The personal injury lawyers with the Miller Law Group have experience with cases that may involve sovereign immunity. Sovereign Immunity is ancient legal doctrine from the European countries that colonized the U.S., which prevents you from suing the government (or back then, the “sovereign”, meaning the king or queen) for injuries and damages. That rule still exists, but there are some exceptions. For personal injury claims, those exceptions have to involve either a statutory waiver of some sort (typically created by the purchase of insurance by the government), or by creation of a special statute allowing for claims against the government.
Article 31 of the North Carolina General Statues is called the State Tort Claims Act (STCA), which allows for certain cases, including some personal injury claims, to be brought against the state of North Carolina. It’s important to remember that this law does NOT apply to county, city, or other local governments, but to the state of North Carolina itself. An important exception is accidents that involve school buses, MOST of which are actually considered to be state-operated vehicles, regardless of what county they’re in.
Different cities and counties may also have some type of insurance they’ve purchased to help people with claims like this, however, whether that insurance exists and what it might cover varies widely between locations.
The Federal Government also has a Federal Tort Claims Act (the FTCA), found in Chapter 28 of the United States Code. Like all such laws, the FTCA is helpful, but complicated, and requires a lawyer to help navigate the requirements of the statute. The Miller Law Group has over 50 years of combined experience in dealing with these types of government claims. If you’ve been injured by someone else’s negligence, contact us today for a free consultation.
