Government agencies,particularly in the United States,cannot be sued. In other words,they are lawsuit-immune. This type of immunity is called “sovereign immunity”,in the case of state and federal governments. In the context of smaller governments,such as city and county governments,the immunity is referred to as “governmental immunity”.
Although governments are immune,government agencies could make exceptions to this rule. In fact,several state and federal agencies willingly put themselves under the judiciary scanner in specific scenarios,such as when poor road maintenance causes a wreck. Generally,negligence in roadway maintenance would create such an exception and let the plaintiff sue.
However,there could be narrow constraints that you’ll need a personal injury attorney Milwaukee to make sense of. The negligence,for example,should have been gross. It means the entity should have been extremely negligent or a municipality must have bought insurance to cover such a lawsuit.
The specific scenarios under which the plaintiff could sue for injury or car damage due to bad road conditions vary across states. Usually,the state government sets rules to sue smaller agencies. The rules,therefore,would not vary much within a state.
Another rule that mitigates lawsuits even if a government agency could be sued is statute of limitations. The statute states that all legal actions must be carried out within a specific period. In case the plaintiff doesn’t start the legal proceedings before the time limit expires,he/she cannot sue the defendant.
States usually have a limited time within which it entertains injury claims relating to faulty road conditions. The period is typically six months to a couple of years. Also,most states require plaintiffs to keep the responsible agency in the know about their decision to sue them prior to the case is taken up. Based on a state,this could mean a plaintiff should notify the agency responsible of why they are being taken to court.