The Federal Tort Claims Act: How to Sue the Government

A collision with a USPS truck, a fall at a VA hospital, an injury on a national park trail, a defect on a federal highway — the underlying accident can look identical to an ordinary claim. The moment the defendant is the federal government instead of a private party, almost everything about the process changes, and several of the guides on this site touch this in passing. This is the explainer those guides point to.

Quick answer: The Federal Tort Claims Act (28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2671-2680) lets you sue the federal government for a federal employee’s negligence, but only after you first file a written administrative claim with the responsible agency and either get a denial or wait six months. The administrative claim deadline is two years from the injury — separate from and usually shorter than an ordinary state statute of limitations. There is no jury trial, and a discretionary function exception can bar the claim entirely if the government’s decision was a policy-level judgment call rather than an operational failure.

Why This Process Exists at All

Ordinarily, the doctrine of sovereign immunity bars lawsuits against the government entirely. The Federal Tort Claims Act is Congress’s limited waiver of that immunity — it lets a claimant sue the United States for the negligent or wrongful act of a federal employee acting within the scope of employment, largely as if the United States were a private person, but subject to a specific procedural gauntlet and a set of exceptions found nowhere in an ordinary personal injury claim.

It applies where a federal employee’s negligence caused the injury — a postal driver, a VA physician, a National Park Service maintenance crew, a federal building’s management. It does not automatically apply just because an injury happened on federal land or involved a federal contractor; contractors are frequently treated differently, and that distinction alone can determine whether the FTCA even applies to your facts.

The Administrative Claim: The Step That Ends Most Cases

You cannot simply file a lawsuit against the federal government the way you would against a private driver or a store. 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a) requires presenting a written administrative claim to the appropriate federal agency first, and a court has no jurisdiction to hear a lawsuit filed before that requirement is satisfied — not a discretionary call by the judge, but a threshold defect that ends the case regardless of how strong the underlying facts are.

The claim is commonly submitted on Standard Form 95, though the form itself isn’t strictly mandatory — what matters is that the written claim states a specific dollar amount, describes what happened, and gives the agency enough detail to investigate. Using SF-95 avoids later arguments about whether your claim was properly presented, which is why nearly every practitioner defaults to it.

Once filed, the agency has up to six months to act. You can wait for a formal denial, or treat six months of silence as a denial and proceed to file suit. Either way, a subsequent lawsuit generally must be filed within six months of a denial — a second deadline layered on top of the first.

The Two-Year Clock

28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) requires the administrative claim to be filed within two years of the injury. This is frequently shorter than the ordinary personal injury statute of limitations you’d face against a private defendant in the same state, and the two deadlines are not interchangeable — a claim that would still be timely against a private party can already be permanently barred against the federal government.

Because the administrative process itself can take months before a lawsuit is even possible, treating the two-year mark as your real deadline — rather than something to approach later — is the single most important practical takeaway of this entire process.

The Exceptions That Can Bar a Claim Outright

28 U.S.C. § 2680 lists numerous categories of claims the FTCA’s waiver of immunity does not reach. Two come up constantly in personal injury contexts:

The discretionary function exception (§ 2680(a)) excludes claims based on a federal employee’s discretionary, policy-level judgment — even a negligent one — from the waiver entirely. Courts generally draw a line between a protected design or policy decision (how to engineer a road, how to allocate limited inspection funding) and an unprotected operational failure (letting a known, previously reported hazard go unrepaired). This single exception decides more FTCA cases on the merits than any other issue in the statute.

The intentional tort exception (§ 2680(h)) generally bars claims for assault, battery, false imprisonment and similar intentional torts — with a specific proviso restoring the claim where the conduct was committed by a federal law enforcement or investigative officer. This carve-out matters most in claims involving federal agents rather than ordinary negligence. See our guide to false arrest and malicious prosecution claims for how false imprisonment, false arrest and malicious prosecution differ as claims, including against a non-federal officer where this exception has no application at all. This proviso is also frequently the only surviving remedy where a federal agent’s alleged constitutional violation itself has no Bivens damages action available — see our guide to Bivens claims against federal agents for why that judge-made remedy has narrowed so sharply.

Two further doctrines specific to particular claimants:

• The Feres doctrine (Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950)) bars active-duty service members from FTCA claims for injuries incident to military service, even against a military hospital. It does not reach civilians, veterans for post-discharge conduct, or family members’ own independent claims — see our dedicated guides to the Feres doctrine for why the bar exists and who it actually reaches, and filing a claim under the Stayskal Act for the limited administrative remedy Congress created specifically for the active-duty service members Feres otherwise leaves without one.
• No jury trial (§ 2402) — every FTCA case is tried to a judge alone, a significant strategic difference from a comparable state-court claim.
• No punitive damages (§ 2674) — recovery against the United States is limited to compensatory damages.
• A statutory attorney fee cap (§ 2678) — well below the ordinary contingency percentages our guide to personal injury lawyer fees describes: 20% of an administrative award, 25% of a litigated judgment, with a criminal penalty for an attorney who charges more.

Where This Actually Comes Up

This process applies across accident types already covered elsewhere on this site, not as a separate category of injury but as a different procedural track once the defendant turns out to be the federal government:

• A collision with a USPS or other federal vehicle — see our guide to delivery van and Amazon DSP accident claims for how this plays out when a federal driver is involved
• A road defect on federal land — a national park, a federal highway maintenance failure — see our guide to motorcycle accidents from road defects and government claims for how the discretionary function line is drawn in practice
• A fall or injury on federal government property — see our guide to slip and fall claims on government property for the notice and deadline framework that layers on top of this process
• Water contamination at a military base — the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022 created its own separate, non-FTCA administrative claims process specifically because ordinary FTCA claims over the base’s decades-old contaminated water had been legally barred for years; see our guide to Camp Lejeune water contamination claims for where that litigation, and its own now-closed filing window, stand today

Practical Steps

1. Identify the federal agency responsible as early as possible — USPS, VA, GSA, the relevant military branch, or another federal agency — since the administrative claim must go to the correct one.
2. File a written administrative claim, ideally on SF-95, with a specific dollar amount and a detailed description, well before the two-year mark — not at it.
3. Preserve evidence exactly as you would in any injury claim — photographs, witness information, medical records — since the underlying investigation is otherwise the same.
4. Track the six-month response window and calendar the follow-on six-month deadline to file suit once a denial (or denial-by-silence) occurs.
5. Get an evaluation from an attorney experienced with FTCA claims specifically — the administrative prerequisite, the discretionary function exception, and the lack of a jury trial are unfamiliar territory even for attorneys who handle ordinary personal injury claims regularly.

Sources & Further Reading

• 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2671-2680 — the Federal Tort Claims Act
• 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) — the two-year administrative claim deadline
• 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a) — mandatory exhaustion of the administrative claim before suit
• 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a) — the discretionary function exception
• 28 U.S.C. § 2680(h) — the intentional tort exception and its law-enforcement proviso
• Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950) — the doctrine barring service members’ claims for service-related injury
• See our guides to delivery van and Amazon DSP accident claims, motorcycle accidents from road defects, and slip and fall claims on government property for how this process applies to specific fact patterns already covered on this site