Suing the Government For Personal Injury

Sometimes the entity at fault in an accident is not a person or corporation, but the Federal Government. Because the government makes and enforces the law, it has some special protections, but they can still be sued. The most common suit brought against the government for injuries is a negligence suit. Examples of when you might sue the government would be if the post man runs into your car, or you were injured by a government agent.

In order to sue the government, you have to use a piece of legislation called the Federal Tort Claims Act, which places some barriers before the injury lawsuit can take place. Denver accident attorneys tell me this is a holdover from English common law, where the king was immune to any lawsuit. The Federal Tort Claims Act is basically the same thing: the government decided when they will allow you to sue. So before any personal injury suit can be taken up against the government or a federal employee, you must determine if your cases falls under the FTCA.

Supposedly the government will allow itself to be sued if one of their agents, acting under his duty, caused injury, property damage or death. This sounds straight forward, until you realize you need a Denver accident attorney to sort out all the fine print. One of the loopholes is that contractors cannot be sued, only federal employees can. This means that Black Hawk security and Halliburton cannot be sued for killing people in Iraq. Another big loophole is that only negligence can be tried against agents, and not wrongful action. So the agent has to be on duty, but if they acted in a way the agency does not like, then they are immune. The claim must be filed at the state level and be permissible by state law. This cuts down the scope of what can be tried quite a bit.

Before you can sue, you must file a claim with the agency you want to sue. You can use a “standard form 95″, another great bit of legal mumbo-jumbo to file against any agency. The time limit is 2 years. A Denver accident attorney therefore recommends you get the ball rolling as soon as possible, so there can not be any argument as to when the injury occurred. The original claim is a bit of work because you must include all the facts of the case and the amount you want in compensation.

The agency will then review the case within 6 months and decide to admit it (accept the claim and pay money) or not, in which case you will have 6 months to file a suit. The second 6 month time limit starts after they have ruled on your claim. If they have not responded in 6 months, you can choose to move forward to court. Once it does go to court there may be some arcane legal rules that apply to the government, but in general the process works like any other.

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