How Long Do You Have to File a Personal Injury Claim in California?

The single most consequential number in any California injury case is a date: the day the statute of limitations runs out. File before it, and the courthouse doors are open. File after it, and in most cases the claim is over before it begins — no matter how strong the facts are. This brief lays out the deadlines that govern personal injury claims in California, with the statutes that set them.

The general rule: two years

For most personal injury claims — car accidents, motorcycle and truck collisions, pedestrian injuries, slip and fall incidents, dog bites — California law allows two years from the date of injury to file a lawsuit. The rule comes from Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1, which covers actions for "injury to, or for the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another."

Two important things follow from the statute's wording:

• Wrongful death claims use the same two-year clock, generally measured from the date of death rather than the date of the underlying accident.
• The clock ordinarily starts on the date of injury, not the date you hired an attorney, finished medical treatment, or resolved an insurance claim.

The exceptions that shorten the deadline

The two-year rule is the ceiling, not a guarantee. Several common situations cut the available time dramatically.

Claims against the government: six months

If the responsible party is a public entity — a city bus, a county road crew, a state agency, a public school district — you generally cannot simply file a lawsuit. Under the Government Claims Act, a written claim for injury to person or personal property must be presented to the entity within six months of the date the cause of action accrues (Gov. Code § 911.2). Only after the claim is rejected (or deemed rejected) does a short window to sue open. Whether the defendant turns out to be the City of Los Angeles or a small rural district, the six-month claim requirement applies statewide, and missing it is one of the most common ways otherwise valid cases end early.

Medical malpractice: a different statute entirely

Claims for professional negligence against a health care provider are governed by Code of Civil Procedure § 340.5: three years from the date of injury, or one year from the date the plaintiff discovers (or reasonably should have discovered) the injury — whichever comes first. In practice the one-year discovery deadline controls far more often than people expect. Medical malpractice also carries its own pre-suit notice requirement and, for minors, its own timing rules.

Rules that can extend the clock

California law also recognizes circumstances that pause — the legal term is "toll" — the limitations period:

• Minors. Under Code of Civil Procedure § 352, the clock is generally tolled while the injured person is under 18, so most injury claims belonging to a child do not expire until two years after the child's eighteenth birthday. Medical malpractice and government claims follow different, less forgiving rules.
• Delayed discovery. California courts apply a discovery rule in limited situations where the injury or its cause was not reasonably knowable at the time it happened. It is a fact-intensive doctrine, not something to rely on by default.
• Defendant out of state, incapacity, and other statutory grounds can also toll the period in narrower circumstances.

Tolling doctrines are exactly the kind of question worth putting to a licensed California attorney early — they are decided on specific facts, and guessing wrong is unforgiving.

Deadlines at a glance

Note that damage to your vehicle or other property carries a three-year period — longer than the injury claim arising from the same crash. The two claims can expire on different days.

The insurance deadline is not the legal deadline

Reporting a crash to an insurer, opening a claim, and negotiating with an adjuster do not stop the statute of limitations. Settlement talks can, and sometimes do, run past the filing deadline — and once it passes, the leverage is gone. The lawsuit deadline is satisfied only by filing a complaint in court (or, for public entities, presenting a timely government claim first).

What to do with this information

1. Fix the date of injury and count forward — then treat the earliest possibly applicable deadline as the real one.
2. If a public entity might be involved, assume the six-month clock applies until an attorney tells you otherwise.
3. Get case-specific advice early. Deadlines interact — a single crash can involve a two-year injury claim, a three-year property claim, and a six-month government claim at once.

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