My Child Was Hurt at School, at Practice, or on the Bus — What Should I Do First in Nebraska?
If your child has been injured at a Nebraska public school, during practice, or on a school bus, the first priority is medical care. The second is understanding that the procedures and deadlines that may apply are not the ones most people expect — and that they can differ depending on who may be legally responsible.
Different procedural tracks may apply depending on the defendant and the claim. Tort claims against a Nebraska public school district or another political subdivision generally require compliance with the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 13-901 to 13-928. That includes filing a written claim with an authorized recipient, special timing rules, statutory immunity exemptions, and a statutory cap on recovery. Claims against a genuinely private party may follow different statutes of limitation and different procedures. An incident involving both public and private actors may require preserving more than one claim under more than one deadline.
Under § 13-919(1), a claim against a political subdivision is barred unless a written claim is made to the governing body within one year after the claim accrues, and suit generally must be started within two years. Presenting a claim does not by itself authorize filing suit; § 13-906 governs final disposition, the statutory waiting period, and written withdrawal.
Section 13-905 identifies where the claim goes: the clerk, the secretary, or another official whose duty it is to maintain that entity's official records, or a duly constituted law department the governing body has designated. Reporting an injury to a principal, coach, employee, risk manager, or insurer may not satisfy the statute. The correct recipient depends on the legal identity and governance structure of the entity involved.
Nebraska's minority-tolling statute, § 25-213, expressly refers to claims under the Act, and § 13-919(5) identifies § 25-213 as the other applicable limitations statute. But the interaction among minority tolling, presentment, accrual, and the separate claims a child and a parent may hold can be legally complex. The presence of a minor claimant should not be treated as eliminating the need for prompt review of every potentially applicable deadline.
Meanwhile, video, telematics, and electronic messages may be retained for only a limited period under an entity's or vendor's policies, which is why a prompt preservation request often matters.
This article is a map of the terrain and the questions worth asking early. It is not legal advice, and it cannot tell you what deadline applies to your child's situation.
Start with the injury, not the paperwork
Get your child evaluated, and be specific with the provider about how the injury happened. Contemporaneous medical records are created by a neutral third party at a time when no one is yet in dispute, which is part of what makes them useful later.
Some injuries are not fully apparent on the first day. A gap between the incident and the first medical visit is frequently raised later as evidence that the injury was minor or unrelated, so a delayed evaluation can create an evidentiary problem even when the medical decision was reasonable at the time. If your child was returned to class or back into a game, or told to keep going, that is worth noting.
Then write down what you know while you know it: date, time, location, who was supervising, who saw it, and what your child said that evening. A dated parent narrative is not glamorous, but it can anchor a timeline months later when the entity's own written record turns out to be brief.
The question that comes before every other question: who may be responsible?
Nebraska does not apply one uniform set of rules to injuries that happen at school. Which rules apply depends on the legal identity of the party alleged to be at fault, and that determination comes before any deadline can be calculated.
Public entities
School districts, educational service units, and community colleges are generally political subdivisions, and tort claims against them generally proceed under the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act. That means a written pre-suit claim, statutorily designated recipients, the statutory exemptions in § 13-910, and the recovery limits in § 13-926. Under § 13-907, suits under the Act are tried to the court rather than to a jury.
Entity identification is not always intuitive. The Nebraska Supreme Court has addressed a situation in which a county hospital governed by its own board of trustees was treated as a political subdivision separate from the county, with the consequence that filing with county officials did not satisfy the Act. Brothers v. Kimball Cty. Hosp., 289 Neb. 879, 857 N.W.2d 789 (2015). That case is not a school case, and it is offered here only as an analogy — but the analogy is a fair one. A district, an educational service unit, a county, and a city are different entities with different governing bodies and different record-keeping officials, and one incident can involve more than one of them.
Private parties
Claims against a genuinely private defendant — an independent transportation company, an outside organization renting a facility, another motorist — fall outside the Act and may follow different statutes of limitation and different procedures. Ordinary negligence claims in Nebraska are frequently governed by the four-year period in Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-207(3), but that is not a universal private-defendant deadline. The applicable period can depend on the theory pleaded, the identity and status of the defendant, accrual rules, statutes of repose, and other statutes that may displace the general residual period.
Situations that resist clean labels
A number of scenarios do not sort neatly into either category. Employees sued individually raise scope-of-employment questions. A contractor may be alleged to be an agent or a statutory employee. A single incident may involve public and private defendants simultaneously. Claims sounding in contract, products liability, professional negligence, or civil rights may carry their own prerequisites and limitation periods. A parent's derivative claim may accrue differently from the child's. None of that is unusual, and all of it argues for early review rather than early assumption.
Where the written claim has to go
Section 13-905 requires that tort claims under the Act be filed with the clerk, the secretary, or another official whose duty it is to maintain the official records of the political subdivision, or with a duly constituted law department if the governing body has provided for that. The claim must be in writing and must set forth the time and place of the occurrence and the other facts pertinent to the claim that are known to the claimant.
Nebraska appellate courts have drawn a distinction here that surprises people. Substantial compliance is available when the question is whether the content of a claim was sufficient. Woodard v. City of Lincoln, 256 Neb. 61, 588 N.W.2d 831 (1999). But where a claim was not filed with an official or office the Act designates, courts have held that a substantial-compliance analysis does not apply. Lowe v. Lancaster Cty. Sch. Dist. 0001, 17 Neb. App. 419, 766 N.W.2d 408 (2009). Nebraska courts have also held that filing only with someone unauthorized to receive a claim does not substantially comply, even where negotiations were conducted with that person. Nyamatore v. Schuerman, 25 Neb. App. 209, 904 N.W.2d 730 (2017).
Lowe also holds that a claim need not be addressed to a particular named individual if it is filed with an authorized official or office — so the requirement is about the recipient's statutory role, not about naming a person correctly.
The practical significance is this: reporting an injury to a principal, filling out a district incident form, speaking with a risk manager, or corresponding with an insurance adjuster may not satisfy the statute, even over many months. Whether a particular communication satisfied § 13-905 depends on who received it, in what capacity, and what it said.
Presenting a claim is not the same as being able to file suit
Section 13-906 governs what happens after presentment. It addresses final disposition of the claim by the governing body, the statutory waiting period when no final disposition is made, and written withdrawal of the claim before suit. Nebraska authority treats compliance with these requirements as a condition precedent, and filing suit prematurely — or withdrawing a claim prematurely — can be dispositive.
The sequence, together with any extension available under § 13-919, should be checked against the current statutes and the specific facts. The passage of six months does not, by itself, authorize filing.
What immunity does and does not cover
Section 13-910 lists claims to which the Act does not apply. Two of those exemptions come up regularly in student-injury matters, and they operate differently.
Discretionary function — § 13-910(2)
The Act does not apply to claims based on the exercise or failure to exercise a discretionary function or duty, whether or not the discretion is abused.
This exemption is fact- and conduct-specific. Nebraska courts examine whether the challenged conduct involved judgment or choice and, if so, whether that judgment is the kind of policy-based decision the exemption protects. A mandatory statute, regulation, or sufficiently specific binding policy may remove discretion, but the wording and legal force of the directive matter — a written policy can itself preserve discretion, and a policy that is aspirational or permits choice may not create the kind of mandatory duty the analysis requires.
The Nebraska Supreme Court has applied the exemption in a school setting to a district's decision to enforce a policy only during school hours and not to supervise a playground area after hours, treating that as a judgment protected by the exemption. Lambert v. Lincoln Public Schools, 306 Neb. 192, 945 N.W.2d 84 (2020). The outcome in any particular case depends on the source and text of the directive at issue, the choices actually available to the employee, the specific conduct challenged, and the theory pleaded. Conduct that is operational may still implicate a different statutory exemption.
Recreational activities — § 13-910(13)
This exemption is frequently relevant to playground and athletics claims and is often overlooked in general writing about school injuries. It addresses two separate paths, and they should not be collapsed.
For recreational activities for which no fee is charged, the Act does not apply to claims resulting from the inherent risk of the activity, and it does not apply to claims arising out of a spot or localized defect of the premises unless the political subdivision failed to correct the defect within a reasonable time after actual or constructive notice. The statute defines recreational activities broadly — the list includes use of playground equipment and athletic contests, and covers participants and spectators. It defines inherent risk as risks characteristic of, intrinsic to, or an integral part of the activity. It also defines what counts as a fee, and provides that a charge for parking or vehicle entry does not qualify.
Notice under this subdivision is defined narrowly. The statute provides that a political subdivision is charged with constructive notice only when its failure to discover the spot or localized defect was the result of gross negligence, which the statute defines as the absence of even slight care in the performance of a duty involving an unreasonable risk of harm. Ordinary negligence in failing to discover a condition does not automatically establish constructive notice under this provision.
Whether a qualifying fee was charged, whether the claimant was participating or spectating, whether the alleged risk was inherent to the activity, whether the condition was a spot or localized defect, and whether actual or statutorily defined constructive notice existed are all distinct questions. Records such as prior complaints, work orders, and inspection logs are often central to the notice question.
School buses
Transportation matters have their own statutory features.
The weather-conditions exemption in § 13-910(10) provides that it does not limit a political subdivision's liability for a claim arising out of the operation of a motor vehicle by an employee acting within the course and scope of employment. The Nebraska Supreme Court has confirmed that a claim alleging a school employee caused a motor vehicle accident is a claim within the Act. Wise v. Omaha Public Schools, 271 Neb. 635, 714 N.W.2d 19 (2006). That the exemption does not apply is not the same as establishing liability; duty, breach, causation, and damages still have to be proven, and other exemptions may be raised.
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 79-610 addresses liability insurance when a school board employs a driver to transport pupils to and from school and to and from other school-sponsored activities. The statute sets minimum limits. Those minimums should not be read as a measure of what is actually recoverable in a given case: insured status, policy exclusions, the number of claimants, other applicable policies, and the statutory cap can all affect the analysis, and the current statutory text should be confirmed against the current Reissue or Supplement.
Where transportation is provided by a contractor, a claim against the contractor may present a different procedural path from a claim against the district — but that cannot be assumed. The contractor's legal status, the relationship between the entities, who employed the driver, the theory asserted, and the applicable insurance all need to be confirmed before selecting a deadline or a procedure.
Preserving evidence
Video, telematics, electronic messages, and similar information may be retained only for a limited period under an entity's or vendor's retention policies, and those policies vary by district, vendor, and system. Routine deletion can occur without anyone acting in bad faith.
A prompt, appropriately directed preservation request can reduce the risk of routine deletion. It does not itself establish a duty to preserve, guarantee that anything will be preserved, or substitute for statutory claim presentment under § 13-905 — those are separate documents doing separate jobs.
Categories of information commonly addressed in such a request include:
Interior and exterior bus video for the full run in question
Facility video covering the gym, hallway, field, playground, or parking area involved
Vehicle telematics, GPS, and event-recorder data
Incident reports, nurse and athletic trainer notes, and concussion-protocol documentation
The entity's written supervision, weather, equipment-inspection, and return-to-participation policies as they existed on that date
Maintenance and inspection records and prior complaints for the equipment or area involved
Internal emails, text messages, and radio dispatch records concerning the incident
If an adjuster contacts you
Before providing a recorded statement or signing a medical authorization, a parent may wish to identify whom the adjuster represents, review the scope of what is being requested, and obtain legal advice about any duties that may apply. Whether a statement or authorization is required can depend on the insurance relationship, any applicable contract or policy, the procedural posture, and the specific request.
The scope of a medical authorization depends on how the authorization is written and how the provider responds to it, so the language of the specific form matters. It is generally reasonable to ask for time to review a request in writing before responding to it.
Notice to an insurance carrier is a separate matter from statutory presentment. Nebraska courts have held that notice to a political subdivision's insurer alone is not sufficient under the Act. Keene v. Teten, 8 Neb. App. 819, 602 N.W.2d 29 (1999).
When the parents are separated: two households, one injured child
An injured child in two households presents coordination problems that a single household does not, and this is the part of these situations our firm sees most often.
Decisions arrive quickly: which specialist, whether to consent to a procedure, whether to clear a return to activity, who attends appointments, who pays and who is reimbursed, and whether to pursue a claim at all. Nebraska parenting plans differ considerably in how they allocate medical decision-making, and a plan that functioned well for routine care can be ambiguous when the stakes rise.
A few points matter here. A parenting plan or decree controls until it is modified, and a private written protocol between parents — however sensible — does not modify a court order. Legal custody allocation, emergency decision-making authority, notice duties, and any dispute-resolution provisions in the order govern what each parent may do. Whether mediation, a targeted modification, or another approach is appropriate or timely depends on the order, the circumstances, and any pending proceedings. Self-help is rarely the right answer when an order is ambiguous.
For clients whose written engagement includes this service, our firm offers in-house divorce and co-parenting coaching at no additional fee. Coaching may help clients organize communication and coordinate child-focused decisions during a stressful period. It is not therapy, does not replace medical care or legal advice, and does not alter a court order. Availability and scope are governed by the written engagement agreement.
If a claim resolves, how is a minor's money handled?
This is where an injury question becomes a probate and county court question, and it is better understood before negotiations than after.
Nebraska law provides a streamlined procedure for some minor settlements that meet the current requirements of Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-3110. Those requirements include an amount calculation that excludes specified components — reimbursement of medical expenses, liens, reasonable attorney's fees, and costs of suit — as well as eligibility conditions tied to whether a conservator or guardian ad litem has already been appointed, a required affidavit or verified statement, and permitted payment arrangements. The statute also restricts withdrawal of funds from the account established for the minor to the limited circumstances it identifies.
Settlements that do not fit that framework may require court involvement and protective arrangements for the proceeds, and § 25-3110 preserves the option of seeking guardianship, limited guardianship, or conservatorship in the appropriate county court and asking the court to approve a settlement and oversee proceeds regardless of amount. Which procedure is appropriate depends on the settlement structure, any existing appointments, liens, fees, costs, and the current text of the statute. Because the threshold and the payment mechanics are set by statute and can change, both should be confirmed against the current Reissue or Supplement.
Separately, § 13-926 limits the total amount recoverable under the Act to one million dollars for any person for any number of claims arising out of a single occurrence, and five million dollars for all claims arising out of a single occurrence. Nebraska courts have addressed how the cap applies when more than one family member has a claim arising from the same occurrence; how it applies in a particular case depends on the claims actually asserted.
What we handle, and what a matter like this may require
Our firm is a family law and civil litigation practice in Lincoln. What draws a situation like this into our work is that it rarely stays in one lane: a student injury can involve a parenting plan that needs to answer medical questions it does not currently address, a county court conservatorship to hold a minor's funds, mediation, and two parents who need to be able to communicate about their child.
A tort claim against a political subdivision is a distinct undertaking with its own procedural prerequisites, and identifying the correct entity and the correct recipient early can matter a great deal. If you are uncertain who a claim would be against or what deadline applies, prompt review may preserve options that later become unavailable. Contacting a law firm does not itself file a claim, create an attorney-client relationship, or stop any deadline from running.
Frequently asked questions
How long do I have if my child was hurt at a Nebraska public school?
Under § 13-919(1), a claim against a political subdivision is barred unless a written claim is made to the governing body within one year after the claim accrues, and suit generally must be begun within two years. Accrual is a fact-dependent question and is not always the date of the incident. Different deadlines may apply to different claimants, defendants, and theories, so all potentially applicable deadlines should be reviewed promptly.
Who has to receive the written claim?
Section 13-905 requires filing with the clerk, the secretary, or another official whose duty it is to maintain the entity's official records, or with a duly constituted law department the governing body has designated. The correct recipient depends on the legal identity and governance structure of the specific entity. A claim need not be addressed to a particular named individual if it is filed with an authorized official or office.
Does telling the principal count?
Reporting an injury to a principal, coach, teacher, employee, or risk manager may not satisfy the statute. Whether a particular communication complied with § 13-905 depends on who received it, in what capacity, and what the writing said. Nebraska courts have also held that notice to the entity's insurer alone is not sufficient.
Does my child being a minor extend the deadline?
Nebraska's minority-tolling statute, § 25-213, expressly refers to claims under the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act, and § 13-919(5) identifies § 25-213 as the other limitations statute applicable to claims under the Act. The interaction among minority tolling, claim presentment, accrual, and the separate claims a child and a parent may hold is legally complex and fact-specific. The presence of a minor claimant should not be treated as eliminating the need for prompt review of every applicable deadline.
What if the bus was operated by a private company?
A claim against a private transportation contractor may follow a different procedural path from a claim against a school district. Whether that is so depends on the contractor's legal status, the relationship between the entities, who employed the driver, and the theory asserted. Because more than one path may apply, preserving both is often safer than choosing early.
Can a school district simply invoke sovereign immunity?
The exemptions in § 13-910 are affirmative defenses the political subdivision must raise. Whether one applies depends on the specific conduct challenged, the source and wording of any governing directive, and the theory pleaded — not on a general label. Both the discretionary-function exemption and the recreational-activities exemption require their own analysis.
What standard applies to playground and sports injuries?
For recreational activities for which no fee is charged, § 13-910(13) separately addresses injuries resulting from inherent risks of the activity and injuries arising from a spot or localized premises defect. Whether a qualifying fee was charged, the nature of the alleged risk or defect, and proof of actual or statutorily defined constructive notice are distinct questions. Under that subdivision, constructive notice is imputed only where the failure to discover the defect resulted from gross negligence as the statute defines it.
If there is a settlement, does my child receive the money directly?
Not directly during minority. Section 25-3110 provides a streamlined procedure for some minor settlements meeting its current requirements, including an amount calculation with specified exclusions, eligibility conditions, an affidavit, and permitted payment arrangements that restrict withdrawals. Other settlements may require court involvement and protective arrangements, and the statute preserves the option of asking a county court to approve a settlement and oversee proceeds.
Educational disclaimer
Educational information only. This article provides general information about Nebraska law as reviewed on August 12, 2026. It is not legal advice and does not address any reader's particular facts. Different defendants, legal theories, claimants, and accrual facts may produce different procedures or deadlines, and the law may change after the review date. Do not rely on this article to calculate a deadline or to decide whether to provide a statement, sign an authorization, alter medical care, modify a parenting arrangement, or handle a minor's funds. Contacting the firm does not create an attorney-client relationship, stop a deadline, or obligate the firm to act. Representation begins only through a written engagement agreement signed or otherwise accepted by the firm. Please do not send confidential information until the firm confirms that it can receive it. Coaching services, where included, are governed by the written engagement scope and are not therapy or medical care. Prior results do not guarantee or predict any future outcome.