The Arizona statute of limitations sets how long you have to file a civil lawsuit or how long prosecutors have to bring criminal charges, and the range is wide: one year for misdemeanors and claims against government entities, two years for most personal injury cases, three years for fraud and unwritten debts, six years for written debts, and no limit at all for murder and certain serious sex offenses. Miss the deadline and the case is almost always over, no matter how strong it would have been.
Personal Injury, Wrongful Death, and Property Damage
You have two years to sue for personal injury, wrongful death, or property damage under A.R.S. 12-542.1Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-542 – Injury to Person; Injury When Death Ensues; Injury to Property That covers car accidents, slip-and-fall injuries, medical malpractice, and damage someone else negligently causes to your property.
The clock usually starts on the date of the injury. Wrongful death is the exception: the two years run from the date of death, not the date of the underlying injury.1Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-542 – Injury to Person; Injury When Death Ensues; Injury to Property Someone hurt in a January crash who dies in August gives the family a filing window that opens in August.
Arizona also applies a discovery rule when the harm isn’t obvious right away. The two-year clock starts when you discover the injury or reasonably should have discovered it. This comes up most often in medical malpractice, where a surgical error or misdiagnosis may not produce symptoms for months or years. The burden is on you to show the problem couldn’t reasonably have been found sooner.
Contract and Debt Claims
Arizona draws a sharp line between written and unwritten debts.
Debt backed by a written contract or a credit card carries a six-year limitation under A.R.S. 12-548.2Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-548 – Contract in Writing for Debt; Six Year Limitation The Arizona Judicial Branch confirms that credit card debt and medical debt both fall inside this six-year window.3Arizona Judicial Branch. Statute of Limitations (SOL)
Debt without a written agreement has only three years under A.R.S. 12-543, including handshake loans and open accounts.4Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-543 – Oral Debt; Stated or Open Account For open accounts, the three years run from the last transaction inside that period.
A.R.S. 12-548 speaks specifically to debt actions. If your dispute involves a written agreement but isn’t about collecting a debt, the four-year general limitation under A.R.S. 12-550 may apply instead, and that four-year rule is also the catchall for any civil claim that doesn’t fit another category.5Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-550 – General Limitation
Fraud
Fraud and mistake claims get three years, and the clock doesn’t start on the date of the fraud. It starts when you actually discover the facts that reveal it.4Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-543 – Oral Debt; Stated or Open Account The discovery rule is built into the statute, which fits the nature of fraud: victims rarely know at the time. Someone deceived in 2020 who uncovers the scheme in 2025 has until 2028 to file.
Product Liability
Product liability follows the two-year personal injury or property damage deadline, but Arizona layers on a hard outer boundary. Under A.R.S. 12-551, you cannot bring a product liability claim if the cause of action arose more than twelve years after the product was first sold.6Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-551 – Product Liability Claims based on the manufacturer’s or seller’s negligence, or on a written warranty they provided, are exempt from the twelve-year cutoff. Strict liability claims are not.
Claims Against Government Entities
Suing a public body in Arizona involves a shorter deadline and an extra step that catches people out. You have one year from the date the claim arises to file suit against a public entity or public employee.7Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-821 – General Limitation; Public Employee
Before that lawsuit, you must serve a written notice of claim on the government entity within 180 days of when the cause of action accrues. The notice has to describe the facts and state a specific dollar amount you’d accept in settlement. Missing the 180-day notice kills the claim outright, even if the one-year lawsuit deadline is still open.8Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-821.01 – Authorization of Claim Against Public Entity Most government liability claims die on this 180-day rule, not on the one-year one. If you’re considering a claim against a city, county, state agency, or public school, the clock is already running.
Criminal Deadlines
Arizona’s criminal deadlines are set by A.R.S. 13-107 and run from the date the state discovers the offense or should have discovered it through reasonable investigation, whichever comes first.9Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 13-107 – Time Limitations
Misdemeanors
Prosecutors have one year to bring misdemeanor charges. That includes petty theft, simple assault, disorderly conduct, and most DUI charges, though some DUI-related offenses have their own timelines under separate statutes.
Felonies
Class 2 through Class 6 felonies carry a seven-year statute of limitations. That covers the bulk of Arizona’s felony offenses: burglary, aggravated assault, theft above the misdemeanor threshold, and drug offenses.
Offenses With No Time Limit
Arizona sets no statute of limitations for homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide that results in death, violent sexual assault, certain Class 2 felony sex offenses, human trafficking, misuse of public funds, and falsifying public records. Attempts to commit any of these offenses are also exempt. Charges can be filed at any time, regardless of how many years have passed.
Federal Deadlines That Reach Arizona Residents
Living in Arizona doesn’t insulate you from federal filing deadlines, and several of the most consequential ones are shorter than their state counterparts.
IRS Tax Assessment and Collection
The IRS generally has three years from the date your return was due, or the date you actually filed if later, to assess additional tax.10Internal Revenue Service. Time IRS Can Assess Tax Once tax is assessed, the IRS has ten years to collect it, including penalties and interest.11Internal Revenue Service. Time IRS Can Collect Tax Actions like filing for bankruptcy or requesting an installment agreement can pause that ten-year collection clock.
Employment Discrimination
Because Arizona has a state agency enforcing anti-discrimination law, employees here get 300 calendar days from the discriminatory act to file a charge with the EEOC, rather than the 180 days that applies in states without such an agency.12U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits for Filing a Charge Federal employees have a much tighter window: 45 days to contact an EEO counselor.13U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Contacting an EEO Counselor
Claims Against the Federal Government
If a federal employee or agency causes you harm in Arizona, the Federal Tort Claims Act requires you to file an administrative claim in writing within two years of when the injury occurred or should have been discovered.14eCFR. 32 CFR 750.36 – Time Limitations You can’t skip straight to court; the administrative claim comes first. For federal crimes that aren’t punishable by death, the standard prosecution deadline is five years.15Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3282 – Offenses Not Capital
When the Clock Pauses
Several circumstances toll the running of a statute of limitations in Arizona. They can be the difference between a live claim and a dead one.
If the person entitled to sue is under 18 or mentally incapacitated when the claim first arises, that period of disability doesn’t count. Once the disability lifts, the full original limitation period begins.16Arizona Legislature. Arizona Revised Statutes 12-502 – Effect of Minority or Insanity
The discovery rule delays the start of the clock when harm isn’t immediately apparent. Arizona courts apply it most in medical malpractice and fraud cases. You have to show the injury genuinely couldn’t have been found earlier through reasonable diligence.
Active-duty military members get additional protection under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Time on active duty doesn’t count toward any state statute of limitations, whether the servicemember is bringing the claim or defending against one.17Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 U.S. Code 3936 – Statute of Limitations This protection does not extend to federal tax deadlines.
What Happens When You Miss a Deadline
Once the statute of limitations expires, the other side can raise it as a defense, and courts will almost certainly dismiss the case. In civil matters, you lose the right to recover compensation no matter how clear the other party’s fault. In criminal cases, prosecutors lose the ability to bring charges. There is no “good cause” exception for simply missing the date. The only way to revive an expired claim is to show that a tolling provision applied all along, meaning the clock was paused by one of the circumstances above and the deadline hasn’t actually run.