Administrative Law · EN
Suing the State in Panama: Patrimonial Liability 2026.
When and how to sue the Panamanian State for damages caused by its action or omission: patrimonial liability before the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court, the three elements the case law requires, the one-year deadline, and the access burdens that decide many cases.
When a public hospital, the police, a municipality or any State entity causes harm through its action — or its omission — the injured party may claim compensation: this is the patrimonial liability of the State. This guide explains when it applies and how it is claimed in Panama, backed by the analysis of the Court's own body of rulings.
Note: general information current as of the date; each case is assessed individually. Confirm your case with a lawyer.
Where you sue: the Third Chamber
Compensation claims against the State are filed before the Third Chamber of Administrative Litigation of the Supreme Court of Justice, through the indemnity or direct-reparation route (article 97 of the Judicial Code). It is not an ordinary civil suit: it is a specialized jurisdiction with its own rules.
The three elements the case law requires
The Court has stabilized a three-element test that must all concur for the State to be liable:
- Failure of the public service — its irregular, inefficient functioning or its absence (for example, an unjustified medical delay, a failure to supervise).
- The damage — direct, certain and quantifiable; in its more elaborate form, an unlawful damage the victim had no duty to bear.
- A direct causal link between the failure and the damage.
If any of the three is missing, the claim fails. The legal basis is threefold: articles 17 and 18 of the Constitution, articles 1644 and 1645 of the Civil Code (as amended by Law 18 of 1992, which established the State's direct liability) and article 97 of the Judicial Code.
The deadline is short: one year
A point that loses many cases: the action prescribes in one year from when the injured party became aware of the damage (article 1706 of the Civil Code). It is a short window; acting promptly is decisive.
The access burden that decides half the contest
Even before the merits, the Chamber requires the claim to expressly invoke the correct legal basis (the applicable paragraph of article 97). A significant share of claims are dismissed without a hearing on the merits for defects of this kind. Filing correctly — from the theory of attribution — is not a formality: it is the difference between being heard or not.
Our edge: we know how the Court decides
At iurispa we work on the most complete repository of Panamanian case law. That lets us anticipate how the Third Chamber has decided cases like yours — which failures it has recognized, which damages it has compensated, which defenses it has accepted — and build the claim on precedent, not intuition.
Related: debt collection in Panama.
Legal basis: articles 17-18 of the Constitution; articles 1644-1645 and 1706 of the Civil Code; article 97 of the Judicial Code. Informational content, not legal advice.