The California Government Claims Act: How a Six-Month Form Decides Whether You Can Sue at All

The single most common way a California personal injury case dies is by missing the six-month deadline to present an administrative claim against a public entity. Government Code § 945.4 makes the claim a jurisdictional prerequisite — no claim, no lawsuit — and the courts apply the rule strictly. Cases that would otherwise be straightforward winners are dismissed every year because the injured person, or counsel they hired late, did not appreciate that the moment a public entity is anywhere near the facts, the clock is half as long as the ordinary statute of limitations and the procedural path is entirely different.

This page covers what triggers Government Claims Act treatment, the contents and timing of the claim itself, what happens after presentation, late-claim relief, the discovery rule, and the relationship between the Claims Act and the underlying statute of limitations.

What triggers Claims Act treatment

The Claims Act applies whenever the defendant is a “public entity” under Government Code § 811.2. That category includes:

• The State of California — Caltrans, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the California Highway Patrol, every department and agency.
• Counties and cities — including police departments, sheriff’s departments, animal control, public works, parks and recreation, and city- or county-owned vehicles and property.
• School districts — K-12 districts, community college districts, the UC and CSU systems.
• Transit agencies — LA Metro, AC Transit, MUNI, SamTrans, BART (as a special district), Sacramento Regional Transit.
• Special districts — water districts, fire districts, sanitation districts, hospital districts.
• Joint powers authorities — multi-agency entities formed under JPA agreements.
• Public hospitals — UC Health facilities, county-run hospitals, public-district hospitals (Cal-Mort cases).

It also reaches public employees acting in the scope of their employment. A claim against an individual police officer for on-duty conduct is treated as a Claims Act case because the entity will be vicariously liable.

Common scenarios that trigger Claims Act treatment:

• Car accident with a city or county vehicle.
• Slip or trip on a defective sidewalk, pothole, or other dangerous condition of public property.
• Bus accident (LA Metro, AC Transit, SamTrans, etc.).
• Injury caused by an on-duty police officer, firefighter, or other public employee.
• Medical malpractice at a public hospital (UC Davis, UCSF, LA County USC, etc.).
• Dangerous condition at a public school, public university, or public park.
• Injury caused by inmate labor or jail conditions.
• Injury at a public swimming pool, public library, public transit station.

The six-month deadline and the form

Government Code § 911.2(a) requires personal injury, wrongful death, and property damage claims to be presented “not later than six months after the accrual of the cause of action.” Most public entities make a standard claim form available — California’s State Board of Control claim form, the JPA standard form, the various agency-specific forms — and accept that form by mail, in person, or sometimes online. A written claim that includes all the required elements from § 910 is sufficient even if it doesn’t use the entity’s form, but using the entity’s form removes ambiguity.

Required elements under Government Code § 910:

1. Claimant’s name and post office address.
2. An address to which notices about the claim should be sent, if different from the claimant’s address.
3. The date, place, and other circumstances of the occurrence or transaction that gave rise to the claim.
4. A general description of the injury, damage, or loss, as far as is known when the claim is presented.
5. The name(s) of the public employee(s) causing the injury, if known.
6. The amount claimed, if $10,000 or less. If more than $10,000, the claim need only state that fact and whether jurisdiction is limited or unlimited civil.

The claim must be signed by the claimant or someone with authority to act on their behalf. Claims by minors are signed by a parent or guardian. Claims by decedents’ heirs in wrongful death are signed by the heir(s) presenting the claim.

Presentation can be by personal delivery, by mail to the entity’s designated address (the entity is required to post that address under § 915.2), or in some cases by electronic submission per the entity’s procedures.

After the claim: 45 days, then the suit window

Once the claim is “presented” (received), Government Code § 912.4 gives the entity 45 days to act. The entity can:

• Accept the claim in whole or in part and pay it.
• Reject the claim by mailing a written notice of rejection (which must include the warning under § 913 that the claimant has six months to file suit).
• Treat the claim as defective by returning it under § 910.8 with a notice of what’s missing, giving the claimant 15 days to amend and resubmit.
• Do nothing. After 45 days of inaction, the claim is “deemed rejected” by operation of law under § 912.4(c), starting the same six-month suit clock as if the entity had formally rejected.

The suit window after rejection (or deemed rejection) is six months under § 945.6(a)(1) if the entity provided written notice of rejection that complied with § 913 — which means the warning was on the rejection notice. If the entity did not give proper § 913 notice, the claimant gets two years from the date the cause of action accrued under § 945.6(a)(2) — which can be longer than the standard CCP § 335.1 limitations period that would otherwise apply.

Late claims and § 911.4 relief

A claimant who misses the six-month deadline has one more procedural shot: an application under Government Code § 911.4 for leave to present a late claim. The application must be filed within one year of the accrual of the cause of action, and the entity is required to grant it if the failure to timely present was due to:

• Mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect, and the entity is not prejudiced by the delay (§ 911.6(b)(1));
• The claimant was a minor for the relevant time (§ 911.6(b)(2));
• The claimant was physically or mentally incapacitated for the relevant time (§ 911.6(b)(2)); or
• The claimant died before the claim period ran (§ 911.6(b)(4)).

If the entity denies the § 911.4 application, the claimant can petition the superior court under § 946.6 for relief — essentially a judicial appeal of the entity’s denial. The petition must be filed within six months of the denial. Courts review the underlying facts but defer significantly to entity findings on prejudice, and the success rate for petitions on “excusable neglect” grounds is modest. Minority and incapacity petitions fare considerably better.

A § 946.6 petition that succeeds restores the claim and triggers the regular § 945.4 process — the entity then has 45 days to act, just as if the claim had been timely.

The discovery rule under the Claims Act

The Claims Act adopts the same delayed-discovery framework as ordinary tort law: the cause of action accrues when the plaintiff discovers, or through reasonable diligence should have discovered, the injury and its cause. Shirk v. Vista Unified School Dist., 42 Cal.4th 201 (2007), confirmed that the Claims Act incorporates the discovery rule from California’s general tort statute of limitations.

In practice, the discovery rule rarely extends the Claims Act window in routine accident cases — the plaintiff knew at the time of the accident that they were hurt and almost always knew the entity’s role at the scene. Where it helps:

• Latent injuries from on-duty police-conduct exposure (e.g., delayed diagnosis of injury from chemical agents).
• Dangerous-condition cases where the specific defect that caused the injury is not apparent at the scene and requires investigation.
• Cases involving sealed records or concealment by public employees.

The plaintiff has the burden of pleading specific facts that show why earlier discovery was not reasonably possible — a generalized “I didn’t know” is not enough.

How the Claims Act interacts with the underlying statute of limitations

A common confusion: meeting the six-month claim deadline does not extend the underlying statute of limitations. The two run on parallel tracks. The Claims Act sets a six-month deadline to present a claim. The two-year (or one-year, for med-mal) statute of limitations sets the deadline to file the lawsuit. Both must be satisfied.

What the Claims Act does affect is the lawsuit deadline after the claim is rejected. Under § 945.6:

• Six months from rejection if the entity gave proper § 913 written notice. This is shorter than the underlying CCP § 335.1 two-year deadline in most cases.
• Two years from accrual if the entity did not give proper § 913 notice. This is the same as the CCP § 335.1 deadline.

Plaintiffs who file a timely claim and receive a proper § 913 rejection notice in month four are on a six-month suit deadline that runs through month ten of the case — even though CCP § 335.1 would otherwise give them until month twenty-four. Missing the post-rejection suit deadline is just as fatal as missing the original claim deadline.

For deeper treatment of the underlying limitations period, see Statute Of Limitations. For dangerous-condition-of-public-property liability theory, see Premises Liability — Government Code § 835 governs the substantive elements, and the Claims Act controls the procedure.