The two six-month clocks in a public entity case

The asymmetry, which is the whole point of the page

Two periods, both six months, opposite legal characters. Nothing else about the Act matters as much as keeping them apart.

The claim presentation period in Gov. Code 911.2(a) is a condition precedent to suit and an element of the claim. It is not a statute of limitations, which is why the doctrines you would reach for do not work on it. Shirk v. Vista Unified School Dist. (2007) 42 Cal.4th 201, 213. Willis v. City of Carlsbad (2020) 48 Cal.App.5th 1104, 1119-1120 says it directly: equitable tolling "cannot be invoked to suspend section 911.2's six-month deadline," because the period "is not a statute of limitations ... to which tolling rules might apply."

The suit period in Gov. Code 945.6(a)(1) is the opposite. It is a real statute of limitations, and equitable tolling reaches it. Addison v. State of California (1978) 21 Cal.3d 313 tolled it for the pendency of a timely federal action.

Accrual for both is borrowed rather than defined. Gov. Code 901 sends you to "the statute of limitations which would be applicable thereto if there were no requirement that a claim be presented." Willis, at p. 1119. So delayed discovery does work here, but it works by moving the accrual date, which is a different mechanism from tolling and has to be pleaded that way.

Which tier the cause of action sits in

Section 911.2(a) is two sentences, not two subdivisions, and the split is by kind of injury rather than by kind of defendant.

Read the list narrowly, because what is missing from it is the point. Real property is not in the six-month list. Personal property is. So damage to land and structures sits in the one-year tier with contract claims, while the same event's personal injury component sits in the six-month tier.

Westcon Construction Corp. v. County of Sacramento (2007) 152 Cal.App.4th 183 is the case to cite for a contract claim landing in the one-year tier, and it carries a second holding that matters below.

The board's 45 days, and what silence does

Presentation starts a 45-day clock on the entity. If it runs out, the claim is rejected by operation of law and your suit clock starts without anyone telling you.

Gov. Code 912.4(a) gives the board 45 days after presentation to act, and a fresh 45 days after any amended claim is presented. Gov. Code 912.4(c) supplies the consequence: on failure to act, the claim "shall be deemed to have been rejected by the board on the last day of the period."

The 45 days can be extended by written agreement, and 912.4(b)(2) allows the agreement to be made even after the period has expired, provided no action has been commenced and suit is not yet barred under section 945.6. That is a useful and underused provision when the adjuster wants more time.

The suit clock, and the three facts about it

Six months, running from the entity's act of sending, in calendar months, with no service-method extension written into the statute.

Gov. Code 913(b) is what makes the trigger findable. A rejection notice has to carry a warning in substantially this form, and the warning names its own trigger:

So the notice usually tells you the date. Get the envelope, and keep it, because a notice dated one day and mailed three days later moves the deadline by three days and the file copy will not show it.

Late claims, and the relief petition

Two deadlines, both hard, and the second one is measured from an event you may never be told about.

1. The application, under section 911.4. Available only for six-month-tier claims. It must be presented "within a reasonable time not to exceed one year after the accrual of the cause of action." Gov. Code 911.4(b). The one-year cap is jurisdictional: Munoz v. State of California (1995) 33 Cal.App.4th 1767 held that filing within one year is "a jurisdictional prerequisite to a claim-relief petition." A reasonable time can be shorter than a year, so the cap is a ceiling and not a safe harbour.
2. The board's 45 days, under section 911.6. Grant or deny within 45 days, extendable by written agreement made before expiration. On silence the application "shall be deemed to have been denied on the 45th day." Gov. Code 911.6(a), 911.6(c).
3. The petition, under section 946.6. Six months, and here is the part that costs people the case: it runs "after the application to the board is denied or deemed to be denied," not from notice of the denial. Rason v. Santa Barbara City Housing Authority (1988) 201 Cal.App.3d 817. On a deemed denial there is no notice at all, so the clock starts on the 45th day, silently.
4. Then 30 days. If the court grants relief, suit "shall be filed with the court within 30 days thereafter." Gov. Code 946.6(f). Thirty days from the order, not from notice of entry.

The 911.3 return procedure, and the half of it that is a gift

If an entity returns your claim as untimely it has to do so within 45 days, and if it says nothing the timeliness defense is waived. But the whole procedure only reaches six-month-tier claims.

Gov. Code 911.3(a) lets the board return a late six-month-tier claim, with a prescribed form of notice, "at any time within 45 days after the claim is presented." Gov. Code 911.3(b) is the consequence of not doing it:

Two things follow, and they cut in opposite directions.

Put an address on the claim. The exception in (b) is the only way an entity keeps a timeliness defense it slept on, and it turns on an omission that costs nothing to avoid.

Do not expect the waiver to save a one-year-tier claim. Section 911.3(a) is limited by its own terms to a claim "required by Section 911.2 to be presented not later than six months after accrual." Westcon, 152 Cal.App.4th at p. 199, held section 911.3 "is not applicable" to a claim in the one-year tier. So on a real property or contract claim, entity silence for 45 days waives nothing.

The pin cites that went stale in 2022

Senate Bill 501 added two grounds to the middle of the mandatory-relief lists in sections 911.6 and 946.6 and renumbered everything after them. Older form books and pre-2022 opinions cite the old numbers.

Both Gov. Code 911.6(b) and Gov. Code 946.6(c) now run to six paragraphs, not four. Stats. 2021, ch. 218 (SB 501), effective 1 January 2022, added the "during any of the time" variants for minors at (b)(3) and (c)(3), and for physical or mental incapacity at (b)(5) and (c)(5).

A brief that cites section 946.6(c)(4) for the death of the claimant is now citing the total-incapacity ground. The same shift happened in section 911.6(b). Check any authority written before 2022 and any template that has not been touched since.

One more numbering trap in the same section. The six-month petition deadline is not in a numbered paragraph at all. It sits as an unnumbered sentence at the end of subdivision (b), after (b)(3). A citation to "section 946.6(b)(4)" points at a paragraph that does not exist. Cite it as Gov. Code 946.6(b).