Suing the State?

What you need to know.

Involved in an accident or injury with a city, town, county or state entity?  There are some special rules that you will need to follow.

When suing the state or local government, there are often strict time limits for bringing your injury claim. Some jurisdictions require that you file a claim within 30 days of your injury. Other states require a claim within 60, 90, or 120 days after your injury. Many states have one time limit for claims against a city, town, county, or municipality, and another for claims against the state or a state agency. However, not all states have a government-specific time limitation, and you may only need to be aware of the general statute of limitation for your injury.

Under Florida's statute of limitations for personal injury cases, you have four years from the date of the accident to file a lawsuit in Florida's civil courts. For injury claims against a city, county or state government, the time limit is three years.

Notice Requirements for filing a lawsuit against a government entity.
In most states, you cannot simply file a lawsuit in court against the government. Instead, you need to provide a “Notice of Claim” to the government. If you do not follow notice of claim guidelines, your lawsuit will be dismissed by the court. You must ensure that the Notice of Claim complies with laws of the applicable jurisdiction.

 In most jurisdictions, the Notice of Claim must be addressed to each person or entity that caused your injuries. The Notice of Claim is not filed with the court, but must be mailed (often by certified mail) to each government employee or entity. The notice may also need to be mailed to a single government agency that receives all Notice of Claim forms. In Florida, every Notice of Claim must be mailed to the Florida Department of Financial Services.

There is specific information that must be included in the notice. For example, in Pennsylvania, the notice must have the name and address of the injured person, the date, location, and hour of the accident, and the name and address of medical care providers.

After sending the Notice of Claim to each person or entity, you must wait for a period of time before filing a lawsuit in court. This period is typically between 30 and 120 days. The court will dismiss a lawsuit that is filed before the Notice of Claim period expires.

 Did you know the Government May Be Immune From Your Injury Claims?

The government is immune from certain injury claims. While this immunity is less broad than in the past, the government is still immune from many injury claims. Again, this immunity varies from state to state. Let’s take a look at the government immunity laws of two states.

In Illinois, there are several governmental immunities related to negligence claims. Under Illinois Law, the government is immune from lawsuit for negligence for:

Failure to supervise activity on public property.
Negligence related to health and safety inspections, and negligence connected to injuries caused by unsafe conditions on government property if the government did not have notice of the conditions.

In Pennsylvania, governmental employees and entities also have certain immunities from liability. These immunities relate to:

Operation of a motor vehicle.
Care, custody, and control of personal and real property in possession of the government.
Dangerous conditions of trees, traffic controls, street lighting, utility service facilities; streets, and sidewalks, and care, custody, or control of animals in possession of the government.

Most states will not allow injured persons to recover punitive damages from the government.

Punitive damages are compensation that is awarded to an injured person in order to punish the wrongdoer and deter future similar misconduct. The reasoning behind this policy (against punitive damages in these cases) is that, where the government is involved, punitive damages would not have the same deterrent effect.