Personal Injury Statute of Limitations by State

Why this deadline matters more than anything else

There is no more final mistake in personal injury law than missing the filing deadline. A claimant with heavy documented damages, clear liability, and every piece of evidence preserved loses the case the day the deadline passes. Courts have no discretion here. It is not a technicality a good lawyer can work around; it is an absolute bar.

The discovery rule is the main exception. Under it, the clock does not begin until the injured person knew, or through reasonable diligence should have known, both that they were injured and that someone else's conduct caused it. It comes up most often in medical malpractice, where harm is not always apparent at the time, and in latent injury cases such as toxic exposure.

Tolling, meaning pausing the clock, is available in limited circumstances: while the injured person is a minor, during periods of legal incapacity, where the defendant concealed the injury or their identity, and in some states while the defendant is absent from the state. Claims against a government entity carry their own separate notice requirement that has to be satisfied first, and it is usually far shorter than the civil deadline. Confirm that one with an attorney immediately if a public body may be involved, because we hold no verified figure for it.

Filing deadlines by state and case type

All values are in years, and every one is read from our state-law data. The workers' comp column is the deadline to file a claim with the state board, which is a different proceeding from a civil lawsuit, not a substitute for one. Exceptions and tolling rules can extend or shorten any of these, so treat the table as a starting point and confirm your own deadline with an attorney in your state.

Some cells read "Pending" rather than a number: 3 in the workers' comp column and 1 in the dog bite column. That is not an oversight. In each case the real window is either shorter than a year, which a table counting whole years cannot express, or it could not be established from a primary source. Rounding either one into a number would tell you that you have more time than you do, so we publish nothing and say why underneath.

The shortest and longest clocks

The shortest personal-injury clock in the table runs 1 year, in Kentucky and Tennessee. Most jurisdictions give longer: 25 of the 51 here run 2 years, which is the single most common period.

At the other end, Maine, Minnesota and North Dakota allow 6 years on an ordinary personal-injury claim. A longer window is not a reason to wait: evidence degrades, witnesses move, and treatment records get harder to pull, so the practical deadline is always earlier than the legal one.

Case type matters as much as the state

Two claims arising from the same incident in the same state can have different deadlines. A medical malpractice claim frequently runs on two clocks at once: a discovery period that starts when the patient learns of the harm, and an outer repose limit that starts at the act itself and runs regardless of discovery. Whichever expires first is the one that governs, and it is usually the discovery period.

Where our data holds that nuance, the note beside the jurisdiction spells it out in the block above rather than compressing it into a single number. That is why some notes describe a shorter period than the outer limit you may have read elsewhere: we publish the deadline that governs most claimants, not the most generous reading of the statute.

When the clock starts, and when it does not

The default rule is that the period begins on the date of the injury. For a collision, that is the date of the crash. For a fall, the date of the fall. Several exceptions modify when it begins.

The discovery rule delays the start until the claimant discovered, or should have discovered, both the harm and its cause. Minors receive tolling in virtually every state: the clock pauses until the injured person turns 18, at which point the full statutory period generally runs. Where a defendant concealed the injury or their own identity, the clock can pause until the truth could reasonably have been discovered. Where the defendant leaves the state, some states toll the clock for the duration of the absence.

None of these is automatic. Each has to be established on the specific facts, which is exactly the kind of question to bring to an attorney early rather than late.