Check your lawsuit filing deadline by state and claim type. Covers personal injury, medical malpractice, breach of contract, property damage, and wrongful death across all 50 U.S. states — with statutory citations and tolling notes.
Standard limitations periods by claim type. Discovery rule, tolling, and repose periods not shown — see tool output for applicable notes.
Periods shown in years. Medical malpractice periods represent the standard discovery SOL — absolute repose periods differ and are often shorter. Verify all figures before relying on them for any legal purpose.
A statute of limitations is a hard deadline for filing a civil lawsuit. Miss it by a single day and the claim is extinguished — courts will dismiss it on motion regardless of how strong the underlying facts are. This is not a procedural technicality that can be excused; it is a substantive bar to recovery. Every potential legal claim has a deadline, and that deadline can be shorter than most people expect.
The periods vary dramatically by state and by claim type. A personal injury claim that gives you three years in North Carolina gives you only one year in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Kentucky. A medical malpractice claim that has a 2.5-year period in New York runs for only one year in Ohio and Tennessee. Contract claims can range from three years (North Carolina, Delaware, Maryland) to ten years (Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana). There is no universal rule — the only way to know your deadline is to identify the correct state, the correct claim type, and apply the accrual date correctly.
The standard accrual date is the date of the injury, breach, or harmful act. But this default is modified by several important doctrines:
Tolling suspends the running of the limitations period. The most common grounds are:
Tolling does not apply automatically — it must be affirmatively alleged and proved by the plaintiff. Courts scrutinize tolling claims carefully. Do not assume your claim is tolled without legal counsel confirming the specific basis in the applicable jurisdiction.
Separate from the statute of limitations, many states impose a statute of repose — an absolute outer time limit measured from a fixed event (usually the defendant's act or the product's manufacture), regardless of when the plaintiff discovered the injury. Unlike the SOL, a statute of repose generally cannot be tolled even for minority, disability, or fraudulent concealment. It is a legislative determination that beyond a certain point, defendants should not be exposed to liability.
Statutes of repose are most common in medical malpractice (North Carolina: 4 years from act; California: 3 years from act; New York: effectively none — but the SOL itself is short). They also appear in products liability (NC: 12 years from sale; many states: 10–12 years). Where a repose period applies, even a tolled SOL cannot extend past the repose deadline.
A statute of limitations is a law setting the maximum time period within which a lawsuit must be filed after an injury or breach. Once expired, the claim is legally dead — courts will dismiss it on motion, regardless of how valid it might otherwise be. This is one of the most strictly enforced rules in civil litigation. Attorneys frequently face malpractice claims for missing SOL deadlines; defendants routinely prevail on otherwise strong claims solely because the plaintiff filed one day late. The deadline must be tracked from the moment any potential legal claim arises.
The standard answer is: on the date of the injury, breach, or harmful act. But many states modify this with the discovery rule, which delays the start until the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known of the injury and its cause. The discovery rule is most significant in: medical malpractice (harm may not be apparent immediately); toxic exposure (latency between exposure and disease); and fraud (where the defendant conceals the cause of action). In these contexts, the date the clock actually starts is often disputed, and establishing the correct accrual date is the first task in any SOL analysis.
Yes — significantly. Medical malpractice has its own SOL in virtually every state, almost always shorter than general personal injury, and with its own accrual rules. Specific examples: Ohio allows only 1 year (vs. 2 for general PI); Tennessee allows only 1 year (vs. 1 year for PI — same, but with a stricter notice requirement); New York uses a 30-month period from the date of the act with no general discovery rule; California gives 1 year from discovery or 3 years from act, whichever comes first; North Carolina gives 3 years from discovery, with a 4-year statute of repose from the last act. If you have a potential malpractice claim, the timeline is shorter than you probably think — act immediately.
The shortest general personal injury SOLs: Kentucky and Louisiana and Tennessee each allow only 1 year from injury. Several other states allow only 2 years. For medical malpractice, Ohio (1 year from occurrence), Tennessee (1 year), and Kentucky (1 year) are among the shortest. Wrongful death: Kentucky and Louisiana and Tennessee again apply 1-year periods from the date of death. If any of these states are involved in your matter, treating urgency as the default assumption is the only safe approach.
In most states, yes — the SOL is tolled during minority and begins running when the plaintiff turns 18. However, this tolling is subject to important limits: many states impose an absolute repose period that caps the outer limit regardless of minority. For example, in medical malpractice, the repose period may be 3–7 years from the act — meaning a child injured at age 15 may have until age 18 plus the SOL period, but only if that total does not exceed the repose period. A few states are more restrictive in medical malpractice specifically, providing different minor tolling rules than for general PI. This is one of the most jurisdiction-specific issues in all of limitations law.
Government entity claims have their own — typically much shorter — notice requirements and limitations periods. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, you must file an administrative claim within 2 years of the injury before you can file suit, and then must file suit within 6 months of receiving a denial. State and local government claims are governed by state tort claims acts, with many states requiring formal written notice within 60–180 days of the injury — far shorter than any civil SOL. Missing a government notice deadline bars the claim entirely, just as missing the SOL does. This is one of the most commonly missed deadlines in personal injury practice.
A statute of limitations measures from when the plaintiff knew or should have known of the claim — it is plaintiff-focused and can be tolled by discovery, minority, disability, or fraudulent concealment. A statute of repose measures from a fixed event in the past (the defendant's act, the product's manufacture, the last date of construction) — it is defendant-focused and generally cannot be tolled by any discovery doctrine or minority. If the repose period has expired, the claim is dead even if the plaintiff literally just discovered the injury and could not have known sooner. Statutes of repose are most commonly encountered in medical malpractice and products liability, but also appear in construction defect and some professional liability contexts.
The clock for breach of contract generally runs from the date the breach occurred — not the date the contract was signed, and not the date the non-breaching party suffered harm. Written contracts typically have longer periods than oral contracts. The range across states is substantial: North Carolina, Delaware, and Maryland give 3 years; California gives 4 years; New York gives 6 years; Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri give 10 years. Discovery rule application to contract claims is limited — most states use a strict accrual date of breach. Installment contracts, revolving accounts, and continuing breaches have their own accrual rules that can extend the limitations period beyond a single breach date.
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