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 3 to 15 years depending on the state. Kentucky and Tennessee are the shortest for personal injury at 1 year; Maine and North Dakota are the longest at 6. The 50-state table below gives the exact period and the controlling code cite for each state.

Years in the table are the headline limitation period for filing a civil action; the cite is the controlling code section as of June 2026.

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.

TL;DR

• Most states sit at 2 or 3 years for personal injury and negligence; written-contract clocks range from 3 (Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina) to 15 (Kentucky for signed instruments).
• Oral-contract clocks are routinely shorter than written, and partial writings often get treated as oral. That is the contract trap that closes cases without warning.
• Accrual date, not the headline number, decides most missed-deadline malpractice claims. ABA Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims data has put administrative errors (calendaring, deadlines, conflicts) at roughly 28 to 30 percent of claims for years; that is the largest single-error category in the report.
• Statute of repose is a separate, harder ceiling than the limitations clock. It runs from delivery or completion, not discovery, and tolling rarely saves you.
• Verify every cite against the current state code before filing. Limitations statutes get amended every legislative session.

Part of our all-50-states legal reference series.

Last verified against current state codes: June 20, 2026. A few flags before anyone screenshots this and files something.

Colorado's general written and oral contract clock is 6 years, but the everyday breach-of-contract claim most lawyers actually bring sits at 3 under § 13-80-101. Kentucky split its written-contract clock in 2014: instruments executed after July 15, 2014 run 10 years, and instruments executed before that date keep the old 15-year period (KRS § 413.160).

Louisiana calls it prescription, not limitation, but the function is identical. Maine's 6-year general clock covers PI; it is the outlier ceiling.

Minnesota's 2-year PI clock under § 541.07 is the assault/battery/false-imprisonment lane; general negligence-based PI in Minnesota runs 6 under § 541.05.

California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, the high-volume jurisdictions, all cluster at a 2-year PI clock, and that is where most malpractice claims for blown deadlines actually originate.

Personal-injury filing deadlines by state; most cluster at two years.

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 has put administrative errors (failure to calendar, failure to file in time, conflict of interest) consistently in the high-20s to low-30s as a share of all claims by error type, the single largest category in the report cycle after cycle. Plaintiff PI and personal-injury defense were the two practice areas drawing the largest share of claims in the most recent reporting periods.

The carrier's framing is direct: more lawyers get sued for blowing a calendar than for any single substantive failure.

The mistake almost never comes from not knowing California is 2 years. It comes from getting the accrual date wrong, missing a discovery-rule exception, or misreading which subsection actually controls your fact pattern.

The case law makes the point. In Pooshs v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 51 Cal. 4th 788 (2011), the California Supreme Court held that a plaintiff's earlier latent disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) did not trigger accrual for a later, distinct latent disease (lung cancer) under California's PI statute, even though both arose from the same smoking conduct.

That is a discovery-rule extension, not a contraction, and it reads against the grain of the "the clock ran on diagnosis day, full stop" intuition lawyers default to.

On the other end, in Crowe v. Tull, 126 P.3d 196 (Colo. 2006), the Colorado Supreme Court applied the discovery rule to a Colorado Consumer Protection Act claim and reaffirmed that accrual is fact-bound, not date-bound. Two states, two different mechanics, both running off the same general PI clock. The cite in the table is shorthand for a much more complicated answer.

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 number on the bumper is not 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 action must be brought within 3 years of the injury OR 1 year from when the plaintiff discovered (or reasonably should have discovered) the injury, whichever occurs first.

The 3-year piece is an outer repose ceiling, not a limitations clock. Tolling applies only for proof of fraud, intentional concealment, or the presence of a foreign body.

In Brown v. Bleiberg, 32 Cal. 3d 426 (1982), the California Supreme Court read the concealment exception broadly enough to revive a claim where the plaintiff had been actively misled about the cause of her foot injury for over a decade. Brown is still the canonical statement of what "intentional concealment" requires.

The point: a med-mal case that looks dead under § 340.5 may not be, if you can plead the concealment exception with particularity.

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 applied the discovery rule to a products-liability PI claim, holding that the cause of action accrued when the plaintiff suspected the wrongdoing, not when the symptoms first appeared.

So § 335.1's 2-year clock has a discovery overlay built in by case law, even though the statute itself does not say so. The construction-defect repose in § 337.15 (10 years from substantial completion) sits on top of all of this as an absolute ceiling for latent construction claims, and minority tolling under § 352 does not extend it.

If you are filing PI in California against a public entity, the Government Claims Act notice runs 6 months from accrual under Cal. Gov. Code § 911.2. That is the deadline that ends the case in practice, not § 335.1.

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Deep dive: New York and the CPLR overlay

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

CPLR § 214-c carves out a discovery rule specifically for toxic-substance exposure (asbestos, environmental contamination, certain pharmaceutical injuries). Outside § 214-c, the default accrual rule is the date of injury, period.

Snyder v. Town Insulation, Inc., 81 N.Y.2d 429 (1993), is the rule that survives: latent injury from non-toxic exposure accrues on the date of the injury-causing event, not on diagnosis. So the plaintiff who develops symptoms two years and four months after a fender-bender has no PI claim, because § 214-c does not reach traffic accidents and the case law is unforgiving.

CPLR § 214-a is the medical-malpractice statute, 2 years and 6 months from the act, with the continuous-treatment doctrine pushing accrual to the end of the treatment relationship for the condition giving rise to the claim. The doctrine is codified in § 214-a and unpacked in Allende v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corp., 90 N.Y.2d 333 (1997).

For municipal-hospital defendants, you also need a 90-day notice of claim under General Municipal Law § 50-e. Miss the 90 days and the underlying limitations period is irrelevant.

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

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

Here is the exercise I run on every PI intake where the incident is more than a year old. Use a New York fact pattern because CPLR § 214(5) is the cleanest 3-year clock in the country and the discovery overlay is unambiguous.

Facts: 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. New MRI shows a herniated C5-C6 disc consistent with the 2023 impact. She walks into your office on June 5, 2026, four days before her 3-year mark.

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

Snyder v. Town Insulation, Inc., 81 N.Y.2d 429 (1993), is the canonical statement: the rule that the cause of action accrues on the date of injury applies even when the injury is latent, absent a specific statutory discovery rule (e.g., CPLR § 214-c for toxic exposure). So the clock ran June 1, 2023 to June 1, 2026. She is four days past.

Game over, except: is there a § 214-c hook? No, this is impact-injury, not toxic-substance exposure. Is there minority tolling? No. Equitable estoppel based on insurer conduct? Maybe, if the carrier strung her along; check correspondence.

Is the defendant a municipal entity (city sanitation truck mistaken for a delivery van)? If yes, General Municipal Law § 50-e required a notice of claim within 90 days. She is three years past that. If the defendant is the city, this case died in late August 2023, two and a half years before she walked in.

That is the structure of a real intake. The 3-year number from the table got you the wrong answer in seconds. The accrual analysis, the discovery overlay, and the municipal-notice screen are what told you whether you had 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. Most states adopt some form of discovery for latent injuries (toxic torts, medical implants, occupational disease, fraud, professional malpractice). The clock starts when the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known of the injury and its likely cause.

Critically, this is not a universal default. Some states limit discovery to specific causes of action. California codifies a one-year-from-discovery rule for medical malpractice under Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 340.5; ordinary slip-and-fall PI accrues on the date of injury.

Texas applies discovery sparingly outside fraud, and the Texas Supreme Court has been actively narrowing it. Florida's discovery rule for medical negligence sits in § 95.11(4)(b) with a 4-year statute of repose ceiling that swallows late-discovered claims.

Minority tolling. In nearly every state, the limitations clock does not run against a minor until the minor reaches the age of majority, with a typical extension floor of 1 or 2 years post-18.

Medical malpractice is the usual exception: many states cap minor tolling for med-mal at age 8 or earlier to keep the insurance market viable. Check the state's medical-malpractice statute, not the general PI section, when the plaintiff was a minor.

Mental incapacity. Most states toll for "insanity" or "incapacity" existing at the time the cause of action accrues. The trick is that incapacity arising later, after accrual, generally does not toll.

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. Older statutes still toll the clock while the defendant is out of state and unreachable by process. Long-arm jurisdiction and modern service rules have eroded this in many jurisdictions, but it survives on the books, and a few state supreme courts have held it constitutional as applied to out-of-state corporate defendants. Worth checking when the defendant is a remote LLC.

Continuous-treatment doctrine. Medical-malpractice-specific tolling: the clock does not start until the treatment relationship for the condition giving rise to the claim ends. New York is the canonical jurisdiction; CPLR § 214-a codifies it. Several other states recognize it by case law.

Statute of repose. Different beast. Repose is an absolute outer limit measured from a fixed event (delivery, completion, occurrence), not from accrual or discovery, and it generally cannot be tolled by minority, fraud, or discovery. Construction defect, products liability, and medical malpractice are the usual contexts. A few specifics worth memorizing because they decide cases:

• North Carolina: 12-year products-liability repose from initial purchase under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-46.1 (raised from 6 to 12 years effective October 1, 2009), and a 6-year improvements-to-real-property repose under § 1-50(a)(5)(a). The CTS Corp. fact pattern lived inside the older 10-year general repose.
• California: 10-year construction-defect repose from substantial completion under Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 337.15 (latent deficiencies). Medical malpractice has a 3-year outer limit under § 340.5 even with discovery.
• Texas: 15-year products-liability repose under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.012 (with carve-outs for asbestos and silica), and a 10-year construction repose under § 16.009.
• Florida: 4-year medical-negligence repose under § 95.11(4)(b), with a 7-year ceiling for fraud or concealment. The constitutionality of this provision has been re-litigated; verify the current text.
• Tennessee: 10-year products repose under Tenn. Code § 29-28-103, but tied to the expected useful life of the product, which has been litigated extensively.

None of these are routinely tolled by minority, incapacity, or fraudulent concealment in the way limitations clocks sometimes are. The repose period is the actual ceiling on the case, and many lawyers miss this because the underlying limitations clock looks fine.

Two intakes from the field

Anonymized, both seen by lawyers in our circle this cycle.

Case A, saved by discovery. A New Jersey paralegal forwards a 2024 medical-device claim, surgical mesh implanted in 2017, erosion symptoms reported to a new GP in March 2026. Headline: PI clock is 2 years under N.J. Stat. § 2A:14-2, the device was implanted nine years ago, looks dead.

Not dead. New Jersey applies the discovery rule for latent medical-device injuries; the clock starts when the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known of the injury and its causal connection, which the GP visit arguably triggered.

The complaint was filed in May 2026, well inside the 2-year window from the actual discovery date. The case is alive because the lawyer did not stop at the implant date.

Case B, split by two repose clocks. A North Carolina homeowner finds water intrusion behind the cladding of a custom build, certificate of occupancy issued December 2019. She wants to sue the GC and the cladding manufacturer in early 2026. The breach-of-construction-contract claim under § 1-52 is fine on the limitations clock if accrual runs from discovery.

The products claim against the cladding manufacturer is alive: § 1-46.1's repose for products is 12 years from initial purchase, and the materials were sold to the GC in 2018, so an early-2026 suit sits comfortably inside the window.

The improvements-to-real-property repose under § 1-50(a)(5)(a) on the contractor's negligence claim is a different, shorter clock: 6 years from substantial completion, which is December 2019 plus 6 equals December 2025. She walked in two months too late on that one. So the breach-of-contract claim against the GC survives on its own theory, and the products claim against the manufacturer is still live under the 12-year products repose; only the negligence claim tied to the improvement is extinct.

The lesson is the same. Repose, not the headline limitations number, decides construction and products cases, and each claim type runs on its own clock. 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: 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. Texas, New York, and several others apply discovery only where the legislature or supreme court has explicitly extended it.

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 written vs 3 years oral. Virginia: 5 vs 3. Washington: 6 vs 3.

The bigger trap is the partial-writing problem. If part of the agreement is in a writing that does not state all material terms, courts often treat it as oral for limitations purposes. The "we had a signed quote but the scope was discussed on a call" cases are where this bites.

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

Trap 3: Statute of repose runs from delivery 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, full stop.

The U.S. Supreme Court drove the point home in CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, 573 U.S. 1 (2014), holding that CERCLA's discovery-rule preemption did not reach North Carolina's 10-year statute of repose for state-law tort claims tied to groundwater contamination.

The plaintiffs' claims were timely under the limitations clock and dead under repose. 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. Most states require written notice to the government defendant within a short window, often 60 to 180 days, before suit. 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 is 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 will save you from the 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.

The pattern across malpractice claims is consistent: the lawyer knew the headline limitations period, missed the accrual quirk or the repose ceiling, and filed two weeks late. The headline is not the trap. The structure underneath is.

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. State legislatures amend limitations statutes every session. The 2026 cite is current as of June 2026, but a fall amendment can shift the floor without warning.

To verify, pull the section directly from the state legislature's official code site (every state publishes one, free) or a research tool that surfaces the live section text with a click-through cite.

The check takes ninety seconds and is the difference between a deadline you can defend and a malpractice carrier's call. We wrote separately about why grounded statutory cites matter more than corpus size if you want the longer argument.

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? No. Insurance negotiations do not toll the limitations clock in any U.S. state. The period keeps running while the carrier reviews records, requests documents, or discusses settlement. Treat the filing deadline as fixed and file suit before it expires even if talks are still open.

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 range from 3 years (Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland) to 10 or more (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky for older instruments). Oral contracts are usually shorter, often 2 to 4 years, 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) and generally cannot be tolled at all. 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. Most states pause the limitations clock for a minor until they turn 18, then allow a year or two to file. Medical malpractice is the common exception, where many states cap minor tolling at age 8 or earlier. Check the state's medical-malpractice statute, not the general personal injury section, when the plaintiff was a minor.

Is the deadline shorter if the defendant is a government entity? Often, and there is usually a separate notice requirement on top of it. Many states require written notice of claim to the government defendant within 60 to 180 days before suit, and that notice deadline can end the case long before the general limitations period runs. For federal employees, the Federal Tort Claims Act requires an administrative claim within 2 years.

Can I still sue if the defendant hid the cause of my injury? Possibly. The fraudulent-concealment doctrine tolls the limitations period in most states when the defendant took active steps to conceal the wrongdoing or the cause of harm. 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, Louisiana, and Tennessee are the shortest at 1 year. Maine and North Dakota are the longest at 6 years. Most other states sit at 2 or 3 years, with the high-volume states (California, Texas, Florida, 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. If you run a plaintiff or PI practice, see our buyer's guide to AI software for plaintiff law firms.

Vaquill AI's statutes API surfaces the live section text with a click-through cite across the U.S. Code, the CFR, and all fifty state codes, so you can confirm the controlling limitations section before you calendar a deadline. See /legal-api.

Arshita Anand

Co-Founder & CEO · Attorney

Arshita leads product and strategy at Vaquill, building the legal AI suite that solo, small-firm, and in-house US lawyers use to run a matter end to end.