vehicle within the scope of the job, Vehicle Code section 17001 makes the public entity itself answerable for the resulting injury. Walk the elements in plain English: a public employee, driving as part of the job, negligently, causing injury or death. Prove those four things and you are not chasing an individual driver's personal assets. You are presenting a claim against the entity that put that driver on the road, with the entity's resources standing behind the recovery.
Flavor two: the road itself was the danger. The blacked-out streetlight. The missing signal. The sightline swallowed by an untrimmed median. The intersection that was designed to fail. That is a dangerous condition of public property claim under Government Code section 835, a different theory with its own elements, its own notice battles, and its own defenses, and it is the arena where this firm made its name. We wrote the complete guide, and if your crash may involve the roadway itself, read it next: dangerous condition of public property attorney. This page stays with the vehicle cases and with the deadline both flavors share.
Many crashes are both. A government driver makes a bad lane change at an intersection where the signal has been malfunctioning for months. A serious government case gets both theories investigated from the first week, because you rarely get a second chance to build either one.
Who Counts
People hear "government vehicle" and picture a police car. The category is far wider: cities and their utility, sanitation, and maintenance fleets; counties and their service vehicles; the State and its transportation department working the 210 and the 134; transit agencies and their buses; school districts and their vans; and a long list of other public agencies and districts. In Pasadena alone, the vehicle that hit you could belong to the city, the county, the State, a transit agency, or a school district, and each one is its own defendant with its own claim office.
The rule of thumb is simple. If there is any chance a public entity owned the vehicle, employed the driver, or controlled the road, assume the six-month claim rules apply until a lawyer confirms otherwise. Guessing cautiously costs you nothing. Guessing wrong in the other direction can cost the case.
Not sure whether the government is involved? Ask us today.
Free Case ReviewThe Claim-First System
Suing the government in California is a sequence, and every step has its own clock.
Which entity owned the truck? Which one employed the driver? Which one controlled the road? Claims must go to the right entity, at the right office, often on the entity's own form. A claim presented to the wrong agency does not stop the clock against the right one.
Government Code section 911.2 sets the deadline. The claim tells the entity who you are, what happened, what your injuries are, and what you seek. It looks like paperwork. It is the key that unlocks the courthouse, and without it there is generally no case at all.
The entity has a short statutory window to accept or reject the claim, and serious injury claims are almost always rejected. Rejection is not defeat. Rejection is the starting gun.
Under Government Code section 945.6, if the entity mails a written rejection, you generally have six months from the mailing to file suit. If the entity never sends proper written notice, a longer outside period applies, generally two years from when the claim arose. Do not calculate these dates yourself. Bring us the paper and let us calendar every one of them.
Litigation against a public entity means facing a defendant with its own attorneys, its own adjusters, and an investigation that started the day of the crash. The claim was the price of admission. Trial readiness is what moves the number.
What Waiting Costs
Nothing about a government claim requires a police report. Read that sentence again, because the most common way these cases die is a careful family politely waiting for paperwork while the six months run out.
Example: David, a Pasadena delivery driver, is stopped at a red light on Fair Oaks Avenue when a city pickup truck rear-ends him. Liability could not be cleaner, and David needs neck surgery. His family is told the police report will take time, and they decide to wait for it before calling a lawyer, because they want to arrive with a complete file. The report finally comes, and eight months after the crash they call our office.
Conclusion: The six-month claim period under Government Code section 911.2 has already run, so no lawsuit can simply be filed. There is a procedure for seeking permission to present a late claim, but that relief is limited and uncertain, and a case that was strong on day one now depends on it. The police report the family waited for was never required to present the claim. The lesson is not subtle: if a government vehicle is involved, call immediately, with or without the report, with or without the records, with or without anything but the date of the crash.
Day-One Investigation
Within hours of a crash involving a public vehicle, the entity's machinery is moving: risk managers open a file, government attorneys are consulted, supervisors take the driver's statement, and photographs are taken for the defense. The evidence that decides these cases mostly lives in government hands. The vehicle's telematics and camera footage. The driver's training, discipline, and route records. The maintenance history. The dispatch logs. The record of prior claims. None of it comes to you on its own, and some of it does not wait around.
So we move the same day you call: preservation demands on the vehicle and its data, public records requests, our own scene photographs, our own witness canvass, and our own experts. A government case is won by building a parallel investigation before the entity's version of events hardens into the official one. That is also why these cases reward the early phone call more than almost any other case we handle.
Why Us
Plenty of firms will present a government claim. Very few have taken a public entity through a full jury trial and won. The Vertanous Firm's signature result is a $22.6 Million jury verdict for a pedestrian struck on the head by a falling municipal light-pole cap, won after a fourteen-day jury trial against the City of Los Angeles. We wrote about that case: the $22.6 Million verdict against the City of Los Angeles. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome, but they do tell a public entity's lawyers exactly what kind of fight to price.
Government defendants pay attention to which plaintiff firms actually try cases. A claim signed by a firm that has beaten a city in front of a jury reads differently from a claim signed by a firm that settles everything. If your crash involved a government vehicle, start here. If the road itself may be the defendant, start with our full guide to dangerous condition of public property claims. Either way, the six months are already running.
The six-month clock does not pause. Call today.
Free Case ReviewIf 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
Before you can sue at all, you generally must present a written government claim within six months of the injury under Government Code section 911.2. After the entity rejects the claim, Government Code section 945.6 sets the lawsuit deadline, generally six months from the mailing of a written rejection. Treat six months as the controlling number, and call well before it.
Call immediately. There is a procedure to seek permission to present a late claim, but the relief is limited and uncertain, and it gets harder with every passing week. Do not decide on your own that the case is dead, and do not wait another month to ask. A lawyer needs to evaluate your dates today.
More defendants than most people expect: cities, counties, the State and its transportation department, transit agencies, school districts, and other public agencies and districts. If any government body owned the vehicle, employed the driver, or controlled the road, assume the six-month claim rules apply and confirm the details with a lawyer immediately.
California law makes the public entity answerable when its employee negligently operates a motor vehicle on the job under Vehicle Code section 17001. In practice the claim is presented to and defended by the entity, which begins investigating through its own risk management and attorneys on day one. That is why your side of the case has to start just as early.
That is a dangerous condition of public property claim under Government Code section 835, a different theory with its own elements and proof, and the same six-month claim deadline. It is the arena where this firm won a $22.6 Million jury verdict against the City of Los Angeles. We cover it in full on our dangerous condition page.
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."
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