If a government body had anything to do with your injury—the City of Oakland, an AC Transit bus, a BART station, a county truck, a state highway—you have six months to act, not two years. That is the single most important sentence on this page.
Six months sounds like plenty until you spend three of them in physical therapy. If there is any chance a public agency is involved, treat your case as a six-month case starting today, and read the rest of this to understand why.
Why the Rules Are Different
You generally cannot sue a government agency in California unless a statute says you can. The law that opens that door is the Government Claims Act, and it comes with conditions.
Before you can file a lawsuit, you have to hand the agency a written claim within six months of the injury. That claim has to say specific things—what happened, where and when, what your injuries are, and how much you are asking for—and it has to reach the correct agency at the correct address. Sending it to the wrong department can be as bad as not sending it.
Once the agency has your claim, it generally gets 45 days to accept or reject it. If it sends you a written rejection, you have six months from that letter to file suit. If it never answers at all, you actually get more time—which is one reason a non-response is not the disaster it feels like.
If you miss the six-month window, you can apply for permission to file late within a year. It is worth trying, but it is discretionary, and it is denied more often than it is granted. (The governing statutes are Government Code sections 810 and following, with the six-month claim rule at section 911.2 and the post-rejection deadline at section 945.6.)
What This Looks Like in Oakland
- Bad roads and broken sidewalks: potholes, crumbling pavement, missing signs and signals. To win these you have to show the agency knew about the problem, or should have. Prior complaints and repair records end up being the whole case—which is why they get requested early.
- Public transit: injuries on or caused by AC Transit buses, and injuries at BART facilities. Transit agencies owe passengers a higher standard of care than an ordinary driver does, but the six-month deadline is the same, and the claim goes to the district itself.
- Government vehicles: collisions with city, county, or state vehicles being driven on the job.
- Mixed cases: a private driver and a dangerous intersection; a sidewalk defect next to private property. The private half runs on two years while the public half runs on six months. The practical answer is to work the whole case to the shortest clock.
Why Agencies Fight Hard—and How These Cases Are Won
Government agencies have legal protections that private defendants do not (for example, they are often shielded from claims about a road that was built to an approved design). They have adjusters who handle these filings all day, and no incentive to pay a claim that arrived late, went to the wrong office, or left out required information.
These cases are won on procedure and on early evidence: photographs of the hazard before the city repairs it, public records requests for prior complaints and maintenance logs, and witness accounts collected while people still remember. It is technical, document-heavy work, and it is the kind of work my practice is built for.
The Takeaway
If a public agency might be involved, assume six months from day one. And if you do not know who owns the road, the vehicle, or the sidewalk that hurt you—that is exactly the question to get answered fast, and I answer it for free. Ask me, or start with the deadlines guide.