California Personal Injury Statute of Limitations:
How long do you have to file?

If you were hurt in California - in a car crash, on someone's property, by a dog, or in any other accident where someone else's carelessness caused the harm - the law gives you a fixed window to bring a lawsuit. That window is called the statute of limitations. The number you need to remember is two years.

That two-year deadline lives in California's Code of Civil Procedure at § 335.1. The clock generally starts the day of the injury. The case needs to be filed in court - not just reported to the insurer - within those 24 months. Otherwise, with a few narrow exceptions discussed below, you may lose the right to recover.

The 2-year rule, in plain English

Here is the simplest way to think about it. Pull out a calendar. Find the date of your accident. Add two years. That is generally your final day to file a personal-injury lawsuit in California, unless one of the exceptions below applies.

• Hurt on March 15, 2025? You generally need to file by March 15, 2027.
• Hurt on December 31, 2024? You generally need to file by December 31, 2026.
• The day you talk to a lawyer or open an insurance claim is irrelevant. The court filing is generally what stops the clock.

Government claims: 6 months, not 2 years

If your accident involved a public entity - a city bus, a county vehicle, a state highway defect, a hospital owned by a public district - California Government Code § 911.2 imposes a much shorter deadline. You need to file a notice of claim with that entity within six months of the injury.

Once the public entity rejects your claim, you generally have six more months to file the lawsuit itself. But the front-end deadline is the trap. We have met clients on month seven of their case who had no idea a public entity was even involved. By then, it may have been too late.

Exceptions that can extend the deadline

California recognizes a small number of narrow situations where the two-year clock can be paused ("tolled") or delayed:

• The discovery rule. If you could not reasonably have known about your injury at the time, the clock may start when you discovered it (or should have).
• Minors. For most personal-injury claims, the clock is tolled until the injured minor turns 18. Then they have two more years.
• Mental incapacity. If the injured person was legally incapacitated when the injury occurred, the clock may be tolled until capacity is restored.
• The defendant was out of state. Time the defendant spent outside California can sometimes be excluded from the running of the clock.
• Tolling agreements. The parties can agree in writing to pause the clock - usually to give time for settlement negotiations.

These are not automatic. Each requires a careful legal analysis. They should not be your plan A. Plan A is filing inside the two years.

What about wrongful death?

California generally gives the surviving family two years from the date of death to file a wrongful-death action, not two years from the date of the underlying injury. If a loved one passed away from injuries sustained months or years earlier, the two-year clock typically starts on the date of death.

Why time matters even more than the deadline suggests

Two years feels like a long time. It is not. Insurance companies count on people waiting. Evidence may disappear within weeks:

• Surveillance video at the intersection or store may get overwritten in 30–90 days.
• Skid marks and debris fields may wash away with the next rain.
• Witnesses may forget details or become impossible to track down.
• Medical records and police reports may take months to assemble.
• The defendant's insurer may have been preparing a defense since day one.

The clients we get the best results for are the ones who called us within days of the accident - not weeks, not months. Even if you do not hire a lawyer immediately, talk to one early. The consultation is free.

Quick reference

What to do today

If you were injured within the last two years and have not yet talked to a lawyer, please do so soon. At Devoted Injury Lawyers, the consultation is free. A real California attorney - not an intake clerk - will pick up the phone, listen to what happened, and tell you what you have. Hablamos Español.