Archuleta Law Firm

10/04/2026

"You can't sue the VA." That's the myth that costs veterans their rights every single day.

The truth: Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, veterans CAN sue the VA for medical malpractice. Family members can too. The claim runs against the United States, not the individual doctor, but the right to hold the VA accountable is real.

Here's what trips people up:

⚖️ You have 2 years from when you knew (or should have known) about the injury to file an SF-95 administrative claim. Not postmarked. Received.

The dollar amount you put on that SF-95 becomes the ceiling on what you can recover. Undervalue it, and you're stuck with that number in almost every case.

No jury. A federal judge decides. State malpractice law applies based on where the VA facility is located, so a case at the Houston VA follows Texas law, and one at Palo Alto follows California law.

Treasury data shows represented claimants recover an average of $241,641. Those who file alone average $63,219.

If someone you served with has been hurt by VA care, or lost someone because of it, this is the piece to send them before another month goes by on that clock.

Full breakdown here: https://veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/can-you-sue-a-va-hospital

Free case review, no fee unless we win: 1-800-798-9529

Pass this along to anyone who might need it.

Yes — veterans can sue the VA under the FTCA. Our federal tort claims attorneys explain the filing process, deadlines, damages, and how to maximize recovery.

10/04/2026

A USPS mail truck hit your car. You call your insurance. You wait. You assume you have three years like a normal accident.

You don't. You have two.

Suing the federal government isn't like suing a private driver. The Postal Service is a federal agency, which means your claim falls under the Federal Tort Claims Act. That means Standard Form 95, filed with the USPS within two years of the accident. Miss that deadline and your case is over before it starts, no matter how badly you were hurt.

A few things most people don't know:

The dollar amount you write on the SF-95 generally caps what you can recover later. List $25,000 for what turns into $300,000 in surgery and you may be stuck with the lower number.

There's no jury trial in an FTCA case. A federal judge decides it.

Punitive damages are off the table, no matter how reckless the driver was.

Attorney fees are capped by federal law at 20-25%, lower than most personal injury cases.

We've handled federal tort claims for 25+ years and recovered over $145M for people harmed by government negligence. If a USPS vehicle hurt you or someone in your family, the clock is already running.

Free case evaluation, no fee unless we win: 1-800-798-9529

Full breakdown here: https://veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/understanding-usps-accidents-and-ftca-claims

Pass this along to anyone who might need it.

Injured by a USPS truck? File Standard Form 95 within 2 years or lose your right to compensation forever. Our FTCA attorneys guide you through every step.

10/01/2026

Waking up during surgery does not by itself mean someone was careless — and a veteran deserves a straight answer about which it was.

The largest national audit of accidental awareness looked at exactly that. It judged three quarters of the cases it reviewed preventable, and in 12% of them the care was good and the episode was not preventable. What separates the two is almost never memory. It is the record.

The same audit found two thirds of awareness experiences arose in the dynamic phases of anesthesia — going under and coming out — not the steady middle of the operation. At induction, the contributing factors included rapid sequence induction, difficult airway management, and interruptions of anesthetic delivery while the patient was moved into the operating room. At emergence, patients perceived residual paralysis as awareness, commonly tied to a failure to ensure the full return of motor capacity. Those are the minutes worth reading, and they are not in the surgeon's summary note.

There is a deadline attached. A tort claim against the United States is "forever barred unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate Federal agency within two years after such claim accrues" (28 U.S.C. § 2401(b)) — and because a patient remembers awareness happening, the clock generally starts the day of surgery.

We walk through which records actually answer the standard-of-care question: https://www.veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/va-intraoperative-awareness-ftca-claim

Archuleta Law Firm — attorney advertising. 1-800-798-9529

09/30/2026

Every few months another Feres doctrine reform bill makes the news, and veterans ask us the same question: do I have to wait for it to pass before I can do anything about the VA care that harmed me?

No. The Supreme Court answered that in 1954. In United States v. Brown, 348 U.S. 110, a veteran was hurt by a defective tourniquet at a veterans' hospital after he had left the service. The Court held his case was "governed by Brooks, not by Feres," because "the injury occurred after his discharge, while he enjoyed a civilian status." Feres bars claims for injuries incident to military service. It does not bar a veteran, already discharged, from bringing a Federal Tort Claims Act claim over VA medical care. Reform is about active-duty servicemembers, who are still shut out of federal court.

Justice Thomas made the same point this year. Dissenting from the Court's February 24, 2025 denial of review in Carter v. United States, he wrote that had the petitioner "been a veteran rather than an inactive-duty reservist, he unquestionably could have filed suit for the same injuries arising from the same treatment by the same military staff at the same military hospital."

So for a veteran, the obstacle is not Feres. It is the calendar. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b), a tort claim against the United States "shall be forever barred" unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate federal agency within two years after the claim accrues — and that clock does not pause while Congress debates.

Where Feres reform actually stands, and what it changes for veterans: https://www.veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/feres-doctrine-reform-2025

Archuleta Law Firm — attorney advertising. General information, not legal advice.

09/29/2026

There is a costly assumption about the two-year deadline on a VA malpractice claim: that the clock does not start until someone tells you the care was negligent. The Supreme Court decided that exact question, in a case about a veteran treated at a VA hospital.

After surgery at a VA hospital in 1968, William Kubrick lost his hearing. In January 1969 an ear doctor told him the antibiotic used during his treatment was the likely cause. Not until June 1971 did a doctor tell him the drug should never have been given at all. The Court held the claim accrued in 1969 — when he knew of the injury and its cause — not in 1971, when he learned the treatment had been improper. United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111 (1979).

Under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b), a tort claim against the United States is "forever barred" unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate federal agency within two years after the claim accrues. So the practical rule runs opposite to most people's instinct: once you know you were hurt and what caused it, the clock is already running. Whether anyone did anything wrong is the question to get answered inside that window, not the event that starts it.

One more detail from the case worth knowing: Kubrick was pursuing a VA benefits claim over the same hearing loss the entire time. That process did not stop the federal tort clock.

How the federal path differs from an ordinary state malpractice suit — the deadlines, who the defendant is, and what has to happen before a court will hear the case:
https://www.veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/ftca-vs-state-negligence-suits-what-sets-them-apart

Archuleta Law Firm — attorney advertising. General information, not legal advice.

09/29/2026

Waking up during surgery isn't a movie plot. In the largest audit ever done on it, 51% of patients who experienced it suffered distress and 41% had long-term effects.

If it happened to you at a VA hospital, you may have a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Here's what most veterans don't realize: the two-year filing clock usually starts the day of surgery, because you remember it happening. That's different from other malpractice cases where the injury takes time to discover.

And the hardest part isn't proving the awareness. It's the dollar figure. The SF-95 makes you name a "sum certain" before you may even know the full psychological toll. Get that number wrong and you can't raise it later except in narrow circumstances.

A few things worth doing right away if this happened to you or someone in your family:

⚖️ Report it in writing to the anesthesia team and patient advocate
⚖️ Get a mental health evaluation and keep the records
⚖️ Request the full anesthesia record and audit trail, not just the surgeon's summary
⚖️ Write down what you remember while it's fresh

Our doctor-attorney can review the anesthesia and operative records medically and legally in the same office. Most firms have to hire that out.

Full breakdown here: https://veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/va-intraoperative-awareness-ftca-claim

Pass this along to anyone who might need it. 1-800-798-9529

Woke up during surgery at a VA hospital? Learn how an FTCA claim works, the two-year deadline, and why the SF-95 sum certain is the hard part.

09/28/2026

If your C&P exam went wrong, the first question isn't whether you have a case. It's which clock you're on — because there are two of them, and they don't talk to each other.

A Compensation & Pension exam is not a treatment visit. VA's own guidance is blunt about it: "The provider won't treat you for any illness or injury, give you referrals to other providers, or prescribe medicine. That's because the purpose of the exam is to gather information that will help us make a decision on your claim." No treating relationship usually means an inaccurate or poorly reasoned exam opinion is a benefits problem, not a malpractice one. The remedy is VA's decision-review process — a Supplemental Claim if you have new and relevant evidence, a Higher-Level Review if you want a more senior reviewer to look at the same record, or an appeal to the Board of Veterans' Appeals.

The second clock is the one people miss. If something physical happened to you during the exam itself — a forced range-of-motion test, a mishandled transfer, a fall — that is a separate legal question from disagreeing with the examiner's conclusions. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b), a tort claim against the United States "shall be forever barred unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate Federal agency within two years after such claim accrues." Two years from when you knew, or should have known, of the injury and its cause.

Nothing about a pending benefits appeal pauses that two-year clock. A veteran can spend two years working a Supplemental Claim and a Board appeal over a bad exam and find the separate window on a physical injury from that same visit has already closed. The two systems solve different problems and keep their own time.

Which lane you're in, and how to tell: https://www.veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/cp-exam-went-wrong-va-malpractice-claim

Archuleta Law Firm — attorney advertising. This is general information, not legal advice.

09/24/2026

A VA medical records request goes in, and then weeks pass with nothing back. Is there an actual deadline on the VA's side, or is it an open-ended wait?

There is a deadline. Under HIPAA's right of access, 45 C.F.R. § 164.524, a covered entity must act on a records request no later than 30 days after receipt. It may take one extension of up to 30 additional days — but only if it provides a written statement of the reasons for the delay inside that first 30-day window, and only one such extension is permitted. The VA's own published guidance tracks this closely: electronic records generally within 30 calendar days, older paper records within 60, and a recommendation to contact the medical records office after 20 days of silence.

When a request stalls, or comes back missing the specific items it named, the Freedom of Information Act is a documented fallback. 5 U.S.C. § 552 entitles any person to agency records that "reasonably describe" what is being sought, and requires the agency to determine within 20 business days whether it will comply. A FOIA request creates a separate paper trail and a separate statutory clock.

One clock none of this stops is the FTCA's. The two-year presentment deadline under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) keeps running while records are in transit, which is why an SF-95 is often presented first and supplemented as records arrive.

The full breakdown — which form to use, how to name the records a general request misses, and what to do when the VA misses its own deadline → https://veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/va-medical-records-audit-trail-request

Archuleta Law Firm — attorney advertising. This is general information, not legal advice.

09/23/2026

A common assumption about VA and military malpractice claims is that only the veteran or the service member can bring one. That is not what the Federal Tort Claims Act says.

The FTCA is the route for claims against the United States when a federal employee's negligence causes harm, and the people it reaches are broader than most families expect. A spouse or child harmed by care at a military treatment facility can file. So can a civilian injured on an installation, a civilian employee of the VA or the Department of Defense, and a veteran harmed by care at a VA medical center. Since the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, active-duty service members have an administrative route for military medical malpractice as well, under 10 U.S.C. § 2733a.

What the FTCA does not allow is a state-court lawsuit, or a suit against the provider personally. The claim is presented to the responsible federal agency first, on a Standard Form 95, and 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) gives two years from the date the claim accrues to present it.

A bad outcome by itself is not malpractice, and every claim turns on its own records. But if a family has been told the door is closed because they were not the one in uniform, it is worth reading who the statute actually covers: https://www.veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/can-civilians-sue-the-military-for-an-accident

Archuleta Law Firm — attorney advertising. This is general information, not legal advice.

09/22/2026

Most veterans who walk into a VA emergency room with severe back pain have walked in with it before. Years of lumbar disc trouble, years of the same complaint, the same chart. That history is exactly what makes one particular emergency easy to miss.

Cauda equina syndrome happens when the bundle of nerve roots at the base of the spinal canal gets compressed — most often by a large lumbar disc herniation. What separates it from ordinary back pain is a specific combination: pain, weakness or numbness in both legs rather than one; numbness across the groin, inner thighs and buttocks; and new trouble with bladder or bowel control. Saddle numbness together with bladder trouble is the hallmark warning sign.

Those last two symptoms are the ones that go unsaid. They are uncomfortable to raise, and patients often do not volunteer them. The standard of care puts that on the provider — when someone presents with severe back pain and symptoms in both legs, asking directly about urinary retention, loss of bowel control and numbness in the saddle area is part of the examination, not an optional extra. Saying those symptoms out loud, unprompted, costs nothing and can change what happens next.

Our full guide covers how cauda equina syndrome gets missed at VA facilities, what the standard of care requires once it is suspected, and the two-year FTCA deadline that runs from when a veteran knew or should have known a delay caused the injury.

https://www.veteransmedicalmalpractice.net/blog/cauda-equina-syndrome-va-hospital

Archuleta Law Firm · Attorney advertising. General information, not legal advice.