California Personal Injury Statute of Limitations: Complete 2026 Guide

By Justin H. King, CA Bar #268730 | Senior Trial Attorney and Founder | Updated May 2026

If you have been injured in an accident in California, one of the most important questions facing you right now is also one of the most easily overlooked: how long do you actually have to take legal action? The answer is rarely as simple as a single number, and getting it wrong is one of the most painful mistakes an injured person can make. California sets firm deadlines for filing personal injury claims, and once those deadlines pass, the law treats your right to compensation as gone — regardless of how strong your case might have been.

This article walks through the general rule, the exceptions that catch most people off guard, and the practical reasons why waiting even within the legal deadline can quietly damage a claim. I’ve spent over a decade representing injured clients throughout the Inland Empire, and the conversations I have most often with potential clients are about deadlines they didn’t know about, deadlines that passed while they were negotiating with insurance companies, and deadlines that applied differently than they expected. My goal here is to give you what I would tell you in a consultation.

The General Rule: Two Years to File a Personal Injury Lawsuit

California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 sets the standard deadline for personal injury claims at two years from the date of the injury. This rule applies to most cases my firm handles, including:

• Car accidents
• Motorcycle crashes
• Truck collisions
• Pedestrian and bicycle injuries
• Dog bites
• Burn injuries
• Premises liability claims, including slip and fall
• Wrongful death claims (where the two-year clock runs from the date of death)

Two years can sound generous. In practice, it’s a tight window. Building a serious case takes time — preserving evidence, completing medical treatment, locating witnesses while their memories are still sharp. The two-year deadline marks the absolute outer limit for filing a lawsuit, not a recommended timeline for getting started.

That’s the headline rule. But several important exceptions can shorten or extend it, and those exceptions are where most cases are won or lost.

Critical Exceptions That Can Change Your Deadline

California recognizes several exceptions to the two-year rule. Some shorten the deadline dramatically. Others can pause or extend it. Understanding which one applies to your situation often determines whether you have a viable claim at all.

Claims Against Government Entities: Six Months

If the at-fault party is a city, county, the State of California, a school district, a public agency, or a public employee acting in the course of their job, California Government Code section 911.2 requires a written government claim within six months of the injury. This is not optional. Filing a lawsuit without first submitting a government claim, or filing one outside the six-month window, will almost always result in the case being dismissed.

The process has two stages:

1. A written claim must be filed with the correct public entity within six months of the injury.
2. After the public entity rejects the claim (or fails to act on it), the injured party generally has six months from the rejection notice to file a lawsuit in court.

Government claims in the Inland Empire often involve Caltrans for dangerous conditions on the freeway system — the I-15, the I-10, the 210, the 215 — because Caltrans is the public entity responsible for state highways. Importantly, Caltrans claims don’t go to Sacramento. They go to the appropriate District Claims Office for the county where the injury occurred. For cases arising in San Bernardino or Riverside Counties, that means Caltrans District 8 in San Bernardino. Getting the claim to the right District Office within the six-month window is critical, and a claim sent to the wrong office can effectively be a missed claim.

Medical Malpractice: One Year From Discovery, Three Years Maximum

Medical malpractice claims follow a separate timeline under California Code of Civil Procedure section 340.5. The injured patient has one year from the date they knew or reasonably should have known that malpractice caused their injury, but in no event more than three years from the date the malpractice occurred. My firm does not handle medical malpractice cases, but the rule is included here because it frequently overlaps with other personal injury scenarios and is widely misunderstood.

Minors: Tolling Until Age 18

When the injured person is under the age of 18, California Code of Civil Procedure section 352 generally pauses the statute of limitations until the minor turns 18. Once the minor reaches adulthood, the standard two-year period begins.

The most common misunderstanding I encounter about the minor’s tolling rule is the assumption that nothing needs to happen until the child turns 18. That’s technically true for filing a lawsuit, but the evidence required to actually win the case begins disappearing on day one — just as it does in any other accident. The vehicles, the photographs, the witness memories, the medical correlation — none of it waits for the child’s eighteenth birthday. A parent can file a claim on the minor’s behalf at any time, and in cases involving serious injuries, doing so promptly is often the difference between a strong case years later and a weak one.

One important exception: the six-month government claim deadline is not tolled for minors. A claim against a public entity must still be filed within six months regardless of the injured person’s age.

The Discovery Rule

For injuries that are not immediately apparent, California applies what is known as the discovery rule. The two-year clock begins not from the date the injury was inflicted, but from the date the injured person knew or reasonably should have known they were injured and that the injury was caused by someone else’s wrongful conduct.

The discovery rule can be especially important in cases involving delayed-symptom injuries, like post-concussion syndrome following what looks at first like a minor collision. A driver who walks away from a rear-end crash thinking they have nothing more than a stiff neck can develop serious cognitive symptoms — memory issues, focus problems, mood changes — weeks or months later, once the brain has had time to show the effects of the injury. In those cases, the two-year clock doesn’t necessarily start at the date of the crash. It can start when a treating physician documents the connection between the injury and the symptoms.

Mental Incapacity

If the injured person was mentally incapacitated at the time of the injury, Code of Civil Procedure section 352 may toll the statute of limitations until capacity is restored. This is a fact-specific exception that requires medical documentation and legal analysis.

Quick Reference: California Personal Injury Deadlines

Here’s a summary of the deadlines discussed above:

These deadlines tell you when the courthouse door closes. But your case begins losing strength long before any of those deadlines arrive, and that’s the part most injured people don’t understand.

Why Waiting Hurts Your Case Even Within the Deadline

The legal deadline marks when you lose the right to file at all. The strength of your case starts eroding the day of the accident. In my experience, the most undervalued piece of evidence in a serious auto case isn’t the police report or the witness statements — it’s the data sitting on the at-fault vehicle’s event data recorder, often called a black box. Insurance companies have no obligation to preserve the vehicle. Many are sent to auction within 45 to 60 days of the crash. Once the vehicle is gone, the data is gone with it, and a case that could have been proven by hard numbers ends up resting on competing memories.

Here’s what else gets lost while you wait.

Physical evidence disappears. In slip-and-fall cases, the dangerous condition that caused your injury frequently gets repaired within days. A leaking ice machine that put water on the floor is fixed. A broken handrail is replaced. A torn carpet is removed. Once that physical evidence is gone, proving what caused the fall becomes dramatically harder.

Vehicles get auctioned. After a serious auto accident, insurance companies typically sell totaled vehicles at auction within 45 to 60 days. Once the vehicles are gone, so is your most powerful evidence of impact severity, crush patterns, and crash dynamics.

Witnesses become unreachable. People move. Phone numbers change. Memories fade. A witness who would have been compelling six weeks after the accident may be impossible to locate, or may no longer remember critical details, two years later.

Dangerous road conditions get fixed. If your accident was caused or contributed to by a dangerous public roadway, an obscured sign, a malfunctioning signal, or a tree blocking sight lines, the responsible government entity often repairs the condition quickly after the incident. That repair, while good for public safety, eliminates the physical proof of what made the road unsafe.

Wrongful Death: Two Years From the Date of Death

When a person dies as a result of someone else’s negligence or wrongful act, the surviving family members generally have two years from the date of death to file a wrongful death lawsuit under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. The clock runs from the date of death, not the date of the original injury — which matters when a fatal injury follows an extended hospitalization.

Wrongful death claims involving a government entity (for example, a fatal collision caused by a public employee) are also subject to the six-month government claim deadline. My firm handles wrongful death claims throughout the Inland Empire and can be reached through the firm’s wrongful death practice page.

When the Right Time to File Actually Is

The best time to file a personal injury lawsuit is when medical treatment is complete and the long-term prognosis is clear, but well before the statute of limitations runs out. Filing too late risks a missed deadline. Filing too early means filing before the full extent of damages is known, which can result in a settlement that doesn’t fully compensate for future medical costs, lost earning capacity, or ongoing pain and suffering.

For most injured clients, the right window opens once doctors have reached what is called maximum medical improvement — the point at which the injury has either healed or stabilized into its long-term condition. From that point forward, an experienced personal injury attorney can document the full picture of damages and either settle the claim or move it toward trial.

Personal injury cases in the Inland Empire are generally filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino, with civil matters heard in either the Rancho Cucamonga Courthouse or the San Bernardino Justice Center depending on where the case arose. Riverside County cases go through the Riverside Superior Court. The practical reality in any of these courthouses is that filing well before the deadline gives a case room to breathe — time for discovery, time for mediation, time to prepare for trial if it comes to that. A complaint filed in the final weeks before the deadline still preserves the legal right to recover, but it usually means the case will be litigated under time pressure that benefits the defense.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I miss the two-year deadline?

If you file a personal injury lawsuit after the statute of limitations has expired, the defendant will almost certainly move to dismiss the case, and the court will grant that motion. The merits of your underlying case — how clearly the other party was at fault, how serious your injuries were — do not save a late-filed lawsuit. The right to recover compensation is generally extinguished entirely.

Does the statute of limitations start on the date of the accident or the date I discovered my injury?

For most personal injury claims, the clock starts on the date of the injury itself. For injuries that were not immediately apparent — toxic exposure, certain product liability claims, or injuries with delayed symptoms — the discovery rule may apply, and the clock starts when you knew or reasonably should have known about the injury and its cause.

Can the deadline be extended for any reason?

California law allows the statute of limitations to be paused (tolled) in specific circumstances: when the injured person is a minor under 18, when the injured person is mentally incapacitated, and in some cases when the at-fault party is out of state. Tolling rules are technical and fact-specific, and an attorney can evaluate whether they apply to your situation.

What is the deadline for filing a wrongful death claim in California?

Two years from the date of death, under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. If the wrongful death involves a government entity or employee, a written government claim must also be filed within six months.

Do I have to file the lawsuit within two years, or just notify the insurance company?

The two-year deadline is for filing a lawsuit in court. One of the most painful conversations I have with potential clients is the one where they explain they’ve been negotiating with the at-fault driver’s insurance company for over a year, the offer is too low, and the two-year deadline is now weeks away. They assumed the negotiations were tolling the deadline. They weren’t. Nothing about communicating with an insurance adjuster — opening a claim, exchanging letters, negotiating an offer — extends the statute of limitations. The only way to preserve the right to recover is to file a lawsuit. My own practice is to file lawsuits early rather than spend months in pre-litigation negotiation, precisely because filing protects the client’s rights while negotiation continues in parallel.

What is the deadline for suing a city, county, or the state of California?

Six months from the date of injury to file a written government claim, under Government Code section 911.2. After the public entity rejects the claim, generally six more months to file a lawsuit. This shortened timeline is one of the most important reasons to consult an attorney quickly when a government entity may share responsibility for an accident.

Key Takeaways

California’s personal injury statute of limitations is not a single rule but a set of overlapping rules with significant exceptions. The two-year general deadline is the headline, but the six-month government claims deadline and the discovery rule are where most cases are won or lost. Injured people who consult an attorney early — well before the deadline approaches — consistently see better outcomes than those who wait.

• Most California personal injury claims must be filed within two years of the injury.
• Claims against government entities require a written claim within six months and a lawsuit within six months of rejection.
• Medical malpractice claims follow a separate one-year discovery rule, with a three-year outer limit.
• Minors generally have until age 18 plus two years, except for government claims, which are not tolled.
• Evidence begins disappearing within days or weeks of an accident, regardless of the legal deadline.
• The best time to file is when medical treatment is complete and damages are fully known, not when the deadline is about to expire.

This article was last reviewed for legal accuracy on May 25, 2026.

Categories : Statute of Limitations, Video Library

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• California Personal Injury Statute of Limitations: Complete 2026 Guide
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