How Do I File a Government Tort Claim in California?

If you are doing research around a potential California civil suit against a government actor, you may have read that it is necessary to file a government tort claim against the relevant agency, and to receive a turndown of the claim, before you can assert a claim in court under California law. This tends to be an issue in civil rights cases because such cases usually involve government actors as defendants and because they could (and probably should, if possible) involve claims under state law for causes of action such as negligence or a violation of the Bane Act.

Paper Mountain: Figuring out how to file a Government Tort Claim in California — and which agency to file it against, and what to say in the claim — can be perplexing.

Not only that: the deadline for filing such a claim is tight: it needs to be submitted within 6 months of the underlying incident, in most cases, and many folks are still scrambling around looking for a lawyer when that deadline approaches. This “government tort claim” requirement is consequently an area where members of the public may need to engage in some self-help and just get the thing filed as best they can on their own, even if they haven’t lined up an attorney, so that these causes of action under state law are preserved. It is better that something get filed on time, even if it is rough, than that the deadline pass with no action.

But how the heck do you find the form to file a tort claim? The answer is tricky because every single agency has its own procedures for submitting a claim. Some agencies want claims submitted on actual paper forms, while others use online “portals” for submitting claims. It just depends.

So step one is to use your trusty friends Google and Claude.ai and some common sense about which agency or municipality you believe is responsible for whatever happened, in order to access the relevant form or portal. If your incident involves police officers, the relevant agency is probably the city that employs the police, whether it’s Los Angeles or San Jose, or whatever. (Note that a “city” is an incorporated entity that often includes many smaller neighborhoods. “Encino,” for example, is not a “city,” it’s merely a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles.) If your incident involves sheriff’s deputies (which is usually the case if an incident happened in a county jail) the relevant agency is probably the county that employs the deputies, such as Alameda County or Stanislaus County. If you are concerned about actions of a CHP actor, the agency is the CHP. If it’s a teacher or a principal, you need to be contacting the school district. And if the incident involves correctional officers in a state prison, the agency is probably CDCR.

Your Google prompt should be “government tort claim [agency]” where [agency] is replaced by the name of the agency or municipality. That will usually, but not always, get you to a useful result. For example, if you Google “government tort claim City of San Diego” the first hit is the government tort claim for the City of San Diego. If you try the same thing for the County of San Diego, the relevant tort claim is the second hit on the Google results. Then you can get the form, or access the portal, and enter your data. But if you Google some smaller cities, you may draw a blank. Try “government tort claim El Centro” or “government tort claim Antioch,” for example, and (at least as of the time this post is being written) you will not find any way to file a tort claim against these cities. Instead, it will probably be necessary to physically go to the City Clerk and ask for a form, or perhaps even to create your own form that complies with the requirements of statute discussed in the next paragraph.

Many people feel somewhat uncomfortable about putting certain information down on these forms, such as their social security number. The only actual information that has to be provided on the claim, under the law, is what is in California Government Code section 910, which has no requirement of providing an SSN or a birth date, though some of these online portals may improperly make certain data fields mandatory. At any rate, make sure you are providing at least the information required by section 910.

Sometimes people are not sure which agency was involved in an incident, and frequently the actual names of of the defendants are unknown. That’s okay: just be overinclusive. If two different agencies might be involved, you need to file claims with each agency. If you don’t know the names of the persons involved, just describe what happened in as much detail as you can and, again, be overinclusive rather than the reverse. Cases can also involve overlapping actions of private and public actors (for example, both Sheriff’s deputies and nurses or psychologists employed by a private healthcare provider may fail to address an detainee’s mental health problems in a jail, or both public law enforcement and the actions of a private hotel company may contribute to the death of an occupant of a hotel room). It may be difficult to know how to correctly refer to the private actor, but in any event the claim merely needs to be presented to the public agency, even if the actions of private actors are included in the claim.

A tort claim does not need to spell out individual causes of action, it merely needs to describe the underlying incident with enough detail to put the agency on notice of what occurred. See Stockett v. Association of Cal. Water Agencies Joint Powers Ins. Authority, 34 Cal.4th 441, 447 (2004). So while the person filing the claim may not know exactly what legal theories would be involved in an eventual lawsuit, that should not be a roadblock to filing the claim in the first place.

Some agencies, particularly the State of California, require payment of a small fee with the filing of the form.

Keep a clear, dated record of when you submitted the claim. If you submit the claim through the mail, do so via certified mail, return receipt requested. If you do it in person, bring an extra copy and get it file-stamped for your records. If you are submitting the claim via a portal, take screenshots of your submission and keep any confirmatory email that you are given.

Also, if you have missed the six-month deadline but are still within one year, the law provides a mechanism for seeking to file a late claim. That is a more complex process for which you should probably get assistance.

If you have questions related to tort claims, feel free to get in touch. I have limited capacity to take on cases, but I am always interested in helping folks preserve their legal rights, and do not charge anything for doing so.

California's Bane Act - An Overview

California’s Tom Bane Act, California Civil Code § 52.1, makes it illegal to interfere by threat, intimidation, or coercion, or attempt to interfere by threats, intimidation, or coercion, with the exercise or enjoyment by any individual secured by the Constitution or laws of California.

Hands On: The use of force, as in this clip from a San Diego case, can give rise to a cause of action under the Bane Act.

The essence of a Bane Act claim is that the defendant, by improper means, “tried to or did prevent the plaintiff from doing something he or she had the right to do under the law or to force the plaintiff to do something that he or she was not required to do under the law.” Austin B. v. Escondido Union Sch. Dist., 149 Cal. App. 4th 860, 883 (2007)

The most obvious applications of Bane Act claims occur when physical force or other forms of coercion are used to violate a person’s rights, and Bane Act claims are often brought as a California-law counterpart to a claim of excessive force under federal law. “Mere words” are typically not enough to be the basis for a claim, though if the words involve a threat of violence or arrest they can be sufficient. See, e.g., Cuviello v. City & Cty. of San Francisco, 940 F. Supp. 2d 1071, 1103 (N.D.Cal. 2013). Additionally, “retaliatory actions may be sufficient to state a Bane Act claim based upon coercion or intimidation.” N.M. v. Ramona Unified Sch. Dist., No. 24-cv-2306-BJC-MSB, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46893 at * 18 (S.D.Cal. March 6, 2026) ; Bailey v. Shasta Union High Sch. Dist., No. 2:23-cv-01750-KJM-DMC, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 210247, at *7 (E.D. Cal. Nov. 18, 2024).

The Bane Act is interpreted as having a “specific intent” component that has been the subject of a great deal of debate. That intent component, however, does not require an intent to violate the law: “A reckless disregard for a person’s constitutional rights is evidence of a specific intent to deprive that person of those rights.”  Reese v. Cty.of Sacramento, 888 F.3d 1030, 1045 (9th Cir. 2018).  The intent component also does not “require a showing that a defendant knew he was acting unlawfully; reckless disregard of the ‘right at issue’ is all that is necessary.” Luttrell v. Hart, No. 5:19-CV-07300-EJD, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 173856, 2020 WL 5642613, at *5 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 22, 2020) (citation omitted).

In a custodial setting like a jail or prison, “deliberate indifference” — the same mental state that needs to be established to make out an Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment claim — will also satisfy the specific intent component of the Bane Act. Cornell v. City and County of San Francisco, 17 Cal.App.5th 766, 802, n. 31 (2017).​ As discussed elsewhere on this blog, the Eighth Amendment version of deliberate indifference requires a “subjective” showing of intent, whereas the Fourteenth Amendment version of deliberate indifference that applies in situations involving pretrial detainees is satisfied by a less demanding “objective” showing. This less-demanding “objective” form of deliberate indifference is sufficient to satisfy the intent component of the Bane Act. See Est. of Hernandez v. San Diego County, 24-cv-00032-DMS-DEB at * 25-26 (S.D.Cal. Sept. 30, 2024) (“the Court has determined that the Complaint alleges a claim under the objective deliberate indifference standard. [Citation.] Thus, the Complaint states a Bane Act claim against Defendants”).

An interesting aspect of Bane Act claims, compared to claims brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, is that the Bane Act statute contains no requirement of acting “under color of law.” See Jones v. Kmart Corp., 17 Cal. 4th 329, 333-334 (1998) (“there is no state action requirement per se” in the language of the Bane Act). In other words, the Bane Act can apply to the actions of private actors, not just folks in government.

Bane Act claims are also not subject to the regime of “qualified immunity” that can make federal civil rights litigation so vexing and unpredictable. However, as with other claims brought under California law (as opposed to under federal law), Bane Act claims need to be set up correctly by filing a government tort claim and receiving a turndown of that claim prior to heading to court.

For free consultation about potential civil rights cases, call today.