Hit by a Metro bus or train in Los Angeles Six months, not two years.

You have six months from the date of the incident to present a written Claim for Damages to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, under Government Code section 911.2. Metro accepts that claim in person or by mail only, and its own Legal Services page states that claims received by email are rejected and denied. Miss the six months and the lawsuit is generally over before it starts.

Why you do not have two years

A public entity is a government body: a city, a county, a district, a state agency, or a transportation authority like Metro. Claims against one run on the Government Claims Act, and the written claim is a prerequisite to the lawsuit rather than a formality. Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 still gives two years to file a personal injury action, but you do not reach that statute at all until the claim has been presented and answered. Our post on what to do if someone rear ends you lists the other deadlines that run at the same time, and our frequently asked questions cover what happens after a claim is filed.

Four dates that decide a Metro claim

Section 912.4 also lets the claimant and the agency's board extend the 45 day period by written agreement. That matters when medical treatment is still running and nobody yet knows what the claim is worth, and it is one of the few pieces of flexibility in the statute.

When a public entity rejects a claim, Government Code section 913 requires the notice to carry a warning in substantially this form: you have only six months from the date the notice was personally delivered or deposited in the mail to file a court action. Read the envelope and calendar that date the day it arrives.

How to file the claim with Metro

Metro's Legal Services page publishes the Claims for Damages form in English and Spanish and states how it will be accepted: in person, or by mail through USPS, FedEx, or UPS. The mailing address is LACMTA, Legal Services, One Gateway Plaza, MS: PL4, Los Angeles, CA 90012. In person filing is at LACMTA, One Gateway Plaza, Plaza Level, Los Angeles, CA 90012, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 8:30am to 4pm. Metro asks for 2 to 3 weeks to review a claim and respond on next steps.

Then the sentence that decides cases: any claims received by email will be rejected and denied. That is not an administrative preference. Government Code section 915 lets a claim be presented to a local public entity by delivering it to the clerk, secretary, or auditor, by mailing it to them or to the governing body at its principal office, or electronically only where the entity has expressly authorized electronic submission by ordinance or resolution. A short deadline plus a submission method that rejects the fastest way to submit is how people lose these claims.

Send it certified with return receipt, or hand it across the counter and ask for a stamped copy. Keep the receipt with the claim. The date of presentation is the fact everything else in the case is measured from.

What the claim form has to say

Government Code section 910 lists the contents. A claim that leaves one out can draw a written notice of insufficiency under section 910.8, given within 20 days and stating the defects with particularity. The six months keeps running while that happens.

• Your name and post office address, and the address where you want notices sent.
• The date, place, and other circumstances of the occurrence that gave rise to the claim.
• A general description of the injury, damage, or loss incurred, so far as it is known when you present the claim.
• The names of the public employees who caused the injury, damage, or loss, if you know them. The bus operator's badge number, the run number, and the vehicle number belong here.
• The amount claimed only if it totals less than $10,000. If it exceeds $10,000, state no dollar amount and indicate whether the claim would be a limited civil case, the court's category for smaller claims.

That last rule surprises people: writing a large number on the form is contrary to the statute.

When the operator is not Metro

You may find later that the operator worked for a contractor rather than for Metro itself, and a private company is not a public entity. That does not make the six months optional. Present the claim on time and identify the correct defendant afterward, using the vehicle number, the run, and the incident report. The cost of presenting a claim that turns out to be unnecessary is a stamp. The cost of skipping one that was necessary is the case.

The same logic reaches every other government vehicle and property in Los Angeles. A City of Los Angeles vehicle, a school district bus, a county truck, and a state highway defect each carry the same six month rule with a different recipient. For the state, section 911.2 measures presentation by the date the claim reaches the Department of General Services with the $25 filing fee, a granted fee waiver request, or a fee paid within 10 days of a waiver denial.

When the six months has already passed

It is not automatically over, but the path narrows. Government Code section 911.4 allows a written application for leave, meaning permission, to present a late claim, presented within a reasonable time not to exceed one year after the cause of action accrued, stating the reason for the delay, with the proposed claim attached.

Section 911.6 then tells the entity when it must grant that application. The grounds are specific: the failure to present the claim was through mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect and the entity was not prejudiced, meaning harmed, in its defense; the injured person was a minor during the whole six months; the person was a minor during part of it, with the application presented within six months of turning 18 or a year after accrual, whichever comes first; or the person was physically or mentally incapacitated. The entity's board grants or denies within 45 days.

Two things follow from that list. A minor's claim against Metro is not lost the way an adult's is, and a person who spent the six months hospitalized has an argument that a person who did not know the rule does not.

What to do in the first week

1. Get medical care and say what happened. The record is the claim. A visit that says "struck by bus, left knee" on the day it happened is worth more than any statement you give later.
2. Write down the vehicle. Bus or train number, line number, run, direction, time, and the stop or station. Photograph the vehicle if you can still see it.
3. Ask in writing that Metro preserve the video. Onboard and station recordings run on their own retention schedules, and nobody preserves a file because someone asked verbally at the scene.
4. Get the police or incident report number. Our post on getting your LAPD traffic collision report covers the DR number and the request routes.
5. Present the claim, then treat. The claim does not have to state a final number. Waiting until treatment ends is the most common way the six months disappears.

What to do after a Metro injury

Treat the six months as the only date that exists until the claim is presented. Get care, record the vehicle and the time, ask for the video in writing, fill out Metro's Claim for Damages, and deliver it in person or by mail with proof of the date. Then calendar 45 days, and calendar six months from any written rejection the day it arrives.

If a serious injury is involved, the claim is the smallest part of the work. Our Los Angeles catastrophic injury lawyer page covers cases where the treatment runs for years, our car accident page covers the vehicle side of these collisions, and there is no fee unless we recover.