The insurance adjuster is not your friend. Every week you wait, the evidence in your case gets thinner and their file gets thicker. California law gives you a fixed window to file suit, and when it runs out, the case is gone.
Key Takeaway: California gives you two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. If a city, county, or state agency caused your injury, you have only six months to file a government tort claim under Government Code section 911.2. Miss either deadline and your case is over, no matter how badly you were hurt.
What Is the Statute of Limitations for Personal Injury in California?
The statute of limitations for personal injury in California is two years from the date of the injury. That rule comes from Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, which covers any action for assault, battery, or injury to or death of an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another.
Two years sounds like plenty of time. It is not. A serious injury case needs medical records, treating physician opinions, accident reconstruction, and wage loss documentation before anyone can put a number on it. That takes months. Then the negotiation phase with the carrier routinely eats another three to six months.
In our experience, the cases that settle for full value are the ones where a lawyer got involved in the first sixty days. The cases that fall apart are the ones handled alone for eighteen months, followed by an insulting offer and a scramble to find counsel with four months left on the clock.
You can read the full text of section 335.1 on the California Legislative Information site.
What Are the Filing Deadlines for Each Type of California Injury Claim?
California does not use one deadline for everything. The clock depends on what kind of claim you have and who you are suing.
| Type of Claim | Deadline | Governing Statute |
|---|---|---|
| Personal injury (negligence) | 2 years from injury | CCP 335.1 |
| Wrongful death | 2 years from date of death | CCP 335.1 |
| Assault and battery | 2 years from the act | CCP 335.1 |
| Property damage (vehicle, real property) | 3 years | CCP 338(c) |
| Fraud | 3 years from discovery | CCP 338(d) |
| Claim against a government entity | 6 months to present the claim | Gov. Code 911.2 |
| Lawsuit after a government claim is rejected | 6 months from the rejection notice | Gov. Code 945.6 |
| Medical malpractice | 1 year from discovery or 3 years from injury, whichever is first | CCP 340.5 |
| Sexual assault | 10 years from the act, or 3 years from discovery of the injury | CCP 340.16 |
| Written contract | 4 years | CCP 337 |
| Injury to a minor | 2 years starting on the 18th birthday | CCP 352 |
One crash can carry a two year deadline for your broken wrist and a three year deadline for your totaled car. Those are separate claims with separate clocks.
What Is the Statute of Limitations for a Car Accident in California?
A California car accident injury claim must be filed within two years of the collision under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. Damage to the vehicle itself gets three years under section 338(c), so it is possible for your bodily injury claim to expire while your property damage claim is still alive.
Three wrinkles come up constantly in Los Angeles collisions. If a city bus, a Metro vehicle, a school district van, or a state or county truck was involved, the six month government claim rule replaces the two year rule. If the at fault driver had no insurance or not enough, you are making a claim against your own policy, and your uninsured motorist accident lawyer in Los Angeles will tell you the arbitration demand carries its own timing rules that do not forgive lateness. And in a Los Angeles truck accident case, the carrier is free to destroy driver logs and electronic data once federal retention periods expire, which can be a matter of months.
The most common mistake we see is the client who assumes that because the adjuster is still calling and still asking for records, the deadline must be on hold. It is not. Nothing an insurance company says or does stops the statute of limitations from running.
What Is the Deadline to Sue for Property Damage in California?
You have three years to sue for property damage in California under Code of Civil Procedure section 338(c). That covers your vehicle, personal belongings destroyed in a crash, and damage to real property such as a fence, a wall, or a structure.
The extra year is not a reason to relax. Your vehicle is often the single best piece of evidence in the injury case. Crush depth, airbag deployment data, and paint transfer all live in that car, and once it goes to salvage it is gone. In our experience, letting the carrier total and dispose of a vehicle before anyone photographs it and downloads the event data recorder costs more cases than any missed filing date.
What Is the Deadline to Sue a City, County, or Government Agency in Los Angeles?
You have six months from the date of injury to present a written government tort claim under Government Code section 911.2, and this deadline destroys more Los Angeles cases than any other. Six months is one quarter of the standard two year window, and most people never hear about it until a lawyer tells them.
The rule reaches a long list of defendants nobody thinks of as the government: the City of Los Angeles, LA County, the LA Unified School District, Metro and its buses and rail lines, LADOT, county hospitals, community college districts, and the state agencies that maintain the freeways. A dangerous condition on a public sidewalk, a badly designed intersection, a Metro bus that ran a light, or negligent care at a county facility all trigger the six month rule.
The claim is a specific written document. It has to identify the claimant, the date and place of the incident, the circumstances, and the injuries. Once you present it, the public entity has forty five days to accept or reject it under Government Code section 912.4. If the entity mails you a written rejection, Government Code section 945.6 gives you exactly six months from that mailing to file suit. That second six month window is harder than the first, because it is shorter than most negotiation timelines.
If you miss the initial six months, Government Code section 911.4 lets you apply for leave to present a late claim within one year of the incident, but the entity can deny the application and often does. We walk through the mechanics in our guide to Los Angeles train and rail accident claims, where the six month rule is almost always in play.
What Is the Statute of Limitations for Medical Malpractice in California?
California medical malpractice claims must be filed within one year of the date you discovered or reasonably should have discovered the injury, or within three years of the date of the injury, whichever comes first, under Code of Civil Procedure section 340.5. The phrase “whichever comes first” is the trap. A three year outer limit does not help you if you figured out something went wrong at month four.
Section 340.5 carries its own extensions. The three year outer limit is tolled by proof of fraud, intentional concealment, or a foreign object left in the body with no therapeutic purpose. Code of Civil Procedure section 364 requires ninety days written notice of intent to sue before you file, and serving that notice during the final ninety days of the limitations period extends the deadline by ninety days.
Damages in these cases are capped. Civil Code section 3333.2, as amended by AB 35, set the non economic damages cap at $350,000 for injury cases and $500,000 for wrongful death cases as of January 1, 2023. Those figures increase every year, by $40,000 and $50,000 respectively for ten years, then by two percent annually after that. Economic damages such as medical bills and lost earnings are not capped at all. If you are weighing a claim against a doctor or hospital, our overview of medical malpractice and your legal rights in California covers what the case actually requires.
What Is the Statute of Limitations for Assault and Battery in California?
Civil claims for assault and battery in California carry the same two year deadline as any other personal injury claim under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. The criminal case against the person who attacked you runs on a separate track and has no effect on your civil deadline.
Sexual assault is treated differently. Code of Civil Procedure section 340.16 gives adult survivors ten years from the last act, or three years from the date they discovered that a psychological injury or illness was caused by the assault, whichever is later.
Many assault cases are not really about the attacker, who frequently has no money to pay a judgment. Where the attack happened on poorly secured property, there may be a claim against the owner or operator. Those negligent security claims in Los Angeles run on the same two year clock and depend heavily on evidence of prior similar incidents, and those records get purged while you wait.
Can the California Statute of Limitations Be Paused or Extended?
Yes. California recognizes several tolling rules that stop or delay the running of the clock. Each one is narrow, and each one has to be proven.
- Minors. Code of Civil Procedure section 352 tolls the deadline while the injured person is under 18, so the two year clock starts on the 18th birthday and expires at age 20. It does not extend the six month government claim deadline the same way, which catches families off guard.
- Delayed discovery. Where the injury or its cause could not reasonably have been discovered right away, the clock starts when the plaintiff knows or should know of the injury and its negligent cause. Toxic exposure, defective implants, and internal injuries are the usual candidates.
- Defendant leaves California. Code of Civil Procedure section 351 excludes from the limitations period any time the defendant is absent from the state.
- Incarceration. Code of Civil Procedure section 352.1 tolls the period for up to two years while the plaintiff is imprisoned on a criminal charge.
- Lack of legal capacity. Section 352 also applies where the injured person lacks the legal capacity to make decisions, which comes up in severe brain injury and coma cases.
- Bankruptcy. An automatic stay in bankruptcy court halts litigation against that defendant and changes the timing.
Do not build a plan around tolling. Courts read these provisions narrowly, and the burden is on you to establish that one applies. Treat the standard deadline as the real one.
Can You Sue After the Statute of Limitations Has Expired?
Almost never. Once the statute of limitations expires, the defense files a demurrer or a motion for summary judgment and the court dismisses the case, no matter how clear the liability is or how severe the injuries are. They do not have to prove you were wrong about anything. They only have to prove you were late.
A few narrow exceptions exist. A tolling provision may apply. A defendant may have concealed their identity or the underlying facts. The legislature occasionally opens a revival window for a specific category of claim, as it has for childhood sexual assault. A defendant can also waive the defense by failing to raise it, which no competent defense firm does.
If you think your deadline may have passed, get a lawyer to look before you assume the case is dead. The accrual date is not always the date of the accident, and in wrongful death cases the two year period runs from the date of death rather than the date of the injury that caused it. Our Los Angeles wrongful death attorneys deal with that distinction constantly.
Should You Wait to See How Your Injuries Turn Out Before Calling a Lawyer?
No. Your lawyer can and should wait to settle until your treatment stabilizes, but that has nothing to do with when you should hire one.
Surveillance video from stores, parking structures, and buses is typically overwritten within thirty to ninety days. Witnesses move and stop answering their phones. Skid marks and roadway debris are gone in days. Vehicles get sold for scrap. In a government case, you may burn half of your six months before the swelling goes down.
You do not have to decide anything today except whether to get an answer. Call (888) 42-BORNA for a free consultation. Borna Houman Law works on contingency, so there is no fee unless we recover for you, and no cost to find out which deadline applies to your case.
How Does California Fault Law Affect What You Recover?
California is a pure comparative negligence state, which means you can recover damages even if you were mostly at fault, with your award reduced by your share of responsibility. That rule comes from the California Supreme Court’s 1975 decision in Li v. Yellow Cab Co.
If a jury sets your damages at $200,000 and finds you 30 percent responsible, you recover $140,000. A plaintiff found 90 percent at fault still recovers 10 percent. There is no cutoff at 50 percent the way there is in many other states.
Timing matters here because the adjuster’s first move is almost always to assign you a share of the fault, and the evidence that rebuts that assignment is the evidence that decays fastest. The same logic applies whether you are dealing with a slip and fall claim in Los Angeles or a multi vehicle freeway collision.
Frequently Asked Questions About California Injury Deadlines
Is waiting 6 months to sue for personal injury in California too long?
Waiting six months does not expire a standard two year negligence claim, but it can be fatal in two situations. If a public entity is involved, your six month government claim deadline under Government Code section 911.2 has already run out. In a private case, six months of delay usually means the surveillance video, the vehicle, and the witnesses are gone.
Can I sue someone 10 years later in California?
Generally no. A standard personal injury claim expires two years after the injury, and a court will dismiss a case filed a decade later. The main exception is sexual assault, where Code of Civil Procedure section 340.16 allows a claim within ten years of the last act or three years from discovering the resulting injury.
What is the average personal injury settlement in California?
There is no meaningful average, and any firm that quotes you one is selling something. Settlement value turns on the severity of the injury, total medical specials, lost earning capacity, available insurance limits, and the strength of the liability evidence. A soft tissue case against a minimum policy and a spinal fusion case against a commercial trucking policy have nothing in common.
What is the 5 year statute of limitations in California?
There is no five year statute of limitations for personal injury in California. The five year figure people are usually thinking of is Code of Civil Procedure section 583.310, which requires that a case be brought to trial within five years after it is filed or the court may dismiss it. That is a deadline for prosecuting a case you already filed, not for filing one.
Does filing an insurance claim stop the statute of limitations from running?
No. Reporting the accident, opening a claim, sending records, and negotiating with an adjuster have no effect on the statute of limitations. Only filing a lawsuit in court stops the clock. Insurance companies know this and are under no obligation to remind you.
What happens if my deadline falls on a weekend or a court holiday?
Under Code of Civil Procedure sections 12 and 12a, if the last day to file falls on a weekend or a judicial holiday, the deadline rolls to the next day the court is open. It is a technical safety valve that you should never plan around, and it does not apply to the government claim presentation deadline in the same manner.
Does a criminal case against the person who hurt me change my civil deadline?
No. Your civil deadline runs independently of any criminal prosecution. Waiting for a criminal case to conclude before filing your civil suit is a common and costly error, because criminal proceedings in Los Angeles routinely take longer than two years.
How Do You Protect Your Deadline Starting Today?
Write down the date of your injury. Find out whether any defendant is a public entity, because that changes your deadline from two years to six months. Preserve the vehicle, the shoes, the clothing, and the photos. Get the video before it is overwritten. Then have a lawyer confirm your actual accrual date, because it is not always the date you think it is.
Borna Houman Law handles personal injury cases across Los Angeles County on contingency. We do not charge to tell you which deadline governs your claim. Call (888) 42-BORNA for a free consultation.
The California courts publish a plain language overview of civil filing deadlines through the California Courts self help center.
Disclaimer: This article is general information about California law and is not legal advice. Deadlines depend on the specific facts of your case, and no outcome is ever guaranteed. Reading this page does not create an attorney client relationship. Speak with a licensed California attorney about your situation before relying on any deadline described here.