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

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In California, the general deadline to file a personal injury lawsuit is two years from the date of the injury. For most car accidents, slip and falls, and dog bites, that is the number that matters.

The complication is that several common situations carry much shorter deadlines, and the consequence of missing one is almost always the same. The claim is barred permanently, no matter how strong it was or how badly you were hurt.

The General Rule: Two Years

Most personal injury claims in California must be filed within two years of the date the injury occurred. This covers the large majority of cases:

• Car, motorcycle, truck, bicycle, and pedestrian accidents
• Slip and fall and other premises liability claims
• Dog bites and animal attacks
• Product liability
• Assault and battery

Wrongful death claims generally run two years as well, measured from the date of death rather than the date of the underlying injury, which are not always the same.

Claims for damage to property, such as your vehicle, follow a longer period than claims for injury to your person. That difference occasionally surprises people whose property claim is still open after the injury deadline has passed.

The Exceptions That Catch People

Claims involving a government entity

This is the shortest and least known deadline in California personal injury practice.

If your injury involves a public entity, you generally must present a formal written claim to that entity within six months, before any lawsuit can be filed at all. If the entity rejects the claim, a further limited window applies for filing suit.

The situations this covers are more ordinary than the phrase government entity suggests. A collision with a city bus or a municipal vehicle. A fall caused by a broken public sidewalk. An injury from a dangerous road condition the agency failed to repair. An incident on public property or involving a public employee acting in the scope of employment.

People in these cases routinely assume they have two years, because that is the number they looked up. They do not.

Medical malpractice

Medical negligence follows its own framework, built around both when the injury occurred and when the patient discovered or reasonably should have discovered it, with an outer limit that applies regardless of discovery. Additional notice requirements also apply before suit is filed. These rules are genuinely intricate and worth a specific conversation rather than a general assumption.

Injured minors

For most personal injury claims, the clock does not run while the injured person is under eighteen. That does not make waiting a good idea, and it does not extend the shorter government and malpractice deadlines in the same way. A parent should get the specific answer rather than assume the child's claim can sit.

Delayed discovery

Some injuries are not apparent when they happen. Where an injury and its cause could not reasonably have been discovered right away, California law may measure the deadline from discovery rather than from the event. This is a narrow doctrine and insurers contest it, but it matters in cases involving latent harm or exposure.

Why Waiting Hurts Even Inside the Deadline

Meeting the deadline is the floor, not the goal. Cases filed close to the limit are frequently weaker than the same case would have been a year earlier, for reasons that have nothing to do with the law.

• Surveillance video is overwritten. Most business and traffic systems retain footage for days or weeks, not months
• Witnesses become unreachable, and the ones you find remember less and remember it differently
• Physical conditions change. The pothole gets filled, the stairway gets repaired, the signage gets replaced
• Vehicles are repaired or scrapped, taking the physical evidence of impact with them
• Treatment gaps compound. A long delay between injury and care is the argument adjusters reach for first

The practical window for building a strong case is much shorter than the legal window for filing one.

When to Call an Attorney

• Any injury involving a city, county, transit agency, school district, or other public entity, where you should call immediately rather than soon
• You are approaching the two year mark on an unresolved claim
• You are unsure whether a government entity, a commercial carrier, or a public employee was involved
• Your injury was not apparent until well after the event
• A child in your family was injured
• An insurer has been negotiating with you for months without resolution, which does not pause any deadline

That last point deserves emphasis. Ongoing settlement discussions do not extend the statute of limitations. Claims are lost every year by people who believed that talking to an adjuster was the same as protecting their rights.

Mayfair Law handles personal injury claims throughout Los Angeles, Calabasas, and Southern California. Consultations are free, and you owe no attorney's fees unless we recover for you.