Arizona · Personal injury · Trial-ready representation
If a public entity or public employee caused your injury, Arizona requires a written Notice of Claim within 180 days. Miss it and the case is gone — even if the statute of limitations hasn't run.
Arizona has a deadline most people have never heard of — and it kills more public-entity cases than any other procedural rule. Under A.R.S. § 12-821.01, anyone making a claim against a public entity or public employee must serve a written Notice of Claim within 180 days of the cause of action accruing. Miss the 180 days, and the claim is barred. Forever. Even if Arizona’s two-year statute of limitations hasn’t expired yet.
The short version
The Notice of Claim requirement applies any time a “public entity” or “public employee” may be liable for your injury. That’s a much broader list than most people realize:
City and town governments
Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, Tempe, Glendale, Chandler, Gilbert, Surprise, Peoria, and every other Arizona municipality.
Counties
Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Yavapai, Coconino, and the rest.
The State of Arizona
ADOT, DPS, AZDPS, Arizona universities, state agencies, and state employees.
School districts and community colleges
Public K-12, charter, and community college districts.
Transit and special districts
Valley Metro, RPTA, irrigation districts, hospital districts, fire districts.
Public utilities owned by a city
Including water, sewer, and some power utilities.
Public employees acting in their job
Police officers, firefighters, ADOT crews, school bus drivers, code enforcement — when the alleged negligence happened on the job.
The rule does not apply to private parties, even if the case happens on a public road or near a government building. But if there’s any chance a public entity contributed to the cause — a missing stop sign, a dangerous intersection design, a public employee driving the truck — assume the 180-day clock is running until a lawyer says otherwise.
A.R.S. § 12-821.01 sets out specific requirements. A defective notice is the same as no notice at all, so this matters:
Facts sufficient to permit the entity to understand the basis on which liability is claimed
Date, location, what happened, and why the entity is being held responsible.
A specific amount for which the claim can be settled
The infamous "sum certain" requirement. A range is not enough. "All damages allowed by law" is not enough.
Facts supporting the amount claimed
Enough detail to show how the number was calculated — not a guess.
The Arizona Supreme Court has been strict about these requirements. Multiple cases have been thrown out because the notice didn’t have a sum certain or because the facts supporting the number were too thin.
Different entities require service on different officials:
City or town
Service on the mayor, manager, or city clerk depending on the entity. Each city's rules are slightly different.
County
Generally on the chair of the board of supervisors and the clerk.
State of Arizona
On the Attorney General and the agency head.
School district
On the superintendent and board president.
Public employee individually
Personal service on the employee — separate from service on the entity.
Sending the notice “to the police department” or “to the city” generally doesn’t satisfy the rule. It must reach the specific designated official.
The clock generally starts on the date the cause of action accrues — which in most personal injury cases is the date of the injury. There are exceptions for delayed-discovery cases (where the injury wasn’t apparent for a while), for minors, and for incapacitated claimants, but the exceptions are narrow. Don’t count on them.
Even if the Notice of Claim is properly served, the lawsuit itself must be filed within one year of the cause of action accruing — half the normal two-year deadline for personal injury claims. So a public-entity case has two clocks running at once:
180 days
Notice of Claim must be served on the right official, with the right content.
1 year
Lawsuit must be filed in court (A.R.S. § 12-821).
Either deadline, missed by even one day, generally bars the claim permanently. This is one of the very few areas of injury law where “I’ll deal with it next week” can mean losing the case entirely.
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