The California Tort Claims Act (Government Code §§ 810–996.6) sets the rules for suing a state or local government agency in California, and the central rule is this: before you can file a lawsuit for money damages, you have to submit a written administrative claim to the responsible public entity, and you have to do it fast. Six months from the date of injury for most personal injury and personal property claims, one year for most others. Miss the deadline or leave out required information, and a court will throw the case out no matter how strong it is on the merits.1California Legislative Information. California Government Code 910-911.2
Why the Claim Requirement Exists
Most people assume that if a government employee causes them harm, they can sue the government the same way they would sue a private business. California starts from the opposite premise. Under Government Code § 815, a public entity is not liable for any injury unless a specific statute makes it liable.2California Legislative Information. California Government Code 815 General negligence principles are not enough on their own.
Three statutory pathways cover most cases:
- Employee negligence under § 815.2. A public entity is liable when an employee causes injury while acting within the scope of employment, provided the employee would be personally liable for the same conduct. If the employee is immune, so is the entity.3California Legislative Information. California Government Code 815.2
- Failure to perform a mandatory duty under § 815.6. When a statute imposes a mandatory duty on the entity to protect against a specific type of injury, the entity is liable if it fails to carry out that duty with reasonable diligence.4California Legislative Information. California Government Code 815.6
- Dangerous condition of public property under § 835. The entity is liable for injuries caused by a dangerous condition on its property if the condition created a foreseeable risk of the type of injury that happened, and either an employee created the condition or the entity had notice with enough time to fix it.5California Legislative Information. California Government Code 835
The dangerous-condition pathway covers a large share of claims against cities and counties: a pothole that causes a motorcycle crash, a broken park railing, an unlit stretch of highway. But the claimant has to show the entity knew about the hazard or should have known through reasonable inspection.
Filing Deadlines You Cannot Miss
Claims fall into two deadline categories:
- Six months from the date the cause of action accrued, for claims involving death, personal injury, damage to personal property, or damage to growing crops.
- One year from accrual, for all other claims, including breach of contract and damage to real property.1California Legislative Information. California Government Code 910-911.2
A common and costly misunderstanding: many people read the one-year deadline as covering “property damage” and assume they have a full year after, say, a city garbage truck backs into their car. They do not. Damage to personal property falls under the six-month rule. The one-year window is for real property damage, breach of contract, and other non-injury claims.
Accrual usually means the date you knew or should have known about the injury and its connection to the government entity. For a car crash, that is the day of the collision. For a latent harm such as contaminated water, accrual may start later, when the harm is discovered.
What the Written Claim Must Contain
You submit the claim to the specific public entity responsible for the harm. Many agencies publish their own claim forms; if none exists, you draft your own. Either way, the claim must include:
- Your name and mailing address.
- An address where you want notices sent (yours or your attorney’s).
- The date, location, and circumstances of the incident.
- A general description of the injury, damage, or loss so far as it is known at the time.
- The name of any government employee involved, if you know it.
- The dollar amount claimed if it is under $10,000, with the basis for the calculation. If it is $10,000 or more, state whether the eventual lawsuit would be a limited civil case (under $35,000) or unlimited.1California Legislative Information. California Government Code 910-911.2
The injury description does not have to be exhaustive, but vague or incomplete information invites a rejection that costs you time. Give enough detail that the agency can actually investigate: which road, which building, which employee, what happened, and what it cost you.
What Happens After You File
Once the public entity receives your claim, it has 45 days to accept, reject, or settle it. You and the agency can agree in writing to extend that period.6California Legislative Information. California Government Code 912.4 During those 45 days the agency typically reviews incident reports, inspects the site, and talks to employees involved.
If the agency rejects the claim in writing, it must send notice explaining your right to sue. If the agency does nothing within the 45 days, the claim is automatically deemed denied on the last day.6California Legislative Information. California Government Code 912.4
The lawsuit deadlines that follow trip up even careful claimants. After a written rejection, you have only six months from the date of that notice to file suit. If the claim was deemed denied because the agency never responded, you have two years from the date of the incident.7San Diego Law Library. Suing State and Local Government Agencies: Claims The six-month post-rejection window is much shorter than most civil deadlines and catches people off guard. Put it on the calendar the day the denial letter arrives.
If You Missed the Deadline
Missing the six-month or one-year filing window does not automatically end the case, but the path back is narrow. You can submit an application for leave to present a late claim, and that application itself must be filed within one year of the date the cause of action accrued.8California Legislative Information. California Government Code 911.4 The application must explain why you missed the deadline and include the proposed claim.
The public entity must grant the late application if you meet one of these grounds:
- Mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect, and the entity was not prejudiced by the delay.
- You were a minor during all or part of the original filing period.
- You were physically or mentally incapacitated during all or part of the original filing period.
- The injured person died before the original deadline expired.9California Legislative Information. California Government Code 911.6
If the entity denies the late application, you can petition a superior court for relief within six months of the denial. The court applies essentially the same grounds, but a judge decides.10California Legislative Information. California Government Code 946.6 Once a year passes from the date of accrual without a late claim application on file, the door closes in most situations. That one-year outer boundary is the hard deadline no petition can fix.
Immunities That Can Defeat an Otherwise Valid Claim
Even when a statute creates liability, the Tort Claims Act carves out immunities that can override it. The main ones to know about:
Discretionary Acts
A public employee is not liable for injuries resulting from the exercise of discretion, even if the discretion is exercised poorly.11California Legislative Information. California Government Code 820.2 This protects policy-level decisions such as a fire chief’s deployment choices during a wildfire or a school board’s bus routing. It does not protect ministerial acts, which are routine tasks that follow established procedures.
Design of Public Improvements
Neither a public entity nor its employees are liable for injuries caused by the plan or design of a public improvement if the design was approved in advance by the legislative body or another authorized decision-maker, and a reasonable person could have approved it.12California Legislative Information. California Government Code 830.6 A highway interchange designed in the 1970s that met the standards of its time can be protected even if modern engineering would call it unsafe.
Natural Conditions and Prisoner Injuries
Public entities are generally not liable for injuries caused by natural conditions on unimproved public property. A hiker who falls on a natural trail on public wild land typically has no claim. Public entities are also not liable for injuries to prisoners, with limited exceptions for dangerous conditions of public property and medical malpractice by healing-arts practitioners employed by the entity.13California Legislative Information. California Government Code 844.6 An individual employee can still face personal liability, but the entity itself is shielded.
What You Can Recover
A successful claim can recover both economic damages (medical bills, lost wages, rehabilitation, property repair or replacement) and non-economic damages (pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of companionship). The Tort Claims Act does not impose a general statutory cap on non-economic damages for most claims against public entities. Specialized statutes may affect damages in particular contexts, such as medical malpractice involving healthcare provided by a public entity.
One category is flatly off the table. Government Code § 818 bars any award of punitive or exemplary damages against a public entity, with no exceptions.14California Legislative Information. California Government Code 818 Even if a government employee’s conduct was outrageous, the entity itself cannot be punished through the damages award. An employee may face personal punitive liability in a separate action, but the public treasury is not available for that purpose.
Defenses the Government Will Raise
Beyond immunities, public entities lean on several defenses.
Comparative fault. California follows pure comparative negligence. If you were partly responsible for your own injury, your damages are reduced by your percentage of fault. A jury finding you 30% at fault and the government 70% at fault gets you 70% of your damages. California does not bar recovery even if you were more at fault than the government, but a high fault percentage on your side shrinks the award.
Procedural noncompliance. Government attorneys go through every claim looking for defects. Filing a day late, sending the claim to the wrong entity, omitting required information, or failing to state whether the case would be limited or unlimited can all end the case before the merits are heard. Courts have little sympathy here because the claim requirement exists specifically to give the government notice and an opportunity to investigate. This is where claims fail most often, and it is preventable.
Failure to exhaust administrative remedies. Filing suit without first submitting an administrative claim and getting it denied (or deemed denied) will get the case dismissed. The claim process is a mandatory prerequisite. If the filing deadline has passed by the time the court sends you back to square one, the claim is gone.
Claims That Fall Outside the CTCA
The California Tort Claims Act covers state and local government entities in California: cities, counties, school districts, and state agencies. Two adjacent situations do not use the CTCA process, and confusing them with a CTCA claim is a common and costly mistake.
If your injury involves a federal employee or federal agency (a VA hospital, a military base, the U.S. Postal Service), the Federal Tort Claims Act governs instead. The federal process requires filing an administrative claim with the responsible agency within two years of the injury, and the agency has six months to investigate. If it denies the claim or fails to act, you have six months from the denial date to file suit in federal court.
When a state or local government employee violates your constitutional rights, such as excessive force by a police officer or deliberate indifference to medical needs in a county jail, you may have a federal civil rights claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in addition to or instead of a state tort claim. Section 1983 does not require filing an administrative claim first and allows recovery of attorney’s fees, which the CTCA generally does not. It also requires proving a constitutional violation, not just ordinary negligence. A city worker who negligently backs a truck into your fence is a tort claim; a police officer who uses unreasonable force during an arrest raises a constitutional issue. Some cases involve both, with different procedural requirements for each.