What Happened

On November 30, 2024, a driver fleeing a Wilmington police pursuit ran a red light and struck a motorist's vehicle at the intersection of North Market Street and East 11th Street. The fleeing driver never stopped. Police responded to the scene and wrote a collision report.

The injured motorist first sued her own insurer, USAA General Indemnity Company, for breach of her policy, filing that claim about three weeks before the one-year anniversary of the crash. She didn't add the City of Wilmington and its police department as defendants until March 13, 2026, more than three months after that one-year mark had already passed.

Why the Timing Was Fatal to Her Claim

Delaware law requires anyone seeking negligence damages from the City of Wilmington to notify the mayor in writing within one year of the injury, specifying the time, place, cause, and nature of the harm. This is a separate legal requirement from simply filing a lawsuit, and it exists specifically to give municipalities early warning that they may face liability, so they can investigate while evidence and memories are still fresh. The motorist conceded she never sent that letter.

Her Fallback Argument & Why It Failed

She argued that the police collision report itself should count as sufficient notice, since it was written by the city's own officers and described the crash in detail. Delaware courts do recognize an exception, known as "actual notice," where a sufficiently thorough government investigation can substitute for a formal written letter, but only when the government entity actually knew about its own potential role in the incident and wasn't prejudiced by the lack of formal notice.

The court found that exception didn't apply here. The collision report documented a red-light runner striking her car and fleeing, nothing about a police pursuit or the city's own possible involvement in creating the situation. The court noted she "presents no evidence that the City knew of her collision and its alleged role in the event." She also argued the report concealed the pursuit, but the court rejected that claim as unsupported speculation, finding she "merely posits concealment" without any factual backing.

What This Means If a Government Vehicle or Pursuit Is Involved in Your Crash

This case is a pointed illustration of something worth knowing well before you're ever in this situation: a police report describing your crash is not the same as legally notifying a government entity that you intend to hold it liable. If you believe a city, county, or state agency, or a pursuit, chase, or other government-related activity, contributed to your crash in any way, you generally need to send a separate, formal written notice within a specific and often short deadline, frequently just one year or even less depending on the jurisdiction, regardless of what any police report already says.

This requirement catches people specifically because it feels redundant. If officers already wrote a detailed report about what happened, it seems reasonable to assume the city already knows. As this case shows, courts don't see it that way unless the report specifically implicates the government's own conduct, not just the conduct of a third party the government happened to be chasing.

Notably, the underlying insurance claim against her own carrier, USAA, remains active and wasn't affected by this ruling. It's specifically her ability to pursue the city itself that was lost.

If you've been injured in a crash that may involve a government vehicle, a police pursuit, or municipal negligence in any way, the independent attorneys we connect you with can help you identify and meet every notice deadline that applies, before it's too late to pursue the claim at all.

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