How to File a USPS Tort Claim: Form 95, Deadlines, and Recovery Limits

To file a USPS tort claim, you submit Standard Form 95 (SF-95) to the Postal Service within two years of the incident, list a specific dollar amount for your damages, attach evidence of your injuries or property loss, and then wait up to six months for the agency to respond before you can take the case to federal court. This administrative step is mandatory. You cannot skip it and sue the USPS directly, because the Postal Service is a federal agency and the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) is the only path Congress has opened for money damages against it.

What Kinds of Incidents Qualify

The FTCA covers injury or property damage caused by a postal employee’s negligence while they were doing their job. Two situations account for most claims: vehicle accidents involving mail trucks, and slip-and-fall or similar premises injuries at post offices. A carrier who runs a red light and hits your car, or an untreated icy walkway outside a post office, is the type of incident the process was built for. The legal test is whether a private person doing the same thing in the same place would be liable under that state’s tort law.¹

Several categories are excluded and belong to different processes or nowhere at all. Lost, damaged, or misdelivered mail is not an FTCA matter; the Act specifically bars any claim for the “loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter,” and those situations go through USPS insurance and indemnity procedures instead. Intentional torts by postal workers, including assault, battery, false arrest, false imprisonment, defamation, and misrepresentation, are also generally excluded.² Claims based on discretionary policy decisions are off-limits too. And the person who caused the harm must be a USPS employee, not an independent contractor.

The Two-Year Filing Deadline

You have exactly two years from the date the injury or damage occurred to file your administrative claim. Miss that window and the claim is, in the statute’s words, “forever barred.”³ There is no good-cause extension. The clock usually starts on the accident date, though for latent injuries it may start when you reasonably should have discovered the harm. What matters for the deadline is when the USPS receives your claim, not when you drop it in the mail.

Filling Out Standard Form 95

The claim must be presented on Standard Form 95, the government’s universal tort claim form. You can download it from the General Services Administration or request one from a USPS District Tort Claims Coordinator.⁴ The form asks for the date and time of the incident, a detailed description of what happened (identifying people, property, and the location), and the nature and extent of your injuries or property damage. If more than one person was hurt, each claimant files a separate SF-95.

The Sum Certain

You must state a specific dollar amount for your total damages. The FTCA calls this a “sum certain,” and the claim is not legally considered “presented” without one.⁴ Phrases like “fair compensation” or “to be determined” do not count.

Get this number right. It functions as a ceiling on any later court recovery. If your claim eventually goes to court, you generally cannot recover more than the amount written on the SF-95.⁵ The narrow exception is new evidence that was not reasonably discoverable when you filed, or intervening facts that change the value of your claim. Underestimate your damages and you may be stuck with the number even if your injuries turn out to be worse than you thought.

You can amend the sum certain at any time before the agency issues a final decision. The amendment must be in writing and signed by you or your representative. Filing an amendment restarts the agency’s six-month review clock.⁶

Documentation That Should Go With the Form

Bare-bones submissions get denied. USPS regulations say that for personal injury claims, you may be required to provide physician reports describing the nature and extent of your injury, your treatment, any disability (temporary or permanent), your prognosis, and any lost earning capacity. Attach itemized medical bills or paid receipts for every expense.⁷

For property damage, include proof of ownership, a detailed statement of the amount claimed for each item, and itemized repair estimates or paid repair receipts. If the property is a total loss or not worth repairing, provide the purchase date, purchase price, and salvage value instead.⁷ Police reports, photographs, and witness statements strengthen any claim. Sign the form yourself, or have your authorized legal representative sign it.

Where to Send It

You can hand the completed SF-95 to any post office. Postal employees are required to accept and date-stamp it. The better route is to send it to the Tort Claims Coordinator for the USPS district where the incident happened, or directly to the USPS National Tort Center:

Chief Counsel, Torts, General Law Service Center, USPS National Tort Center, 1720 Market Street, Room 2400, St. Louis, MO 63155-9948.⁷

Use certified or registered mail. A certified mail receipt gives you proof of the exact date the USPS received the claim, and with a two-year statute of limitations measured by receipt, that receipt can be the difference between a live claim and a dead one.

What Happens After You File

Once the USPS has your completed SF-95, a mandatory six-month period begins. During those six months you cannot file a lawsuit. The agency uses the time to investigate, and it has the full six months to offer a settlement or formally deny the claim.⁵

If the USPS denies the claim before six months are up, you can go to court immediately. If six months pass with no answer, the silence counts as a denial and you may file suit any time after.

If the USPS offers a settlement, think carefully before accepting. Acceptance is final and irreversible. It “shall constitute a complete release of any claim against the United States and against any employee of the Government whose act or omission gave rise to the claim.”⁷ You cannot reopen the claim if your injuries worsen or you discover additional damage. If the offer is too low, you can reject it and file suit.

The Second Deadline That Kills Otherwise-Valid Claims

A separate six-month clock starts running when the USPS formally denies the claim. From the date the denial notice is mailed, you have six months to file a lawsuit in federal district court.³ Let those six months lapse and the courthouse door closes permanently. This is where people who did everything right on the SF-95 still lose the case, so mark the denial-letter date the day it arrives.

Limits on What You Can Recover

Even a successful FTCA claim has caps built in. The federal government is not liable for punitive damages or pre-judgment interest.⁸ Recovery is limited to actual compensatory damages: medical expenses, lost wages, property repair or replacement costs, and pain and suffering where state law allows.

FTCA cases in federal court are tried by a judge alone; there is no jury. And as noted above, your court recovery is generally capped at the dollar amount on the SF-95, which is why the sum certain matters years after you sign the form.⁵

Attorney Fee Caps

If you hire a lawyer, federal law limits the fee. For claims resolved at the administrative level through a USPS settlement, attorney fees cannot exceed 20% of the award. For claims resolved by a court judgment or court-level settlement, the cap is 25%. Any fee agreement above these limits is unenforceable.

These caps sit below the roughly one-third contingency common in private personal injury cases, which can make it harder to find counsel willing to take smaller USPS claims. For a straightforward property damage claim worth a few thousand dollars, you may need to prepare the SF-95 yourself. For serious injury claims, the caps still leave enough on larger recoveries to attract experienced counsel.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1346 – United States as Defendant
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2680 – Exceptions
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States
4
Department of Justice. Standard Form 95 – Claim for Damage, Injury, or Death
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2675 – Disposition by Federal Agency as Prerequisite; Evidence
6
eCFR. 28 CFR 14.2 – Administrative Claim; When Presented
7
eCFR. 39 CFR Part 912 – Procedures to Adjudicate Claims for Personal Injury or Property Damage Arising out of the Operation of the U.S. Postal Service
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2674 – Liability of United States