California’s Personal Injury Statute of Limitations

California’s standard two-year rule applies in most cases, but specific circumstances can either shorten or extend that window considerably.

California’s personal injury statute of limitations sets the deadline to bring a lawsuit after suffering an injury caused by someone else’s negligence, and in most cases that deadline is two years from the date of injury. Exceptions exist that can shorten or extend that window depending on the circumstances.

Two-Year Deadline

California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 gives you two years from the date of injury to bring a lawsuit in court. Car accidents, slip and falls, dog bites, and most other personal injury cases fall under this two-year deadline.

Once the deadline passes without a lawsuit, the case is over. A defendant can raise the expired statute of limitations as a complete defense, and a judge will usually dismiss the case, even if the injuries were serious and the evidence is compelling. There are no grace periods, and a case brought one day late faces the same outcome as one brought two years late.

Insurance companies track statute of limitations deadlines carefully. If a settlement hasn’t been reached as the deadline approaches, the opposing side has no incentive to negotiate, and once it passes, the other party has no remaining exposure and no reason to offer any compensation.

Starting the Two-Year Clock

In most situations, the two-year clock starts on the date the injury occurred. A car accident on March 1, 2024 means the deadline to bring a lawsuit falls on March 1, 2026.

Discovery Rule

Certain injuries aren’t immediately apparent, and California law accounts for that. Under California’s discovery rule, the two-year clock starts on the date the injured person discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, that an injury occurred and that another party may have been responsible.

California law considers what a reasonable person in your position would have known, and when. If symptoms were present and a reasonable person would have connected them to the cause of the injury, the clock starts running even without a formal diagnosis. How this plays out depends on the situation:

• When the connection is immediate: If you slipped and felt immediate back pain, a reasonable person would connect that pain to the fall. Waiting months for an MRI to confirm a herniated disc doesn’t delay the beginning of the timeframe. The clock would start the day of the fall, not the date of the MRI.
• When the connection isn’t immediately apparent: If you had no symptoms for years and no reason to connect a later illness to a specific cause until a doctor made that link, the clock would reasonably start at the point of diagnosis, not the date of exposure

Exceptions to the Two-Year Deadline

California’s standard two-year rule applies in most cases, but specific circumstances can either shorten or extend that window considerably.

Suing a Government Entity

If the person or agency responsible for your injury is a city, county, or state agency, filing a lawsuit against a government entity works differently and the deadline is shorter. You can’t go straight to court. First, you need to file a formal complaint directly with the government agency within six months of the injury date.

From there, the agency has 45 days to respond. If they reject your complaint, or simply don’t respond, you then have six months to file a lawsuit in court. If you miss that initial six-month complaint deadline, you lose the right to sue entirely, even if the standard two-year window is still open.

Injured Minors

If the injured person was under 18 at the time of injury, the two-year clock doesn’t start until their 18th birthday. A 10-year-old injured today would have until their 20th birthday to file a lawsuit.

One important exception: if the case involves a government entity, the six-month complaint deadline still applies regardless of the injured person’s age. A parent or guardian needs to submit that complaint within six months of the injury.

Mental Incapacity

California law pauses the two-year deadline for people who are not mentally able to make their own legal decisions at the time of the injury. Examples may include:

• A severe brain injury that leaves someone unable to understand or manage their own affairs
• A pre-existing mental disability that already prevented the person from making independent legal decisions before the injury occurred
• A coma or similarly incapacitating medical condition

Statute of limitations stays paused until the person regains the ability to make their own legal decisions, or until a court-appointed guardian is in place to act on their behalf. At that point the two-year clock begins.

Mental incapacity exceptions don’t apply to temporary impairments like being intoxicated at the time of the injury, and it does not apply if the mental incapacity developed after the injury occurred.

Defendant Left California

If the person responsible for your injury leaves California after the injury occurs, the time they spend out of state doesn’t count toward your two-year deadline. Since you can’t sue someone in California if they aren’t here to be served with a lawsuit, the clock doesn’t run against you while they’re gone. Once they return to California, the clock picks back up from where it left off.

For example, if someone hits you with their car and then moves to Nevada three months later, those three months still count toward your deadline. But the time they spend living in Nevada does not. If they move back to California a year later, you would still have the remaining time on your original two-year window to file.

Sexual Assault

California has significantly extended the deadline to file a civil lawsuit for sexual assault, and the rules differ depending on the age of the victim at the time of the assault.

• Childhood sexual assault (under 18): For assaults that occurred after January 1, 2024, there is no statute of limitations on civil lawsuits. For assaults that occurred before that date, victims can file until their 40th birthday or within five years of discovering a psychological injury caused by the abuse.
• Adult sexual assault (18 or older): Victims have 10 years from the date of the assault to file a civil lawsuit, or three years from the date they discover an injury resulted from the assault, whichever is later.

Filing the Lawsuit Starts the Clock, Not the Case

Bringing a lawsuit before the deadline doesn’t mean your case has to be resolved by then. Once a lawsuit is filed within the two-year window, it can stay active in court for as long as it takes to reach a resolution, whether that’s months or years down the road.

Act Quickly To Preserve Your Rights

Two years can pass faster than expected, especially when medical appointments, lost income, and recovery are competing for your attention. A California personal injury attorney can identify which deadline applies to your case, determine whether any exceptions shorten or extend it, and make sure the window doesn’t close before you’ve had a chance to pursue the compensation you deserve.