Arkansas Statute of Limitations: Deadlines, Tolling, and Exceptions

The Arkansas statute of limitations sets how long you have to file a lawsuit or how long prosecutors have to bring criminal charges, and the deadline depends entirely on the type of case. Most personal injury lawsuits must be filed within three years. Medical malpractice gets two. Written contracts get five, oral contracts three. On the criminal side, misdemeanors must be charged within a year, most felonies within three to six years, and murder and several child sex offenses carry no deadline at all.

Civil Filing Deadlines by Claim Type

Filing even one day late usually means permanent dismissal, so the first question in any Arkansas civil matter is which deadline applies.

Personal Injury

Three years from the date of injury. This covers car accidents, slip-and-fall incidents, product injuries, and similar negligence claims.¹ When an injury isn’t immediately apparent, the discovery rule may push the start date to when you first knew or reasonably should have known about the harm. That matters most in toxic exposure or defective product cases where symptoms develop slowly.

Medical Malpractice

Two years from when the cause of action accrues.² This is a trap for people who assume every injury claim gets three years. If a surgical error or misdiagnosis caused your harm, the shorter clock is the one that matters.

Wrongful Death

Three years from the date of death, not the date of the underlying injury.³ The distinction matters when a person survives for months or years after the event that ultimately causes death.

Defamation

Three years, running from when the defamatory statement is published.¹ For online content, that generally means the date of the original posting, not the date you happened to find it.

Property Damage and Adverse Possession

Damage to real property, trespass, nuisance, and damage or theft of personal property all fall under the three-year rule.¹ Adverse possession runs the other direction: if someone occupies your land openly and without your permission for at least seven continuous years, they can seek legal ownership. Their use must be open, continuous, exclusive, and hostile to the true owner’s rights.⁴

Contracts

Written contracts: five years from the date of the breach. A partial payment or written acknowledgment of default restarts the clock.⁵ Oral contracts: three years.¹

Contracts for the sale of goods fall under the Uniform Commercial Code, which sets a four-year deadline. Parties can agree in the original contract to shorten this period to as little as one year, but they cannot extend it beyond four.⁶

Criminal Filing Deadlines

Arkansas divides criminal statutes of limitations into three tiers based on offense severity.

Some offenses can be prosecuted at any time. That list includes capital murder, first-degree murder, and second-degree murder. It also covers rape of a minor, sexual assault in the first and second degree involving a minor victim, incest with a minor, child exploitation offenses, and computer exploitation of a child in the first degree. Fertility treatment fraud also has no time limit.⁷

For felonies not on the permanent list, the deadline depends on class:

Class Y and Class A felonies: six years after the offense.
Class B, C, and D felonies, and unclassified felonies: three years after the offense.
Concealed crimes by public officials: five years after the official leaves office or five years after the offense is discovered, whichever comes first.

A special rule applies to rape cases not already covered by the no-limit list: if biological evidence capable of producing a DNA profile is identified, the limitations period is eliminated entirely.⁷

Misdemeanors and violations must generally be charged within one year of the offense. If a misdemeanor sex offense was committed against a minor and was never reported to law enforcement, the prosecution window extends until the victim reaches age 28.⁷

Construction Defects: A Hard Five-Year Wall

Construction defect claims operate under a statute of repose, which works differently from a standard statute of limitations. A statute of limitations starts running when you discover (or should have discovered) the harm. A statute of repose sets a hard outer deadline measured from the defendant’s last action, and it can expire before you even know you have a claim.

In Arkansas, you cannot bring a construction defect claim more than five years after the improvement was substantially completed. The rule applies to anyone involved in design, planning, supervision, or construction of improvements to real property.⁸ The one exception: fraudulent concealment of the defect.

A homeowner who discovers foundation damage six years after a house was built is likely out of luck, even if the defect was invisible until that point.

When the Clock Pauses

Several situations toll (pause) the statute of limitations.

Minors and Incapacitated Persons

If you are a minor or mentally incapacitated when your claim arises, the statute does not begin running until the disability is removed.⁹ For a child injured at age 10, the three-year personal injury clock would not start until the child reaches adulthood.

Defendant Leaves the State

If the person you need to sue leaves Arkansas before you can file, the time they spend outside the state does not count toward the limitations period. The clock pauses while the defendant is absent and resumes when they return or become reachable through other legal methods. The same rule applies to someone who hides or takes other steps to prevent being served.¹⁰

Fraudulent Concealment

When a defendant actively hides wrongdoing, Arkansas courts can toll the statute until the fraud is uncovered. The construction defect statute explicitly provides this exception.⁸ Arkansas courts also recognize a broader equitable doctrine: if someone deliberately conceals facts that would have revealed your claim, the clock may not start until you discover or should have discovered the fraud.

Bankruptcy and Military Service

A bankruptcy filing triggers an automatic stay that halts most lawsuits against the debtor.¹¹ Active-duty military service also pauses the statute under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, whether the service member is a plaintiff or defendant. That protection does not extend to federal tax matters.¹²

Suing the Government Comes With Shorter Deadlines

Claims against a government entity carry extra procedural hurdles that trip up many people. For claims against the federal government, you must file a written administrative claim with the responsible federal agency within two years of the incident. If the agency denies your claim, you have only six months from the date of the denial letter to file suit in federal court. Miss either deadline and the claim is permanently barred.¹³

Claims against Arkansas state and local agencies often require a notice of claim well before any lawsuit, and these notice periods can be significantly shorter than the underlying statute of limitations. Depending on the entity, you may need to provide written notice within as few as 180 days. Waiting until the standard limitations period is about to expire often means the government notice deadline has already passed.

What Happens If You File Late

Filing after the statute of limitations expires almost always ends the case. The defendant raises the expired deadline as a defense, the court grants dismissal, and the claim is permanently dead. It doesn’t matter how strong the underlying case was or whether both parties are willing to proceed.

Criminal cases mirror this. If prosecutors miss the deadline, the defendant can move to dismiss. For the offenses that carry no limitations period, this isn’t an issue. For everything else, charges must come within the applicable window or not at all.

Old Debts and the Restart Trap

Once the statute of limitations on a debt expires, the debt doesn’t disappear, but your legal exposure changes. Federal rules prohibit debt collectors from suing or threatening to sue you to collect a time-barred debt. It’s a strict liability rule, so the collector violates it even if they genuinely didn’t know the deadline had passed.¹⁴

Be cautious about making partial payments on old debt. Under Arkansas law, a partial payment on a written obligation restarts the limitations clock, giving the creditor a fresh five years to sue.⁵

1
Justia. Arkansas Code 16-56-105 – Actions With Limitation of Three Years
2
Justia. Arkansas Code 16-114-203 – Statute of Limitations
3
Justia. Arkansas Code 16-62-102 – Wrongful Death
4
Justia. Arkansas Code 18-11-106 – Seven Years Adverse Possession
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Justia. Arkansas Code 16-56-111 – Notes and Instruments in Writing and Other Writings
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Justia. Arkansas Code 4-2-725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale
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Justia. Arkansas Code 5-1-109 – Statute of Limitations
8
Justia. Arkansas Code 16-56-112 – Design, Planning, Supervision, or Observation of Construction
9
Justia. Arkansas Code 16-56-116 – Persons Under Disabilities
10
Justia. Arkansas Code 16-56-120 – Prevention of Commencement of Action by Party
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 362 – Automatic Stay
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States
14
eCFR. 12 CFR 1006.26 – Collection of Time-Barred Debts