The Legal Intelligencer reports, “If you’re filing a claim against the postal service, don’t just drop it in the mail because the courts won’t apply the ordinary presumption that a letter mailed is a letter received.” Now, “the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has declared in Lightfoot v. United States that the so-called ‘mailbox rule’ cannot be invoked against the U.S. Postal Service to save an otherwise time-barred claim” and that “a plaintiff pursuing a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act has the burden of proving that the federal agency was ‘presented’ with a timely administrative claim, and that proof of mailing is not enough.”
From the American Association for Justice news release.
