Statute of Limitations by State (2026): Personal Injury, Breach of Contract, and Negligence

Statute of limitations by state: personal injury and contract claims (2026)

Short answer: in most states the personal injury statute of limitations is 2 or 3 years from the date of injury, and the written-contract clock runs from 3 years to 10, with 5 or 6 years the usual answer. Kentucky and Tennessee are the shortest for personal injury at 1 year. Maine, North Dakota and Minnesota (for negligence) are the longest at 6. The 50-state table below gives the period and the code cite for each state.

Reviewed and corrected on 6 October 2026. This is general information, not legal advice; check the cited statute or opinion before relying on it.

Years in the table are the headline limitation period for filing a civil action. The cite is the code section as read on 6 October 2026, and a few cells carry an exception in brackets.

PI = personal injury (general bodily injury, not medical malpractice). Written = written contracts. Oral = oral contracts.

Negligence is usually the same clock as general PI, but a few states split them. Tolling rules and the case-law landmines are after the table.

Official text, as of 6 October 2026

Three headline numbers in older charts are now wrong. Here is the current text for each, with the official link.

• Louisiana, personal injury and other torts. La. Civ. Code art. 3493.1: "Delictual actions are subject to a liberative prescription of two years." Source: Louisiana Legislature. Article 3492, the old one-year rule, was repealed by Acts 2024, No. 423 (HB 315), effective July 1, 2024, and section 3 of the act gives it prospective application only, to delictual actions arising after that date. The enrolled act numbers the new article 3493.11; the Legislature's Civil Code page prints it as art. 3493.1, the number used here.
• Montana, written contracts. Mont. Code Ann. § 27-2-202(1): "The period prescribed for the commencement of an action on any contract, covenant, obligation, or liability founded on an instrument in writing is within 6 years." Source: Montana Code Annotated. The change from 8 years to 6 comes from 2025 Mont. Laws ch. 174 (SB 143), which applies to written-contract actions filed on or after October 1, 2025.
• Colorado, contracts. C.R.S. § 13-80-101(1)(a): "All contract actions, including personal contracts and actions under the 'Uniform Commercial Code', except as otherwise provided in section 13-80-103.5". Three years is the general rule. Six years under § 13-80-103.5(1)(a) is for an action to recover a liquidated debt or an unliquidated, determinable amount of money due. Source: Colorado Revised Statutes 2026, Title 13.

What changed in 2026: Colorado amended § 13-80-102(2) (HB 26-1237, effective August 12, 2026), Ohio amended § 2305.06 (S.B. 219, effective September 23, 2026), Kentucky amended KRS 413.140 (2026 Ky. Acts ch. 172, effective July 15, 2026), and Florida's governor vetoed HB 145 on June 30, 2026. None of those four moves the headline personal injury or contract number in the table. Details are in the box after the table.

TL;DR

• Most states sit at 2 or 3 years for personal injury and negligence. Kentucky and Tennessee are at 1 year. Maine, North Dakota and Minnesota (negligence) are at 6.
• Written-contract clocks run from 3 years (Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina) to 10 years (Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Indiana and Missouri for some writings).
• In many states the oral-contract period is shorter than the written one (California, Arizona, Virginia and Washington are examples). Whether a partly written deal counts as written depends on the state, so check your state's cases.
• Accrual date decides most missed-deadline claims, not the headline number. In the ABA's Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims for 2020 to 2023, substantive errors were about 51 percent of claims and administrative errors, which include failing to calendar a deadline, were about 23 percent.
• A statute of repose is a separate, harder ceiling than the limitations clock. It runs from a fixed event such as a sale or substantial completion, and courts do not apply equitable tolling to it.
• Open the section before you file. Limitations statutes change often, and the changes since 2023 that matter most are listed in the box after the table.

Part of our state law reference series.

Table notes. Delaware's 3 years for a written contract is the default: under 10 Del. C. § 8106(c), a written contract involving at least $100,000 may set its own period, up to 20 years. Alaska's 3 years for contracts can be waived by agreement under Alaska Stat. § 09.10.053. Arizona's 6 and 3 years are for an action for debt that is, or is not, evidenced by a written contract executed in Arizona (Ariz. Rev. Stat. §§ 12-548, 12-543), and § 12-550 sets 4 years for claims with no other period, so confirm which section a non-payment contract claim falls under. Wisconsin's 3 years for injury drops to 2 years for a death caused by a motor vehicle accident (Wis. Stat. § 893.54(2m)). Tennessee's 1 year becomes 2 years if criminal charges are brought against the person alleged to have caused the injury and the other conditions of Tenn. Code § 28-3-104(a)(2) are met. Florida's 2 years for negligence applies to causes of action accruing after March 24, 2023 (ch. 2023-15), and suits against the state or a subdivision run under Fla. Stat. § 768.28, which sets 4 years in subsection (14).

Checked on 6 October 2026: each corrected row and each statute named in the sections below was read against the statute text that day, on the state legislature's own site wherever it could be reached. Where an official site could not be read, a Justia copy of the 2024 or 2025 code was used, so a 2026 session law could be missing for those sections. A deadline you rely on should be confirmed in the current code.

Colorado's general contract period is 3 years under C.R.S. § 13-80-101(1)(a). Only an action to recover a liquidated debt or an unliquidated, determinable amount of money due gets 6 years under § 13-80-103.5(1)(a). For personal injury, Colorado gives 2 years for most torts under § 13-80-102(1)(a) but 3 years for bodily injury arising from the use or operation of a motor vehicle under § 13-80-101(1)(n)(I). Kentucky split its written-contract clock in 2014: a written contract executed after July 15, 2014 runs 10 years (KRS § 413.160), and one executed before that date keeps the 15-year period (KRS § 413.090(2)).

Louisiana calls it liberative prescription rather than limitation. Tort claims arising on or after July 1, 2024 run 2 years under art. 3493.1, and an injury before that date stays on the former one-year period. Maine's 6-year general clock covers personal injury; North Dakota and Minnesota (for negligence) are also at 6.

Minnesota's 2-year period under Minn. Stat. § 541.07(1) covers intentional torts such as assault, battery and false imprisonment. Negligence-based personal injury runs 6 years under § 541.05, subd. 1(5): in Manteuffel v. City of North St. Paul, No. C5-97-696 (Minn. Ct. App. Nov. 18, 1997), a Data Practices Act limitations case, the court noted in passing that "[a]ctions alleging personal injury grounded in negligence are generally subject to the six-year limitation of Minn. Stat. §541.05, subd. 1(5)." (opinion on Justia)

Indiana and Missouri do not give every written contract the 10-year period. Indiana's 10 years is for contracts in writing other than those for the payment of money (Ind. Code § 34-11-2-11(a)), and a written contract for the payment of money executed after August 31, 1982 gets 6 years (§ 34-11-2-9(b)). Missouri's 10 years is for "an action upon any writing, whether sealed or unsealed, for the payment of money or property" (Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.110(1)), and other contracts fall under the 5-year period in § 516.120(1).

California, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania, four of the highest-volume jurisdictions, all use a 2-year personal injury clock. New York is 3.

Why this matters more than the headline number

Limitations is the only doctrine in tort and contract law that erases a meritorious claim by the calendar alone. Discovery rule, equitable tolling, statute of repose, accrual triggers: those are the moving parts that decide whether you keep the case or lose it before you ever see a jury.

The ABA's Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims is a four-year study of claims reported by insurers. In the 2020 to 2023 Profile, as presented in ABA CLE course materials from July 2026, substantive errors were the largest category of alleged error at 51.01 percent of claims, followed by administrative errors at 22.87 percent, client relations at 17.26 percent and intentional wrongs at 8.85 percent. Administrative errors include failing to calendar properly, and "failure to know or ascertain a deadline" appears on the substantive list, so missed deadlines show up on both. Personal injury plaintiff work was the top claims area in the 2016 to 2019 Profile at 16.30 percent of claims, with personal injury defense tenth at 3.01 percent; in the 2020 to 2023 ranking, plaintiff personal injury was third, behind estate, trust and probate and real estate. Sources: ABA CLE course materials, July 29, 2026 for the 2020 to 2023 error percentages, Minnesota Lawyer for the 2020 to 2023 practice-area ranking, and a 2016 to 2019 top-ten list for the earlier period. These are secondary reports of the ABA study.

Many deadline mistakes come from getting the accrual date wrong or missing a tolling or repose rule, not from misremembering the headline period. Accrual, discovery-rule exceptions and the subsection that controls your fact pattern decide the case.

The case law makes the point. In Pooshs v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 51 Cal. 4th 788 (2011), answering a question certified by the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court held that "when a later-discovered disease is separate and distinct from an earlier-discovered disease, the earlier disease does not trigger the statute of limitations for a lawsuit based on the later disease." The plaintiff had been diagnosed with COPD in 1989 and later developed lung cancer. The court limited its holding to latent disease cases.

Pooshs is a separate-disease accrual rule for latent diseases. It reads against the instinct that the clock always ran on the first diagnosis, but the court did not announce a general extension of the discovery rule.

Colorado handles accrual by statute. C.R.S. § 13-80-108(1) provides that a cause of action for injury to person "shall be considered to accrue on the date both the injury and its cause are known or should have been known by the exercise of reasonable diligence." California applies a judge-made delayed-discovery rule to its 2-year clock, and Colorado writes the discovery trigger into its accrual statute.

The cite is the load-bearing column in the table. The year is shorthand. Open the section. Read the subsection.

Then read the case law construing accrual for your exact tort or contract theory. The headline number is not always the number that controls your case.

Deep dive: California PI and the § 340.5 ceiling

California is the state most lawyers think they understand and most often misapply. The general PI clock is 2 years under Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 335.1. Sounds simple. It is not, for two reasons that decide cases.

First, medical malpractice does not run on § 335.1. It runs on § 340.5, which is a hybrid: the time for commencing an action is "three years after the date of injury or one year after the plaintiff discovers, or through the use of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the injury, whichever occurs first."

The 3-year piece is an outer limit that applies unless tolled. The statute lists three tolling grounds: proof of fraud, intentional concealment, or the presence of a foreign body with no therapeutic or diagnostic purpose. For a minor under six, the statute allows three years or until the eighth birthday, whichever is longer.

In Brown v. Bleiberg, 32 Cal. 3d 426 (1982), the California Supreme Court reversed a summary judgment for the doctors after a 1965 foot surgery. The suit was filed in 1978, and the court held that there was a triable issue whether the doctors' affirmative concealment of the true nature of the surgery prevented the plaintiff from discovering the cause of her injury, and so whether the one-year period was tolled. As to the outside period in § 340.5, the court held it "was tolled by its own terms" "for purposes of this summary judgment."

The point: a malpractice case that looks barred under § 340.5 may survive if the facts support tolling for fraud, intentional concealment or a foreign body.

Second, accrual for ordinary PI in California is not always the date of impact. In Fox v. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., 35 Cal. 4th 797 (2005), the California Supreme Court held that "a cause of action accrues and the statute of limitations begins to run when the plaintiff has reason to suspect an injury and some wrongful cause, unless the plaintiff pleads and proves that a reasonable investigation at that time would not have revealed a factual basis for that particular cause of action." A patient who had already sued over her surgery could therefore try to show she had no earlier reason to suspect the stapler maker, and the court expressed no opinion on whether she could. Fox applied the former one-year statute that § 335.1 replaced in 2003.

So California's two-year clock under § 335.1 carries a judge-made delayed-discovery rule, even though the statute does not mention it. The construction-defect repose in § 337.15 (10 years from substantial completion for latent deficiencies) sits on top of that for latent construction claims, with exceptions in subdivision (e) for an owner or occupier in control of the improvement and subdivision (f) for willful misconduct or fraudulent concealment.

If you are filing PI in California against a public entity, the Government Claims Act requires a claim for injury to person to be presented "not later than six months after the accrual of the cause of action" under Cal. Gov. Code § 911.2. That is the deadline that ends the case in practice, not § 335.1.

Deep dive: New York and the CPLR overlay

New York is a clean 3-year clock, CPLR § 214(5), and one of the easiest to blow because of the surrounding rules. Two anchors.

CPLR § 214-c gives a discovery rule for injuries caused by "the latent effects of exposure to any substance or combination of substances," and § 214-c(1) defines exposure to include implantation or injection. Outside § 214-c, a New York personal injury claim accrues when the injury is sustained.

Snyder v. Town Insulation, Inc., 81 N.Y.2d 429 (1993), shows how strict that is. The plaintiffs sued over emissions from urea-formaldehyde foam insulation installed in their home in 1977. They conceded that the discovery rule of CPLR 214-c did not apply retroactively to them, so the question was whether accrual under CPLR 214 ran from the date of injury or the date of last exposure. The Court of Appeals held "that the date of injury rule applies and that the causes of action were time-barred." So the plaintiff who first sees a doctor three years and four months after a fender-bender has no PI claim, because § 214(5) allows three years from the injury and § 214-c does not reach traffic accidents.

CPLR § 214-a is the medical-malpractice statute: 2 years and 6 months "of the act, omission or failure complained of or last treatment where there is continuous treatment for the same illness, injury or condition." Allende v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corp., 90 N.Y.2d 333 (1997), asked whether the continuous-treatment doctrine tolled the 90-day notice of claim against the Health and Hospitals Corporation and held it did not: the plaintiff's statements and actions showed she did not intend to return to the hospital where she was first treated, and treatment at another HHC-owned hospital was not continuous treatment.

For municipal-hospital defendants, you also need a notice of claim under General Municipal Law § 50-e, which must be served "within ninety days after the claim arises" (for wrongful death, ninety days from the appointment of a representative). Miss the 90 days and the underlying limitations period may never come into play.

If you handle PI in New York and you do not know whether your defendant is a city hospital entity or a private hospital before you finish the intake call, you have a calendaring problem in the making.

A worked intake (hypothetical): New York PI, slow-burn injury

Here is an exercise for any PI intake where the incident is more than a year old. It uses a New York fact pattern because CPLR § 214(5) gives a plain 3-year clock.

Facts: a client is hit by a delivery van on June 1, 2023, in Brooklyn. She thinks she has a sprained shoulder, declines an ambulance, sees her PCP a week later, gets a referral, does six weeks of PT, feels mostly fine.

In March 2026, she develops radiating arm pain. A new MRI shows a herniated C5-C6 disc consistent with the 2023 impact. She walks into your office on June 5, 2026, four days after her 3-year mark.

Walk it. CPLR § 214(5) controls, and PI is 3 years. Accrual in New York for general PI is the date of injury, not the date the full extent of the injury was discovered.

Snyder v. Town Insulation, Inc., 81 N.Y.2d 429 (1993), states the general proposition that "the cause of action does not accrue until an injury is sustained," and it held that accrual runs from the date of injury rather than the date of last exposure. CPLR § 214-c is the statutory discovery rule for latent exposure injuries. So the clock ran June 1, 2023 to June 1, 2026, and she is four days late.

Is there a § 214-c hook? No, this is an impact injury, not a latent exposure. Is there minority tolling? No. Is there anything in the defendant's or the insurer's conduct that might support an estoppel argument? Check the correspondence; that is a fact question for a New York lawyer.

Is the defendant a municipal entity (say a city sanitation truck mistaken for a delivery van)? If yes, General Municipal Law § 50-e required a notice of claim within 90 days of June 1, 2023, which is August 30, 2023. She is nearly three years past that. If the defendant is the city, the claim was already in trouble in late August 2023, almost three years before she walked in.

That is the structure of a real intake. The 3-year number from the table got you to the answer in seconds. The accrual analysis, the discovery overlay and the municipal-notice screen are what tell you whether you have a case at all.

Tolling triggers worth knowing

Tolling rules are where the real fights happen. These come up often enough that anyone practicing PI or commercial litigation should be able to spot them cold.

Discovery rule. Many states apply a discovery rule to latent injuries (toxic torts, medical implants, occupational disease, fraud, professional malpractice), some by statute and some by case law. North Carolina writes it into the statute: under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-52(16), a personal injury claim does not accrue "until bodily harm to the claimant or physical damage to his property becomes apparent or ought reasonably to have become apparent," subject to a 10-year outside limit. Colorado does the same in C.R.S. § 13-80-108(1).

This is not a universal default, and the version that applies depends on the cause of action. California codifies a one-year-from-discovery rule for medical malpractice in Code of Civil Procedure § 340.5; for other injury claims accrual is the date of injury unless the delayed-discovery rule applies.

Florida's medical malpractice period sits in Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(c): two years from the incident or from discovery, with a four-year outside limit and a seven-year limit where fraud, concealment or intentional misrepresentation prevented discovery.

Minority tolling. Many states suspend the clock while the plaintiff is a minor. California is an example: under Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 352(a), if the person entitled to sue is under the age of majority when the cause of action accrues, "the time of the disability is not part of the time limited for the commencement of the action." The full period then generally starts at 18.

Medical malpractice is the usual exception, and the cutoffs differ. In California, a minor under six has three years or until the eighth birthday, whichever is longer (§ 340.5). In Florida, the four-year outside limit does not bar an action brought on behalf of a minor on or before the child's eighth birthday (§ 95.11(5)(c)). Check the state's medical-malpractice statute, not the general PI section, when the plaintiff was a minor.

Mental incapacity. Many states toll for incapacity that exists when the cause of action accrues. California's § 352(a) is an example, using the words "lacking the legal capacity to make decisions" at the time the cause of action accrued. Incapacity that begins later usually does not toll, but the wording of each state's statute decides it.

Read the statute carefully; the difference between "at the time the cause accrues" and "during the running of the limitation period" decides cases.

Defendant absence from the state. Some older statutes toll the clock while the defendant is outside the state. The U.S. Supreme Court held Ohio's version unconstitutional as applied to an out-of-state corporation in Bendix Autolite Corp. v. Midwesco Enterprises, Inc., 486 U.S. 888 (1988), because it imposed an impermissible burden on interstate commerce. Check current case law in your state before relying on one.

Continuous-treatment doctrine. Medical-malpractice-specific tolling: the clock runs from the last treatment for the same condition. New York codifies it in CPLR § 214-a. Some other states recognize it by case law, so check your state.

Statute of repose. Different beast. Repose is an outer limit measured from a fixed event (sale, completion, occurrence), not from accrual or discovery. Courts do not apply equitable tolling to it: in CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, 573 U.S. 1 (2014), the Supreme Court explained that statutes of repose generally may not be tolled, even in cases of extraordinary circumstances beyond a plaintiff's control. But several repose statutes carry their own exceptions for fraud or concealment. Construction defect, products liability and medical malpractice are the usual contexts. A few specifics worth knowing:

• North Carolina: 12 years from initial purchase for a product claim under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-46.1, for causes of action accruing on or after October 1, 2009 (S.L. 2009-420), and 6 years from the later of the defendant's last act or omission and substantial completion for improvements to real property under § 1-50(a)(5)(a). The CTS Corp. facts arose under the 10-year limit in § 1-52(16). Since 2014, § 130A-26.3 provides that this period does not bar an action for personal injury or property damage caused by contaminated groundwater.
• California: 10-year construction-defect repose from substantial completion under Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 337.15, with the exceptions in subdivisions (e) and (f). Medical malpractice has a 3-year outer limit under § 340.5, unless tolled for fraud, intentional concealment or a foreign body.
• Texas: 15-year products-liability repose under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.012(b), with an exception in § 16.012(d) for a disease whose symptoms did not manifest within 15 years, and a 10-year repose for construction or repair of an improvement under § 16.009(a).
• Florida: 4-year medical-malpractice repose under § 95.11(5)(c), extended to a 7-year outside limit where fraud, concealment or intentional misrepresentation prevented discovery.
• Tennessee: a products action must be brought within 6 years of injury and within 10 years of first purchase or 1 year after the product's anticipated life expires, whichever is shorter, under Tenn. Code § 29-28-103(a).

Most of these repose periods run despite minority or incapacity, but several, including California § 337.15(f), North Carolina § 1-50(a)(5)(e) and Florida § 95.11(5)(c), have exceptions for fraud or concealment. The repose period can be the real ceiling on the case, and many lawyers miss it because the underlying limitations clock looks fine.

Two hypothetical intakes

Both are invented to show how the rules interact. The statutes and cases are real.

Case A, saved by discovery. A New Jersey paralegal forwards a medical-device claim: surgical mesh implanted in 2017, erosion symptoms reported to a new GP in March 2026. Headline: the PI clock is 2 years under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2, and the device was implanted nine years ago, so it looks dead.

Not necessarily. New Jersey applies an equitable discovery rule, and under Lopez v. Swyer, 62 N.J. 267 (1973), a cause of action does not accrue while the injured party neither knew nor reasonably could have known that there may be a basis for an actionable claim. The court called the rule "a means of mitigating the often harsh and unjust results which flow from a rigid and automatic adherence to a strict rule of law." Lopez was a physician-malpractice case, so check New Jersey cases on device claims for your facts.

If the GP visit in March 2026 is when she first had reason to connect the symptoms to the mesh, a complaint filed in May 2026 is inside the two-year window from that date. The case is alive only if the lawyer did not stop at the implant date, and only if the facts on knowledge hold up.

Case B, split by two clocks. A North Carolina homeowner finds water intrusion behind the cladding of a custom build, with a certificate of occupancy issued December 2019. She wants to sue the general contractor and the cladding manufacturer in early 2026.

Start with the six-year improvement repose in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-50(a)(5). Its list expressly includes "[a]ctions to recover damages for breach of a contract to construct or repair an improvement to real property" and actions for negligent construction, and it applies "to the exclusion of G.S. 1-15(c), G.S. 1-52(16) and G.S. 1-47(2)." Treating the December 2019 certificate of occupancy as substantial completion, six years ends in December 2025. On these facts the contract claim and the negligence claim against the general contractor are both likely barred, unless the contractor's last act or omission came later or the fraud and willful or wanton negligence exception in subdivision (e) applies. Subdivision (f) says the three-year limitations period in § 1-52 does not start until the damage is apparent, but it also says no action may be brought after the six years.

The products claim against the cladding manufacturer may be timely under the 12-year products repose in § 1-46.1, which runs from initial purchase, and the materials were sold to the contractor in 2018. Expect the manufacturer to argue that the six-year improvement repose also applies, because subdivision (a)(5)(b)(9) covers "any person furnishing materials." Which statute controls is the fight.

The lesson is the same. Repose, not the headline limitations number, often decides construction and products cases, and each claim type needs its own check. The general PI clock tells you whether to dig deeper. The accrual rule and the specific repose period for each claim tell you whether you have a case at all.

Three traps that catch lawyers

These are the patterns plaintiff and defense lawyers learn the expensive way.

Trap 1: A discovery rule does not apply to all PI in all states. It is tempting to assume that if the plaintiff did not know about the injury, the clock did not run. Wrong in many fact patterns. New York applies discovery to personal injury only where the legislature has provided for it (CPLR 214-c for latent exposure injuries). Check each state's statute and case law.

Garden-variety slip-and-fall, car-accident and premises-liability claims usually accrue on the date of injury, not the date of diagnosis, even if the full extent of the injury was not apparent then. The plaintiff who waits a year because they thought it was "just a bruise" can be out of court.

Trap 2: Oral contract clocks are shorter than written, sometimes much shorter. California: 4 years written vs 2 years oral. Arizona: 6 years on a written debt vs 3 years on an oral debt. Virginia: 5 years on a signed writing vs 3 years on an unsigned writing or an oral contract (Va. Code § 8.01-246(A)(2) and (4)). Washington: 6 vs 3 (RCW 4.16.040 and 4.16.080).

The bigger trap is the partial-writing problem. Whether a partly written deal gets the written or the oral period depends on the state. In Virginia, for example, a writing not signed by the party to be charged gets the 3-year period. The "we had a signed quote but the scope was discussed on a call" cases are where this bites.

The case law on what makes a contract "in writing" for limitations purposes is jurisdiction-specific; the cite in the table is the start, not the end.

Trap 3: Statute of repose runs from the sale or completion, not discovery. A products liability claim where the defect surfaces 11 years after sale may be dead under a 10-year repose statute even if the limitations clock just started ticking. Construction defect is the same story: repose runs from substantial completion, often 6 to 12 years depending on the state, and once it expires the claim is gone unless a statutory exception applies.

The U.S. Supreme Court drove the point home in CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, 573 U.S. 1 (2014). It held that CERCLA § 9658 pre-empts state statutes of limitations but not state statutes of repose, so federal law did not displace North Carolina's 10-year repose in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-52(16) for the landowners' tort claims over contamination from a nearby plant. The Court reversed the Fourth Circuit, which had held the claims could go forward.

The plaintiff's lawyer who screens an intake on the limitations period alone, without checking repose, will eventually sign a case that is already dead.

A fourth honorable mention: government-tort-claim notice. Many states require written notice of claim to the government defendant before suit, and the deadlines vary widely: 90 days in New York (GML § 50-e), six months in California (Gov. Code § 911.2), two years in Massachusetts (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 258, § 4) and three years in Florida (§ 768.28(6)). Missing the notice deadline is functionally the same as missing the limitations period, and it sits in a different statute (usually the tort claims act, not the general limitations chapter).

If the defendant is a municipality, school district or state agency, the notice statute may be the controlling deadline, not the PI clock in the table.

Practical checklist before you sign the engagement

Run this before you accept any PI or contract case where the incident or breach is more than six months old. It takes ten minutes and can save you a malpractice referral.

• Identify the controlling state's general limitations chapter and the specific subsection that maps to your claim type.
• Note the accrual date. Is it the date of injury, the date of discovery, the date of last treatment, the date of breach, the date of demand?
• Check for any cause-of-action-specific statute that overrides the general clock (med-mal, legal-mal, asbestos, products, government tort claims).
• Check for an applicable statute of repose. Calculate the outer limit and compare it to the accrual-based limitations date. The earlier of the two controls.
• Check tolling: minority, incapacity, defendant absence, fraudulent concealment, continuous treatment.
• For contract claims, verify the writing satisfies the state's definition of "in writing" for limitations purposes. Check whether any modifications or partial performance changed accrual.
• If government defendant, find and calendar the tort-claim-notice deadline before anything else.
• Calendar the deadline with at least a 60-day cushion. Calendar a secondary review at the 30-day mark.

Missed deadlines appear on the ABA's lists of alleged errors ("failure to calendar properly" and "failure to know or ascertain a deadline"). The practical lesson is to check accrual, tolling and repose, not only the headline period.

What this table cannot do for you

A reference table is a memory aid. It is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for opening the statute. Two things this table deliberately does not try to be.

It is not exhaustive. Each state has cause-of-action-specific statutes (libel and slander, fraud, conversion, wrongful death, products liability, professional malpractice, wage claims, FLSA pre-emption questions) that override the general clocks above. The general PI, written-K and oral-K columns are the most common defaults, not the universe.

It is not a substitute for current statutory text. The cites in this table were read against the state codes on October 6, 2026, and a session law passed since then can change a period, so open the section before filing.

To verify, pull the section directly from the state legislature's official code site (every state publishes one, free) and read the history line at the bottom for recent amendments.

FAQ

What happens if I miss the statute of limitations? In almost every case the claim is permanently barred. The defendant files a motion to dismiss and the court grants it, regardless of how strong the underlying facts are. A few narrow exceptions can revive a late claim (fraudulent concealment, minority, mental incapacity, a statutory discovery rule), but counting on one after the deadline has passed is a bad bet, not a plan.

Does the statute of limitations pause while I negotiate with the insurance company? Settlement talks with a liability carrier generally do not stop the clock on a personal injury claim, so file before the deadline even if negotiations continue. A few doctrines can change that, such as equitable estoppel and, for first-party insurance suit provisions in some states, equitable tolling: in Prudential-LMI Commercial Insurance v. Superior Court, 51 Cal. 3d 674 (1990), the California Supreme Court held that a policy's one-year suit provision should be equitably tolled from the time the insured files a timely notice to the time the insurer formally denies the claim in writing.

How long do I have to sue for breach of contract? It depends on the state and on whether the contract was written or oral. Written-contract clocks in the table above run from 3 years (Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina) to 10 years (for example Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Rhode Island and Wyoming). Oral-contract periods range from 2 years in California to 10 in Louisiana and Rhode Island, and 21 of the 50 states give 5 or 6, so the form of the agreement matters as much as the state.

What is the difference between a statute of limitations and a statute of repose? A statute of limitations runs from injury or discovery and can be tolled by minority, incapacity, fraud or a discovery rule. A statute of repose runs from a fixed event (a product sale, substantial completion of construction); courts do not apply equitable tolling to it, though some repose statutes have their own exceptions for fraud or concealment. Repose is the harder ceiling; a claim can be timely under the limitations clock and still dead under repose.

Are the deadlines different for children injured in an accident? Usually yes. Many states pause the limitations clock while a plaintiff is a minor, and the period then generally starts at 18 (for example California Civ. Proc. Code § 352(a)), but check the state's minority statute and any shorter rule for medical malpractice. In California a minor under six has three years or until the eighth birthday for medical malpractice, whichever is longer.

Is the deadline shorter if the defendant is a government entity? Often, and there is usually a separate notice requirement on top of it. Notice-of-claim deadlines range from 90 days in New York to three years in Florida, and that notice deadline can end the case long before the general limitations period runs. For a tort claim against the United States, the Federal Tort Claims Act requires presenting a written claim to the agency within 2 years of accrual, and suit within 6 months after the agency mails its final denial (28 U.S.C. § 2401(b)).

Can I still sue if the defendant hid the cause of my injury? Possibly. Many states toll the limitations period when the defendant actively concealed the wrong or its cause, and California's § 340.5 lists intentional concealment and fraud as tolling grounds for medical malpractice. Courts require evidence of concealment, not just suspicion, so document the timeline and the misleading conduct.

Which states have the shortest and longest personal injury deadlines? Kentucky and Tennessee are the shortest at 1 year. Maine, Minnesota (for negligence) and North Dakota are the longest at 6 years. Most other states sit at 2 or 3 years, with California, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania at 2.

For related state-by-state coverage, see Non-Compete Enforceability by State: A 2026 Map and Indemnification Caps by State: How 50 Jurisdictions Read the Same Clause.

For the US statutes, regulations and court rules these laws sit in, see the US primary law API.

Arshita Anand

Co-Founder & CEO · Attorney

Arshita leads product and strategy at Vaquill AI, the US primary law data API. As an attorney, she decides which law we carry, how each section is sourced and cited, and what legal AI and compliance teams need from the data.