Suing Over a Fall on a Broken Public Sidewalk in Pennsylvania

Attorney Answer

You may have a claim, but the deadline that will decide it is six months, not two years — and almost nobody is told that in time.

If a municipality owns the sidewalk right-of-way, 42 Pa.C.S. § 5522(a) requires a written statement of the claim within six months of the injury, giving your name and residence address, the date, hour and location of the incident, and the name and address of any treating physician. That requirement is not absolute: up to 90 days of incapacity caused by the injury itself is excluded from the six months against a non-Commonwealth government unit, and failure to give notice does not bar the claim where the government unit had actual or constructive notice of the incident. Do not rely on those escape hatches. Send the notice.

On liability, 42 Pa.C.S. § 8542(b)(7) lifts governmental immunity for a dangerous condition of sidewalks within the rights-of-way of streets owned by the local agency, but you must show the condition created a reasonably foreseeable risk of the kind of injury you suffered and that the agency had actual notice, or can reasonably be charged with constructive notice, in enough time to have taken protective measures. A slab that has been lifted for years is how constructive notice is usually proven. One point most people miss: where the local agency is liable under this paragraph by reason of its power to require installation and repair of sidewalks under the care, custody and control of other persons, the agency is secondarily liable only, and those other persons — typically the abutting property owner — are primarily liable. In many Pennsylvania sidewalk cases the neighboring property owner is the real defendant.

Pennsylvania also reduces your recovery by your own share of fault and bars it entirely if you are found more than half responsible, so expect an argument that you should have seen the raised slab.

What you can do 1. Photograph the defect immediately from several angles, with a ruler or a coin in frame showing the height of the lift, before it is repaired. 2. Determine who owns and who abuts the sidewalk through the municipal tax parcel records, because the abutting owner may be primarily liable. 3. Send the written notice required by § 5522(a) to the municipality within six months, including every item the statute lists, by a method that proves delivery. 4. Get your foot examined and documented by a doctor even though the injury seems minor; an undocumented injury is hard to prove later. 5. Gather evidence of how long the defect existed: prior complaints, 311 records, older street-level images, neighbors' statements. 6. Report the fall in writing to the municipality's risk or claims office.

⏱ Time limits apply. The six-month written notice under 42 Pa.C.S. § 5522(a) is the first and shortest deadline and it can end a claim that is otherwise good. The general two-year personal-injury limitations period in 42 Pa.C.S. § 5524 runs separately and does not extend the notice period. Both run from dates specific to your facts.