Claims Against Government

Michigan law governing claims against government entities is codified in the Governmental Tort Liability Act, MCL 691.1401 et seq. The GTLA establishes a broad general rule under MCL 691.1407: a governmental agency engaged in the exercise or discharge of a governmental function is immune from tort liability. Michigan courts have historically interpreted this protection expansively, meaning that a claim against a government body will fail unless it fits squarely within one of a small number of statutory exceptions.

Identifying which exception, if any, applies to a given set of facts is the first task in any claim against a governmental agency. The most frequently litigated exceptions include the highway exception under MCL 691.1402, which permits claims arising from a governmental agency’s failure to maintain a highway in reasonable repair, and the motor vehicle exception under MCL 691.1405, which permits recovery for bodily injury or property damage resulting from the negligent operation of a government owned motor vehicle by an officer, agent, or employee. A third significant avenue, the public building exception under MCL 691.1406, allows claims where a dangerous or defective condition of a public building causes injury and the governmental agency had actual or constructive knowledge of the defect and a reasonable opportunity to repair it; the notice required for this exception is set out separately under MCL 691.1406(2). Two narrower exceptions can also apply: the sewage disposal system event exception under MCL 691.1417, which addresses property damage or personal injury caused by a defective sewage system, and the proprietary function exception under MCL 691.1413, which removes immunity for activities a governmental agency operates primarily to generate a profit, such as certain hospitals or utilities. Michigan courts require a claim to be pleaded within one of these exceptions with particularity, and have consistently rejected claims that rely on a generalized theory of negligence untethered to a specific statutory carve-out.

Few areas of Michigan practice punish procedural imprecision as severely as claims against governmental entities. Notice, not the underlying exception itself, is often where a claim is won or lost: MCL 691.1404 sets out the notice provision for the highway exception, requiring that written notice of the defect and the resulting injury be served on the governmental agency within one hundred twenty days of the incident, a deadline dramatically shorter than the standard three-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims under MCL 600.5805. The public building exception carries its own one hundred twenty day notice requirement under MCL 691.1406(2). Each notice must identify the exact location and nature of the defect, the injuries sustained, and the names of any known witnesses, with a level of specificity that Michigan courts have shown little patience to excuse.

Claims against individual government employees, as distinct from the governmental agency itself, are governed by a separate standard under MCL 691.1407(2). An individual officer or employee is immune from tort liability so long as the employee was acting within the scope of authority, the governmental agency was engaged in a governmental function, and the employee’s conduct did not amount to gross negligence that was the proximate cause of the injury. The Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in Robinson v. City of Detroit, 462 Mich 439 (2000), established that proximate cause in this context means the one most immediate, efficient, and direct cause of the injury, a demanding standard that requires a disciplined factual record to overcome. Our investigation in these matters starts with early preservation of municipal maintenance records, incident reports, and any prior complaints regarding the same defect or hazard, evidence that is frequently subject to shorter retention periods in government hands than in private litigation.

An injury caused by governmental negligence carries the same physical, financial, and personal consequences as any other serious injury, yet the path to a remedy is considerably narrower. Protecting that path has always depended on counsel prepared to act immediately, given that the one hundred twenty day notice window can begin running before a client has even secured legal representation. A delay of even a few weeks in seeking counsel can permanently foreclose an otherwise valid claim.

That is why we treat these time-sensitive obligations as a priority from the moment a potential client makes contact with the firm. The long-term implications of a missed notice deadline are absolute: unlike many procedural defects that can be cured or excused, a failure to provide timely and legally sufficient notice under the GTLA typically results in outright dismissal, regardless of the severity of the injury or the clarity of the government’s fault. Abood Law Firm brings the same rigor to identifying the correct statutory exception and preserving the record within these compressed timelines that it brings to any matter where the stakes for a client’s future are this significant.