In most California car accident cases, you have two years from the date of the crash to file a lawsuit under CCP 335.1. But if a government vehicle or a dangerous road condition caused or contributed to your crash, a separate six-month deadline under Gov. Code section 911.2 applies first, and it can expire long before the two-year clock does.
The Short Answer: Two Years for Most California Car Accident Claims (CCP 335.1)
California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 gives you two years from the date of the crash to file a lawsuit for personal injury or death caused by another person’s wrongful act or neglect. For a typical crash where everyone involved was a private driver, this is the deadline that controls the case, and the two-year clock generally runs from the date of the crash itself.
That two-year period is the default, not a guarantee. It does not run freely against a government defendant. When a city, transit agency, county, or the state is a potential defendant, a shorter administrative claims process takes over first, and missing it can end your case long before the two-year mark. What follows is general information about how these deadlines interact, not legal advice for your specific crash.
First, Answer This: Was a City Vehicle or a Road Defect Involved?
Before you rely on the two-year deadline, ask two questions. First, was one of the other vehicles owned by a government entity, or driven by a government employee who was working at the time, such as a Culver City vehicle, a Culver CityBus or LA Metro bus, an LA County vehicle, a Caltrans truck, or a police car? Second, even if every vehicle involved was privately owned, did a road condition, such as a pothole, a broken guardrail, a malfunctioning signal, or poor sightlines on a public street or highway, cause or contribute to the crash?
If the answer to either question is yes, this is not an ordinary two-year case. A shorter, six-month administrative claim requirement under the Government Claims Act applies, and it runs on its own schedule regardless of how the rest of the case unfolds. Answering this honestly, right away, matters more than almost anything else you do after the crash, because the government claims clock does not wait for you to finish treatment or gather records.
The Six-Month Rule for Claims Against a Government Entity (Gov. Code § 911.2)
Under Government Code section 911.2, a claim for injury to a person or death must be presented to the responsible public entity not later than six months after the crash. This is a presentment deadline, meaning you must file an administrative claim with the entity itself before you can sue it; you cannot go straight to court. Six months also applies to a claim for damage to personal property, which includes your vehicle, when a government entity is involved. Only claims that fall outside those categories, such as damage to real property, get a full year to present.
Six months arrives fast. It is measured from the date of the crash, or from the date of death in a wrongful death claim, and it is separate from, and unrelated to, the two-year period under CCP 335.1 that governs claims between private drivers. Missing this window does not necessarily end the case outright, but it puts you in a much harder position governed by a separate, narrower exception.
What Counts as “Government-Involved”: City/Metro Vehicles, Police Cars, Caltrans, and Dangerous Road Conditions (Gov. Code § 835)
Government involvement takes two different forms, and they are not the same claim. The first is a public employee driving on the job. That usually means a marked public vehicle, such as a Culver City vehicle, a Culver CityBus or Metro bus, an LA County vehicle, a Caltrans maintenance truck, or a marked or unmarked police car. But it does not depend on who owned the car. If the other driver was a government employee working at the time, including one driving their own personal vehicle on agency business, the six-month claim deadline applies.
The second is less obvious: the crash was caused not by another driver but by a dangerous condition of public property. Government Code section 835 sets out what that requires: the property must have been in a dangerous condition at the time of the injury, that condition must have proximately caused the injury, the condition must have created a reasonably foreseeable risk of the kind of injury that occurred, and either a public employee’s negligence created the condition or the entity had actual or constructive notice of it in time to have fixed or warned about it. An ordinary single-car crash caused by a driver’s own inattention, with no vehicle or road defect involved, does not meet this standard.
Was the other driver actually on the job for a government agency?
Even their own personal car counts if they were working at the time, and that alone cuts your two years down to six months.
Which Entity to File Against and What Happens After You File (45-Day Response, Gov. Code §§ 912.4, 945.6)
Which entity you file against depends on where the crash happened and what caused it. A crash on a Culver City street involving a city vehicle, or a road defect the city is responsible for maintaining, generally goes to the City of Culver City. A crash involving a Culver CityBus is a claim against the City of Culver City, which runs that bus service. A crash involving an LA Metro bus is a claim against LA Metro. A road defect on an LA County-maintained road is a claim against the County of Los Angeles, and a defect on a state highway or freeway, such as the 405 or the 90, is a claim against the State of California. Where the claim has to arrive matters as much as when. For a city, county, or transit agency it goes to that entity’s clerk, secretary, or auditor, or to its governing body at its principal office. For the state it goes to the Department of General Services, with a small filing fee or a fee waiver request. Handing it to the department you believe is responsible, such as County Public Works or a Caltrans district office, does not count as presenting it, and nobody there has to forward it for you.
Once a claim is presented, the entity generally has 45 days to respond, under Government Code section 912.4. The claimant and the entity can agree in writing to extend that period. If the entity simply does not respond within 45 days, the claim is deemed rejected automatically on the last day of that period, whether or not any notice was ever sent. Under Government Code section 945.6, a lawsuit must then be filed within six months of a written rejection notice, or within two years of the crash if no such notice was ever given.
The Three-Year Deadline for Property Damage Only (CCP 338)
If your car was damaged but no one was injured, and every driver involved was a private individual, a different statute applies. Code of Civil Procedure section 338 gives you three years to sue over injury to or damage of personal property, which covers vehicle damage in a crash with no bodily injury claim. That three-year window is longer than the two-year personal injury deadline under CCP 335.1, and it is easy to assume it always applies to property damage.
It does not apply, however, if a government entity is a potential defendant. In that situation, the six-month presentment deadline under Government Code section 911.2 controls vehicle property damage claims the same way it controls injury claims, because personal property damage is one of the categories that section specifically places on the six-month track. Whether you have three years or six months to act on property damage alone still comes back to the same first question: was a government vehicle or a government-maintained road involved.
Exceptions That Change the Clock: Minors and Wrongful Death
A few circumstances change how these deadlines run, and they cut in different directions depending on whether a government entity is involved. Under Code of Civil Procedure section 352, if the injured person was a minor or otherwise lacked legal capacity when the crash happened, the limitations period is paused for the duration of that disability, for claims against a private driver. That tolling does not apply to a claim that has to be presented to a public entity under the Government Claims Act.
Instead, Government Code section 911.4 allows a written application for permission to file a late government claim, within a reasonable time not exceeding one year after the crash, explaining the reason for the delay. Time spent as a minor still counts toward that one-year cap; it is not paused the way it is under section 352. Time the injured person spends mentally incapacitated without a guardian or conservator does not count, so twelve months on the calendar is not always twelve months on this clock. But if the injured person was a minor for any part of the six-month period, the entity must grant a timely late-claim application; there is no discretion to refuse it. A minor who was under 18 for the whole six months still has the usual one year to apply. One who turned 18 during that window has six months from the birthday or one year from the crash, whichever comes first.
A wrongful death claim runs on the same two-year period under CCP 335.1, but both clocks start on the date of death, not the date of the crash.
If your injury was not obvious at the scene and showed up later, when your clock started can be a separate question.
What Happens If You Miss the Deadline
Missing the two-year deadline under CCP 335.1, without an applicable tolling exception, generally bars the lawsuit entirely; a court will dismiss the case as untimely regardless of how strong the underlying facts are. Missing the six-month presentment deadline against a government entity is not necessarily fatal by itself.
Government Code section 911.4 allows a late-claim application within a reasonable time up to one year after the crash, and it must explain the delay. For most adults there is no guarantee it will be granted. But the entity has no choice in some situations and must grant a timely application: where the injured person was a minor, or was physically or mentally incapacitated, for any part of the six-month period, or died before it ran. Incapacity works the same way minority does. If it lasted the whole six months, you have the usual one year to apply. If it covered only part of them, the application is due six months after the incapacity ends or one year after the crash, whichever comes first. If a child was hurt, do not assume the claim is gone; the one-year application is the step that protects it. If the entity denies the application, or simply does not act on it within 45 days, that is still not the end. A court can relieve you of the claim requirement, but only if you ask within six months of the denial. If more than a year has gone by with no application, that route is closed, but that is not automatically the end of the case. Whether anything survives can turn on how the entity handled a claim you did send. That is a question to put to a lawyer rather than answer for yourself.
A separate trap applies even after a claim is properly presented and rejected: Government Code section 945.6 requires the lawsuit itself to be filed within six months of a written rejection notice, and missing that filing deadline bars the case even though the administrative claim was filed on time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the two-year deadline start on the day of the crash, or later? For a typical injury claim it runs from the date of the crash itself. If the crash resulted in a death, the wrongful death claim runs on that same two-year period, but the clock starts on the date of death instead of the date of the crash.
What if I’m not sure whether a government vehicle or a road defect was involved? Ask two things: was another vehicle owned by a government entity or driven by a government employee working at the time, and did a road condition, such as a pothole, broken guardrail, malfunctioning signal, or poor sightlines, cause or contribute to the crash. If either answer is yes, or you simply aren’t sure yet, treat the case as government-involved until you can confirm otherwise, because the six-month presentment window runs on its own schedule and can close long before the two-year deadline you might otherwise assume applies.
My car was damaged but no one was hurt, and a government vehicle may have been involved. Which deadline applies? The three-year property damage deadline under CCP 338 only applies when every driver involved was a private individual. If a government entity is a potential defendant, the same six-month presentment deadline that controls injury claims also controls vehicle property damage claims, not the three-year period.
My child was hurt in the crash. Does the six-month government claims deadline still apply to them? Yes, and the usual tolling for minors under CCP 352 does not apply once a government entity is involved. If the injured person was a minor for any part of that six-month window, the entity must grant a late-claim application, and that application is due within one year of the crash if they were a minor the entire six months, or within six months of their 18th birthday, or one year of the crash, whichever comes first, if they were a minor for only part of it.
I already sent my claim to the department I thought was responsible, like County Public Works or a Caltrans district office. Does that count as filing? No. A government claim has to reach the entity’s clerk, secretary, auditor, or governing body, or the Department of General Services for a claim against the state, and delivering it to the department you believe caused the problem does not count as presenting it under the law. Nobody at that department is required to forward it to the correct office for you, so confirm you have the statutory recipient before the six-month window runs out.
What happens if the government entity never responds to my claim at all? If it doesn’t act within 45 days, or within an extension you agreed to in writing, your claim is automatically deemed rejected on the last day of that period, even if you never receive a notice saying so. From there, the lawsuit-filing deadline under Government Code section 945.6 still applies: six months from a written rejection notice if one was sent, or two years from the crash if no such notice was ever given.
A Culver City car accident lawyer can review your crash, identify whether a government entity is involved, and make sure the right notice or lawsuit gets filed before either deadline passes. Consultations are free, and there is no fee unless we win, with no case costs charged if there is no recovery. Call 310-600-7881 for a free case review, or send us the details and we will call you back.
