Can You Sue a Government Agency for Negligence? Your Rights Under the FTCA and State Tort Claims Acts (2026 Guide)

You slipped on an unmarked wet floor in a federal building. A county ambulance ran a red light and T-boned your car. A state hospital’s overworked nurse gave you the wrong medication. A VA doctor missed the diagnosis that your private doctor caught six months later. In every one of these situations, the person who hurt you was wearing a government badge — and that single fact changes everything about how you seek compensation. The question you are asking is the right one: can you sue a government agency for negligence, or does the government get a free pass the rest of us do not?

The short version is this: yes, you generally can sue — but not the way you would sue a private business or an individual. Suing the government means playing by a separate rulebook, with shorter deadlines, mandatory pre-lawsuit paperwork, caps on what you can recover, and traps that can kill a valid claim before a judge ever hears it. And there are two separate rulebooks: a federal track (the Federal Tort Claims Act, or FTCA) for injuries caused by federal agencies and their employees, and a state/local track (each state’s own tort claims act) for injuries caused by state, county, and city agencies. If you came here wondering whether can you sue a government agency for negligence — the federal post office, the VA, the city, the county — this guide walks both tracks end to end, flags the mistakes that end cases, and tells you exactly where the deadlines hide.

The Short Answer: Yes — With Special Rules You Cannot Skip

Yes, you can sue a government agency for negligence in most situations where a private person could be sued for the same careless conduct. Congress waived the federal government’s immunity for torts in the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2671–2680, and every state has enacted some version of its own tort claims act doing the same for state and local agencies. That waiver is why can you sue a government agency for negligence is answered “yes” in the typical case: a postal truck rear-ending your car, a slip-and-fall on federal property, malpractice at a VA hospital, a school bus accident — these are all ordinary negligence claims, and the government has agreed to answer for them.

The deeper question hiding behind whether can you sue a government agency for negligence is not really “can I?” but “how do I, and how fast must I move?” The “can I” part is usually the easy part — the government has consented to be sued for negligence. The “how” part is where the special rulebook, the mandatory forms, and the compressed deadlines all live, and where unrepresented claimants most often lose claims that should have won.

But the waiver is conditional, not unlimited. Suing a government agency means you must (1) give the government formal advance notice of your claim, usually on a specific form; (2) wait out a mandatory review period before you can file in court; (3) name the correct government defendant (naming the wrong one is a classic case-killer); (4) beat deadlines that are far shorter than the ordinary statute of limitations; and (5) accept limits on the kinds of damages and fees available to you. Miss any one of these, and your claim can die without a hearing — no matter how strong the negligence was.

Two practical takeaways follow. First, your deadline clock almost certainly started ticking the day you were hurt, and on the government track that clock runs faster than the private track — so the first thing to check is always which deadline applies to your agency. Second, you cannot sue first and ask questions later. With one narrow exception, courts lack jurisdiction over a government tort suit until you have exhausted the administrative claim process — filing the lawsuit before that step is complete gets it dismissed, not delayed.

Why Suing the Government Is Different: Sovereign Immunity, Explained Plainly

The entire system rests on one old idea: sovereign immunity — the rule that the government cannot be sued unless it agrees to be. This is not a loophole lawyers invented; it is the default. Before the FTCA was enacted in 1946, you literally could not sue the United States for a postal truck accident or a botched procedure at a federal hospital, no matter how clear the negligence was. Your only option was to beg Congress to pass a private bill paying you — a process so slow and political that it was functionally no option at all.

Congress changed the default with the FTCA, and state legislatures followed with their own tort claims acts. But they did it the way a cautious landlord gives you a key: the waiver comes with conditions printed on the key tag. The government agrees to be treated like a private person for negligence claims — meaning you must prove the same elements (duty, breach, causation, damages) that you would prove against a private defendant — only if you follow its special procedures and deadlines. That “only if” is where most claims fail. So when you ask whether can you sue a government agency for negligence, the honest legal answer is: yes, if you obey the sovereign’s conditions. Those conditions are the subject of the rest of this guide.

One Important Boundary: This Guide Is About Negligence, Not Every Grievance

Tort claims acts cover negligence and wrongful acts — careless driving, unsafe premises, medical malpractice, professional mistakes. They do not cover every bad thing a government employee might do. As we will cover below, the FTCA specifically excludes a long list of intentional acts, discretionary policy decisions, and categories like tax collection and postal delivery mishaps. A separate legal framework governs discrimination claims, civil-rights violations (such as § 1983 claims against state actors), and constitutional claims — those are different lawsuits with different rules, and this guide does not cover them.

Track 1: Suing a Federal Agency Under the Federal Tort Claims Act

If the negligence came from a federal employee — a postal worker, a VA doctor, a TSA officer, a National Park Service ranger, a federal prison guard — you are on the federal track, and the FTCA is your only path. It is a single federal statute, so the rules are the same everywhere in the country, which makes this track the more predictable of the two. Getting the track right is the first thing anyone asking whether can you sue a government agency for negligence must do, because the federal and state procedures do not mix. Here is how the federal track works, step by step.

Who You Can and Cannot Sue

On the federal track, you do not sue the individual employee, and you do not sue the agency as such — you sue the United States itself. Naming the employee personally is one of the most common case-killing mistakes in FTCA practice: the FTCA’s framework is designed so that the United States substitutes in as the defendant for torts of federal employees acting within the scope of their employment. If you file your lawsuit naming “John Smith, USPS driver” instead of “the United States,” the case is defective from the cover page.

“Within the scope of employment” is doing real work in that sentence. The negligence must have happened while the employee was doing their federal job. A postal worker who hits your car on the mail route is covered; the same worker who hits your car on a personal weekend errand in their own car is not — that becomes an ordinary private lawsuit against the individual. Independent contractors working for the government are generally not covered either: if the government hired a private company to pave a road and the contractor’s crew injured you, your claim is usually against the contractor, not the United States.

Step 1: Present Your Claim to the Agency — Standard Form 95

Before any court will hear your case, you must first present an administrative claim to the federal agency whose employee caused the harm. The government’s standard vehicle for this is Standard Form 95 (SF-95), “Claim for Damage, Injury, or Death.” The Department of Justice’s Civil Division maintains the form and its filing guidance, and its official page confirms the mechanics that every claimant needs to get right: the claim goes to the agency whose employee’s conduct caused the injury, it must state a specific dollar amount of damages demanded (a “sum certain”), and the agency must receive it within two years after the claim accrues. See the DOJ’s official Torts Branch Documents and Forms page for Standard Form 95 instructions.

Three details on the SF-95 matter enormously, and getting any of them wrong is how otherwise-winnable cases die at the starting line:

▸ Name the right agency. The claim goes to the agency that employed the negligent actor — USPS for the postal truck, the VA for the VA hospital, the Department of the Interior for a national park injury. Sending it to the wrong agency does not stop your deadline from running against the right one.

▸ State a sum certain. The DOJ guidance is explicit: without a specific dollar figure in the damages block (Block 12d), a submission cannot be considered a valid presentation of a claim. “Whatever my damages turn out to be” is not a claim. This number also caps your eventual lawsuit: you generally cannot sue for more than the amount you demanded on the administrative claim, except for narrow exceptions such as newly discovered evidence. Demand too little and you have permanently under-priced your own case — which is why one of the great case-killing mistakes in FTCA practice is filling out the SF-95 like a routine intake form instead of a binding damages declaration. Talk to an attorney before you write that number down.

▸ Include enough facts for the agency to investigate. The form is not legally mandatory — the DOJ notes that any writing containing the required information can qualify — but it is the safest format because it prompts you for everything the regulations require: who, what, where, when, and how much.

If you are wondering whether can you sue a government agency for negligence without ever filing this paperwork — no. The administrative claim is not a suggestion or a courtesy. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a), a federal court has no jurisdiction over your FTCA case until the claim has been presented to the agency. Lawyers call this the exhaustion rule, and courts enforce it strictly: filing the lawsuit first and sending the SF-95 later does not cure the defect.

Step 2: Wait — The Six-Month Review Period

Once the agency receives your SF-95, it gets six months to investigate, and you cannot file your lawsuit during that window. The agency can admit the claim and pay it, deny it, or make a settlement offer. If six months pass with no final decision, the law treats the claim as denied — what practitioners call a “deemed denial” — and you are free to file suit.

This waiting period trips people up in two opposite directions. Some claimants file suit during the six months and get dismissed for failure to exhaust. Others read silence as victory and wait too long: the deemed denial does not extend your other deadlines. So if the agency simply never responds, your clock is still running. If the agency never answers at all and you are unsure what your silence means, our guide explains what happens when a defendant does not respond to a lawsuit — though on the FTCA track, the deemed-denial rule means you should treat six months of silence as a green light to sue, not an invitation to wait longer.

Step 3: File Your Lawsuit in Federal Court

Once the agency denies your claim (actually or by deemed denial), you file in United States District Court. Two features of FTCA trials surprise first-time litigants:

▸ No jury. FTCA cases are tried to a federal judge sitting alone — a bench trial. You cannot demand a jury, and you cannot get one by styling the case differently. Your case will be decided on the papers, the evidence, and the judge’s assessment of credibility.

▸ The United States is the defendant. The caption reads something like Your Name v. United States of America. Do not name the agency or the employee in the caption.

Before you file, know the practical basics of federal-court practice — filing fees, fee waivers for litigants who cannot afford them, pro se procedure if you proceed without a lawyer, and the fact that court staff cannot give legal advice. The U.S. Courts’ official FAQs: Filing a Case page covers those fundamentals straight from the judiciary. For FTCA cases specifically, though, the procedural demands — proving negligence under the law of the state where the act occurred, observing the administrative-damages cap, and navigating the government’s motion practice — make experienced counsel nearly essential rather than optional.

The Federal Deadlines That End More Cases Than the Merits Do

The FTCA’s time limits are set by statute and enforced ruthlessly. There are two of them, and both matter:

▸ Two years to present the administrative claim. The agency must receive your SF-95 within two years after the claim accrues (28 U.S.C. § 2401(b)). Note the word receive: mailing it on the last day is not enough — the agency must have it in hand. “Accrual” usually means the date of injury, though in cases like medical malpractice where the injury is hidden, courts may apply a discovery rule. When in doubt, file early.

▸ Six months to sue after denial. Once the agency mails you its final denial, you have six months to file in district court. Miss that window and the claim is dead even if the underlying negligence was undisputed.

For how these clocks compare with ordinary private-party deadlines in your state, see our state-by-state statute of limitations guide — but remember that the federal deadlines above apply to your FTCA claim regardless of what your state’s general limitations period says.

Track 2: Suing a State or Local Agency Under State Tort Claims Acts

If the negligence came from a state, county, or city employee — a city bus driver, a county road crew, a public-school employee, a state hospital nurse, local police — you are on the state track, and the rules come from that state’s tort claims act. There are fifty of these (plus separate rules in territories), and they vary sharply. That variation is the single most important thing to understand about this track: there is no uniform national rule. A deadline that is generous in one state is fatal in another.

The Notice-of-Claim Requirement: Shorter Than You Think

Nearly every state requires you to file a formal notice of claim with the government entity before you can sue — the state-track analogue of the SF-95. The details (which form, where to file, what it must contain) are set by each state’s statute, and the deadlines are the dangerous part: while the federal track gives you two years to present the claim, many states require notice within months of the incident — illustratively, some states measure this window in as little as 30 to 180 days. These figures are ILLUSTRATIVE only; your state’s statute controls, and some states have different windows for different kinds of entities (state vs. county vs. city).

The notice-of-claim deadline is the number-one case-killer on the state track, precisely because people assume the ordinary personal-injury statute of limitations applies. It does not. You can be well within the state’s general two- or three-year limitations period for negligence and still have lost your case on day 91 because the notice-of-claim window closed. If you were injured by a state or local employee, your very first question should be: what is the notice-of-claim deadline for this entity in this state? — not what the general statute of limitations is. Every person asking whether can you sue a government agency for negligence on the state track should treat that notice deadline as the real deadline, because it almost always arrives long before the ordinary limitations period does.

What the State Track Typically Looks Like After Notice

Once notice is properly filed, most states then let you proceed to a lawsuit in state court, though the playing field is tilted in the government’s favor in ways that vary by state:

▸ Damage caps. Many states cap the total damages you can recover from a government defendant at a fixed statutory amount — illustratively, caps in the low-to-mid six figures per claim or per occurrence are common. These are ILLUSTRATIVE bands, not promises: your state’s cap (or lack of one) is written in its tort claims act, and some states layer separate caps for state agencies versus local governments.

▸ No punitive damages (usually). As on the federal track, most states bar or severely limit punitive damages against government defendants. Your recovery is meant to compensate, not to punish.

▸ Jury rights vary. Unlike the federal track’s mandatory bench trial, some states allow jury trials in government tort cases and others do not. This is purely a function of the state’s statute and constitution.

▸ Who you name varies. Some states let you sue the agency or municipality directly; others require you to name the state or a specific governmental unit; still others follow the federal model of a single sovereign defendant. Read the statute — or better, have a local attorney read it.

A useful first step when you are still deciding whether a complaint, a claim, or a lawsuit is the right vehicle is USA.gov’s official guide to filing complaints against federal and state government agencies, which explains the difference between complaining to the agency (or its inspector general) and pursuing a formal legal claim.

Suing the Federal Government vs. Suing a State/Local Agency (Illustrative)

The table below compares the two tracks side by side. Every figure below is ILLUSTRATIVE — the federal column reflects the FTCA’s statutory framework, while the state column reflects common patterns across state tort claims acts, not any one state’s law. Dollar figures and deadlines are given as bands to show the shape of the rules, never as promises. Always verify the current statute for your specific agency and jurisdiction. Reading the two columns together is the fastest way to see why the answer to whether can you sue a government agency for negligence always depends on which government you mean.

Issue	Federal track (FTCA)	State/local track (state tort claims acts)
Who you name as defendant	The United States — not the employee, not the agency	The agency, city, county, or state entity — varies by state; check the tort claims act
Pre-lawsuit notice	Administrative claim on Standard Form 95 (or equivalent writing with a sum certain)	State notice-of-claim form filed with the specific government entity
Notice deadline	ILLUSTRATIVE: 2 years from accrual for the agency to receive the claim	ILLUSTRATIVE: measured in months for many states — commonly a 1-to-6-month band; some states longer
Wait before suing	6 months after the agency receives the claim (or actual denial, whichever comes first)	Varies — some states impose a waiting period, others allow suit after notice
Deadline to sue after denial	ILLUSTRATIVE: 6 months from the agency’s final denial notice	ILLUSTRATIVE: varies widely by state; often 1–2 years after the incident or after notice
Decision-maker	Federal judge — bench trial; no jury	Varies by state — jury trial available in some states, bench trial in others
Damage caps	ILLUSTRATIVE: no general federal cap, but recovery is limited to the sum certain demanded on the administrative claim (narrow exceptions)	ILLUSTRATIVE: statutory caps common — bands often in the low-to-mid six figures per claim or per occurrence
Punitive damages	Barred under the FTCA	Barred in many states; limited where allowed
Attorney-fee limits	ILLUSTRATIVE: federal statute caps fees at a fixed percentage of recovery — lower for claims resolved administratively, higher once suit is filed (see 28 U.S.C. § 2678 for current figures)	Varies by state — some states cap fees in government tort cases, most follow ordinary contingency-fee practice

Table note: all dollar figures and deadlines above are ILLUSTRATIVE — they describe the shape of the rules, not the rule for your case. Consult the specific statute (28 U.S.C. §§ 2671–2680 for federal claims; your state’s tort claims act for state/local claims) and verify current law before acting. Nothing in this table is a promise of any outcome or recovery amount.

What You Can’t Sue For: The FTCA’s Built-In Exceptions (§ 2680)

The FTCA’s waiver has carve-outs, and 28 U.S.C. § 2680 lists them. If your claim falls into one of these exceptions, the sovereign-immunity door stays shut and no court can hear the case — so check this list before you invest months in the process:

▸ Discretionary functions. The government cannot be sued for policy-level choices, even when those choices have bad consequences — for example, a federal agency’s decision about how to allocate inspection resources, or a regulator’s judgment call about whether to issue a warning. The line between a discretionary policy decision (protected) and a careless operational mistake (not protected) is one of the most litigated issues in FTCA law. A ranger who negligently maintains a trail bridge is an operational claim; the agency’s decision about which parks get maintenance funding is discretionary. So if you are asking whether can you sue a government agency for negligence over a policy-level choice — a funding decision, a regulatory judgment call, a resource-allocation tradeoff — the answer is generally no, and that is exactly what the discretionary-function exception exists to protect.

▸ Intentional torts by employees. The FTCA generally excludes assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, malicious prosecution, abuse of process, libel, slander, misrepresentation, deceit, and interference with contract rights. There is a partial carve-back: for assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, and malicious prosecution committed by federal law-enforcement officers, the exclusion does not apply. Note that an assault by a government employee raises its own separate legal questions — for the private-party side of that issue, see our guide on whether you can sue someone for assault.

▸ Combatant activities of the military during wartime, and claims arising from the fiscal operations of the Treasury or the administration of the tax laws.

▸ Postal matters. Claims arising from the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of mail are excluded — a late or lost package is not an FTCA case (though a USPS truck hitting your car absolutely is).

▸ Detention of goods by law-enforcement or customs officers, and claims arising in foreign countries.

States have their own exception lists that often mirror these — discretionary-function immunity and intentional-tort exclusions are nearly universal — but the specifics are in each state’s statute.

Can You Sue a Government Agency for Negligence? Five Mistakes That Kill Otherwise Good Cases

Government tort claims fail far more often on procedure than on the merits. These are the five errors that end the most cases — and every one of them is avoidable:

Mistake 1: Missing the notice deadline

The notice-of-claim or SF-95 deadline is the single deadliest trap in government tort law. On the state track, claimants routinely assume the ordinary personal-injury statute of limitations applies and discover — months too late — that the notice window closed in a fraction of that time. On the federal track, claimants mail the SF-95 on the last day and learn that the statute requires the agency to have received it within two years. Docket the deadline the day you are injured, confirm which agency must receive the notice, and send it by a trackable method well before the window closes. Of every question wrapped up in whether can you sue a government agency for negligence, “did I give notice on time?” is the one that ends the most cases with a single word: no.

Mistake 2: Suing the employee instead of the United States

On the federal track, the defendant is the United States — full stop. Lawsuits naming the individual postal worker, the VA doctor, or “the U.S. Postal Service” as the defendant are defective. On the state track the naming rules vary, but the principle is the same: the tort claims act tells you exactly who the proper defendant is, and guessing wrong can cost you the case. Copy the caption requirements from the statute, not from a generic lawsuit template.

Mistake 3: Demanding too little on the administrative claim

The sum certain you write on the SF-95 is not a placeholder — it is effectively a ceiling on your lawsuit. You generally cannot recover more at trial than you demanded from the agency, except in narrow circumstances like newly discovered evidence or newly arising injuries. Claimants who rush the form routinely under-price serious injuries: they list the medical bills they have so far and forget future treatment, lost earning capacity, and pain and suffering. Never file the SF-95 before you understand the full scope of your damages, and never treat the damages block as a rough estimate.

Mistake 4: Filing the lawsuit before the waiting period ends

Impatience kills FTCA cases. If you file in district court before the agency has denied your claim or the six-month review period has run, the court lacks jurisdiction and must dismiss — and the dismissal can land after you have spent real money on filing fees and service. The exhaustion rule has no equitable shortcuts: no court will hear your case early because your need is urgent.

Mistake 5: Assuming a complaint to the agency is the same as a legal claim

Calling the agency’s customer-service line, writing an angry letter to your congressperson, or filing an inspector-general complaint is not the same as presenting a tort claim. None of those actions satisfies the SF-95 or notice-of-claim requirement, and none of them stops your deadline from running. Administrative complaints and congressional inquiries can be useful parallel steps — but they are not substitutes for the formal claim the statute requires.

Damages You Can Recover — and What the Government Will Not Pay

If you clear every procedural hurdle, what can you actually win? The FTCA makes the United States liable “in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances” — which means the standard negligence damages are on the table: past and future medical expenses, lost wages and lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and property damage. But three government-specific limits apply, and they shape every case:

▸ No punitive damages. The FTCA bars them outright, and most states do the same for government defendants. Your case is about compensation, not punishment — which means the eye-popping verdicts you read about in private-party cases do not translate to the government track.

▸ The sum-certain ceiling. As noted above, your FTCA recovery generally cannot exceed the amount you demanded on the administrative claim. State-track caps work differently — many states impose a flat statutory maximum per claim — but the effect is the same: anyone weighing whether can you sue a government agency for negligence must know the ceiling before filing, because the ceiling is set before the lawsuit even exists.

▸ Attorney-fee caps on the federal track. Federal law limits what your lawyer can charge you in an FTCA case — illustratively, a lower percentage of any amount recovered through the administrative process and a higher (but still capped) percentage once a lawsuit is filed. The current figures are in 28 U.S.C. § 2678; confirm them before signing a fee agreement.

Because the economics of these cases are unusual — capped fees for the lawyer, capped or ceiling-limited recovery for you, no punitive damages — the cost-benefit analysis of suing differs from an ordinary injury case. Our guide on how much it costs to sue for a personal injury walks through the fee structures, and our explainer on how lawsuit settlements are paid out covers the timeline from settlement or judgment to money in hand — including the government payment mechanics, which run through the Treasury’s Judgment Fund on the federal track and can add their own waiting period after you win.

Key Takeaway

When you ask can you sue a government agency for negligence, the answer is yes — Congress and every state legislature have waived sovereign immunity for ordinary negligence claims. But the waiver is a deal with strict terms: present your claim to the agency first (SF-95 on the federal track, notice of claim on the state track), name the right sovereign defendant, respect deadlines that run far faster than ordinary lawsuit deadlines, and accept caps on damages and fees that do not exist in private-party cases. The negligence may be obvious; the procedure is where these cases are won and lost. Get the procedure right — ideally with an attorney who handles government tort claims — and the courthouse door is open.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you sue a government agency for negligence without a lawyer?

Legally, yes — you can file an SF-95 yourself and you can file an FTCA lawsuit pro se in federal district court. Practically, it is a bad idea for anything beyond a small property-damage claim. The exhaustion rule, the sum-certain ceiling, the naming requirements, and the government’s motion practice are unforgiving of procedural mistakes, and a single error can end the case permanently. At minimum, get a consultation before you file the administrative claim, because the damages number you write there is very hard to raise later.

How long do I have to file a claim against a federal agency?

The agency must receive your administrative claim within two years after the claim accrues (28 U.S.C. § 2401(b)). “Accrues” usually means the date of the injury, though a discovery rule may apply when the injury was hidden, such as in some medical-malpractice situations. After the agency denies the claim (or six months pass with no decision), you have six months to file your lawsuit in federal court. These are statutory deadlines — courts enforce them strictly.

What is Standard Form 95 and where do I send it?

Standard Form 95 is the federal government’s standard “Claim for Damage, Injury, or Death” form used to present the administrative claim the FTCA requires before you can sue. You send it to the federal agency whose employee’s conduct caused your injury — not to a court, and not to the Department of Justice. The DOJ’s Civil Division publishes the form and official filing instructions, including the requirement that the form state a specific dollar amount of damages demanded. Without that “sum certain,” the submission is not a valid claim.

Can I sue the individual government employee who hurt me?

On the federal track, generally no — the FTCA is designed so that the United States is the defendant for torts committed by federal employees within the scope of their employment, and suits naming the employee personally are defective. There are narrow exceptions for conduct outside the scope of employment or for certain constitutional claims, which follow different legal frameworks. On the state track, the naming rules vary by state — some allow suits against the employee alongside the entity, others do not.

What happens if the agency ignores my administrative claim?

If six months pass after the agency receives your claim without a final decision, the law treats the claim as denied — a “deemed denial” — and you may file your lawsuit in federal district court. You do not need to wait for an actual denial letter, and the agency’s silence does not extend any of your deadlines. Treat six months of silence as authorization to sue, not as a reason to keep waiting.

Can you sue a government agency for negligence and get punitive damages?

No — not on the federal track. The FTCA expressly bars punitive damages against the United States, and most state tort claims acts bar or severely limit them against state and local governments. Your recovery is limited to compensatory damages: medical costs, lost income, pain and suffering, and property damage, subject to any applicable caps. If punishment-style damages are central to your goals, discuss with an attorney whether any separate legal theory applies to your facts.

Does the FTCA cover medical malpractice at a VA hospital?

Yes — malpractice by federal employees at VA facilities is one of the most common categories of FTCA claims. The same rules apply: file the SF-95 with the Department of Veterans Affairs within two years, state a sum certain, wait out the six-month review period, and then sue the United States (not the doctor) in federal district court. Because medical injuries sometimes surface later, pay close attention to when your claim “accrued” — and file early rather than testing the discovery rule.

Can I sue a city or county, or does the FTCA cover them too?

The FTCA does not cover cities, counties, or states — it covers only the federal government. Claims against state and local agencies go through your state’s tort claims act, with its own notice-of-claim form, its own (usually much shorter) deadlines, and its own damage caps. Do not file an SF-95 for a city-bus accident; find your state’s notice-of-claim procedure instead. Mixing up the tracks is one of the fastest ways to lose a claim.

What if my claim was denied — can I demand more money in court than I asked for on the SF-95?

Generally no. Your FTCA lawsuit is limited to the sum certain you demanded on the administrative claim, with narrow exceptions for newly discovered evidence or injuries that arose after the claim was filed. This is why the damages figure on the SF-95 deserves the same care as the complaint itself — it is a ceiling, not a starting bid. If your injuries worsened after filing, document the change immediately and discuss the exception with your attorney.

Are there time limits for suing a state agency, like there are for federal agencies?

Yes — and they are usually shorter and more dangerous than the federal deadlines. Most states require a formal notice of claim within months of the incident (illustratively, windows in the 1-to-6-month band are common), followed by a lawsuit deadline set by the state’s statute. These figures are ILLUSTRATIVE only: the exact deadlines, the correct entity to notify, and the required form are all in your state’s tort claims act, and they differ from state to state. Verify the current statute for your jurisdiction before acting.

Disclaimer: This article provides general information for educational purposes only and is not legal advice. Government tort claims are governed by the Federal Tort Claims Act (28 U.S.C. §§ 2671–2680) and by individual state tort claims acts, whose deadlines, forms, caps, and exceptions vary by jurisdiction and change over time. Dollar figures and deadlines described as illustrative are approximations only. For guidance about your specific situation, consult a licensed attorney in your state before any deadline expires.