AB 67 rewrites Section 905 to specify a broad set of claim types that are not subject to the statutory requirement that claims for money or damages be presented to local public entities under the chapters that begin at Sections 900 and 910. The listed exceptions range from tax refund procedures and workers’ compensation to specific civil-procedure and education-code remedies.
Critically, the bill includes a retroactivity clause that says the changes apply to suits filed on or after enactment and to suits already pending—explicitly including actions that previously would have been time-barred. That combination alters how counsel, local counsel offices, insurers, and courts will evaluate notice, limitation, and revival issues going forward.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill makes the claim-presentment requirement inapplicable to a defined list of claim types and cross-references in other codes, and it declares those changes retroactive. In short: if a claim falls into one of the enumerated categories, the claimant does not have to comply with the local-claim presentation procedure set out in the referenced chapters.
Who It Affects
County and city attorneys, municipal risk pools and insurers, plaintiffs’ attorneys who sue local public entities, and courts deciding procedural defenses will see the most immediate effect. Specific beneficiary groups named in the text—survivors of childhood sexual assault, students seeking fee reimbursements, and parties pursuing certain tax or unemployment claims—are directly impacted.
Why It Matters
Removing the pre-litigation claim presentation step for many claim types shifts the early-warning function away from local entities and toward courts and insurers, increases litigation risk for local governments, and raises substantive and constitutional questions because the bill seeks retroactive application that could revive claims formerly barred by time limits.
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What This Bill Actually Does
AB 67 targets the technical but consequential rule in the law that requires most claims for money or damages against local public entities to be presented under the chapters starting at Sections 900 and 910. Rather than changing the general timelines or procedures, the bill narrows the rule by carving out a long list of exceptions: tax- and assessment-related refund procedures, lien-related claims, employee payroll and retirement claims, workers’ compensation matters where that remedy is exclusive, certain statutory recovery causes in the Education Code and Health & Safety Code, and several specific Code of Civil Procedure remedies, among others.
For any claim that falls into an exception, the pre-suit presentation requirement does not apply.
The bill’s practical effect is twofold. First, for claimants whose causes of action fall into an exception, attorneys can proceed without completing the local-claim notice steps that typically act as a gatekeeper to suit.
Second, the bill’s retroactivity language says the changes apply not only prospectively but also to suits already filed and to suits that would previously have been time-barred. That increases the population of cases that may proceed to court and prompts immediate questions about res judicata, statute-of-limitations revival, and reliance interests of local entities and insurers.Operationally, local governments will need to adjust internal intake and defense workflows: county counsels and risk managers will face more complaints filed without the earlier opportunity to investigate and possibly settle via administrative claim handling.
Insurers will confront notice-of-claim defenses and may litigate coverage disputes when municipalities lack the usual prior notice. Courts will receive more motions and potentially novel threshold litigation over whether a cause of action fits an enumerated exception and whether retroactive application is constitutional or procedurally appropriate.The statute as drafted also contains drafting and numbering oddities and relies on cross-references to a range of separate codes.
Those features create interpretive tasks for lawyers and judges—deciding, for example, whether a given statutory cause of action is truly exempted or whether the listed cross-reference operates only in certain contexts. The combination of many narrow exclusions plus a blanket retroactivity provision makes the provision both impactful and a likely flashpoint for litigation over scope and fairness.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill lists specific statutory exceptions to the claim-presentation requirement, including claims under the Revenue and Taxation Code, lien-related stop-notice claims, and claims governed by the Unemployment Insurance Code.
It expressly excludes claims by the state, by state departments or agencies, and by other local public entities or judicial-branch entities from the local claim-presentation requirement.
The bill names several targeted causes: recovery under Code of Civil Procedure Section 340.1 (childhood sexual assault), Section 701.820 (recoveries under Section 26680), Education Code Section 49013 (pupil-fee reimbursement), and Health & Safety Code Article 2.5 claims (beginning at Section 123460).
Section 905 preserves workers’ compensation exclusivity by exempting claims where Division 4 of the Labor Code is the exclusive remedy, which maintains the existing bar on civil suits for covered workplace injuries.
The text contains a retroactivity provision that reaches claims filed both after enactment and cases pending at enactment—including those that would previously have been barred—plus a drafting irregularity in the subsection lettering (a duplicated '(p)' leading into a '(q)').
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Core financial and employment exceptions
Subsections (a) through (d) exclude claims that fall into longstanding refund and employment regimes: tax and assessment refund procedures, mechanics’ lien and stop-notice matters, ordinary payroll and expense claims by public employees, and claims governed exclusively by the workers’ compensation remedy. Practically, these carve-outs preserve the specialized administrative pathways those statutes create and prevent the general claim-presentation rule from interfering with them; they also clarify that workers’ compensation remains the exclusive civil remedy where the Labor Code so provides.
Public assistance, retirement, debt, and state-entity exclusions
These subsections exempt applications related to public-assistance programs, public retirement systems, bond or warrant claims, special assessment-related claims, and claims either by or against other public entities. The net effect is to keep intergovernmental and benefit-administration processes outside the local-claim framework—an important detail for counsel who must decide whether a pre-suit presentation step is required.
Targeted statutory remedies
Subsections here pick out specific statutory remedies that will not be subject to the local presentation requirement: the Pedestrian Mall Law, childhood sexual assault recovery under CCP 340.1, a CCP 701.820 recovery tied to Vehicle Code Section 26680, and Education Code reimbursements for pupil fees under Section 49013. These are discrete carved-out categories that signal legislative intent to allow direct court access for sensitive or already-structured claims.
Health & Safety Code cross-reference
The bill excludes claims covered by Article 2.5 (beginning at Section 123460) of Chapter 2 of Part 2 of Division 106 of the Health & Safety Code. That cross-reference pulls in a subset of public-health related remedies and requires practitioners to map Health & Safety Code causes of action against the local-claim framework to determine presentation requirements.
Retroactivity and drafting notes
The final language declares the changes retroactive—applying to actions commenced on or after enactment and to actions already pending, explicitly including those that would have been barred under prior law. The text also reflects a labeling/formatting error in the subsection letters; that drafting defect will likely need correction and could itself be a source of litigation or administrative confusion about the provision’s precise scope.
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Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Claimants in the enumerated categories (for example, survivors pursuing CCP 340.1 claims and students seeking fee reimbursements under Ed. Code §49013) because they can proceed without satisfying the local pre-suit presentation requirement.
- Plaintiffs’ attorneys who handle tax-refund, unemployment, and other expressly excluded claims, as the changes remove an often dispositive procedural hurdle and simplify the path to filing suit.
- Workers and employers in the workers’ compensation context, because the bill preserves the exclusivity of the Labor Code remedy and thus avoids parallel civil suits for covered injuries.
Who Bears the Cost
- Local public entities (counties, cities, special districts) and their counsel, who will lose the early-warning and investigation benefit that claim presentation typically supplies and will likely face more suits filed without prior notice.
- Municipal insurers and pooled-risk carriers, which may see increased defense and indemnity costs and more coverage disputes when notice-based defenses are foreclosed or when retroactivity resurrects claims for which insurers believed exposure had lapsed.
- Trial courts and judicial officers, who will need to adjudicate threshold disputes about whether a cause of action fits an enumerated exception and handle an increased caseload of claims that previously would have been filtered out administratively.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill embodies a hard trade-off: it expands direct access to court for many specialized claimants (advancing access and remedy concerns) while simultaneously depriving local governments of the administrative notice and investigation that claim-presentation rules provide—then layers on retroactivity that pits claimants’ ability to revive old claims against governments’ and insurers’ reliance and evidence-preservation interests. There is no frictionless way to satisfy both aims.
The most consequential and contested feature of this text is the retroactivity clause. Applying the exception list retroactively to revive claims that would previously have been time-barred raises classic problems: evidence may have been discarded, witnesses’ memories will have faded, and governments and insurers will have acted in reliance on the old limits.
Those reliance interests create both fairness concerns and credible constitutional challenges (for example, under due process or impairment-of-contract principles) if the retroactivity meaningfully prejudices vested rights or settled expectations.
Separately, the provision’s reliance on many cross-references and narrow statutory hooks creates interpretive risk. Litigation is likely over whether a particular cause of action ‘‘falls within’’ an exception (is it a tax refund? an unemployment claim? a Health & Safety Article 2.5 matter?), producing early motion practice that will determine the provision’s real-world reach.
The drafting/lettering irregularity in the final paragraphs increases the chance of procedural challenge or confusion about whether the retroactivity language applies to the entire section or only to particular subsections. Finally, municipal insurers will press coverage defenses on late-notice-related grounds, and courts will have to reconcile indemnity policy language with the new statutory scheme.
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