A genuinely strict 6-month notice requirement
Under 42 Pa.C.S. § 5522, before suing Pennsylvania or a local government, written notice of the claim generally must be sent to the responsible government agency within six months from the date of injury. If a claim against the Commonwealth itself is involved, a copy of that notice must also be delivered to the Pennsylvania Attorney General.
A genuinely important trap for minors
Here's the detail that catches families off guard. In a real, documented Pennsylvania case involving two minor plaintiffs, the court held that the minority tolling rule — which generally pauses the statute of limitations clock for a minor's underlying claim until they turn 18 — does not extend the six-month notice requirement under § 5522. In other words, even though a minor's actual lawsuit doesn't need to be filed until years later, the separate written notice to the government unit still generally needs to go out within six months of the injury itself.
A real exception worth knowing
Under § 5522(a)(3)(iii), a failure to provide timely written notice isn't necessarily fatal if the government unit already had actual or constructive notice of the incident or condition giving rise to the claim. In one real case, a school district was found to have had constructive notice of an incident, meaning the six-month limitation didn't apply even though the plaintiff's formal notification letter came in after that window had technically closed.
The notice and the underlying claim are different things
Pennsylvania courts have described this notice requirement as a prerequisite to a future claim, separate from the statute of limitations governing when the lawsuit itself must actually be commenced. Satisfying the notice requirement doesn't resolve the underlying claim; it simply preserves the ability to bring it later, within whatever deadline otherwise applies.
Why acting immediately matters, especially for a minor's claim
Because the six-month notice window runs regardless of the injured person's age, a parent whose child was injured by a government entity needs to treat that notice step as urgent from day one — not something that can wait simply because the underlying lawsuit itself has years to go before a filing deadline arrives.