California Civil Statute of Limitations by Case Type

The California civil statute of limitations sets how long you have to file a lawsuit, and the answer depends entirely on the type of claim. Personal injury cases get two years. Property damage gets three. Written contracts get four, oral contracts two. Fraud is three years from discovery, medical malpractice as little as one. Claims against a government agency demand action in as little as six months. Miss the deadline and the case is over before it starts, no matter how strong the facts.

Deadlines at a Glance

Personal injury, wrongful death, assault and battery: 2 years
Property damage (real or personal): 3 years
Written contract: 4 years
Oral contract: 2 years
Sale of goods (UCC): 4 years, reducible by agreement to as little as 1 year
Fraud: 3 years from discovery
Medical malpractice: 1 year from discovery, 3 years outer limit
Legal malpractice: 1 year from discovery, 4 years outer limit
Adult sexual assault: 10 years, or 3 years from discovery of injury
Childhood sexual assault: until age 40, or 5 years from discovery
Claims against state or local government (injury, death, personal property): 6-month administrative claim
Other claims against government: 1-year administrative claim
Federal Tort Claims Act: 2-year administrative claim
Workplace discrimination (EEOC charge): 300 days in California

Personal Injury and Wrongful Death

You have two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit in California, whether the harm comes from a car crash, a slip-and-fall, or any other form of negligence.¹ The same two-year clock applies to wrongful death claims, running from the date of death rather than the date of the underlying incident. Assault and battery claims fall under the same two-year window.

The clock can shift when the injury isn’t immediately apparent. If symptoms develop months after exposure to a toxic substance, the deadline starts when you discovered or reasonably should have discovered the harm. Once the connection between the harm and someone else’s conduct becomes reasonably apparent, the countdown begins.

Property Damage

California gives you three years to file a lawsuit for damage to your property, real estate or personal belongings.² The clock starts on the date the damage occurred or the date you discovered it. Evidence in property cases degrades fast, so waiting the full three years rarely helps your position.

Breach of Contract

Written contracts carry a four-year statute of limitations measured from the date of the breach.³ Oral contracts get only two years.⁴ The clock starts on the date of the breach, not the date you signed.

Contracts for the sale of goods follow a separate rule under the Uniform Commercial Code. The standard deadline is four years from the breach, but the parties can agree in the original contract to shorten that period to as little as one year.⁵ They cannot extend it beyond four years. A breach of warranty on goods typically accrues when the seller delivers the product, not when the defect shows up, unless the warranty explicitly guarantees future performance.

Fraud

Fraud claims carry a three-year statute of limitations, and the clock starts when you actually discover the fraud or reasonably should have discovered it.² A contractor who hides defective work behind drywall can’t benefit from a deadline the victim had no way to meet. Courts still expect you to act with reasonable diligence, though. If red flags were obvious and you ignored them, a judge may find that you should have discovered the fraud earlier.

Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice runs tighter than the general personal injury deadline. You must file within one year of discovering the injury, or within three years of the date the injury actually occurred, whichever comes first.⁶ The three-year outer limit is hard, with only narrow exceptions for fraud, intentional concealment, or a foreign object left inside a patient’s body.

California also requires 90 days’ written notice to the healthcare provider before filing suit. Serving that notice within 90 days of the statute of limitations expiring extends the deadline by 90 days from the date you send the notice. Many malpractice claims fall apart here. People spend months gathering records and consulting experts, then realize they never sent the required notice.

Legal Malpractice

Claims against an attorney for professional negligence must be filed within one year of discovering the wrongful act or omission, with an absolute outer limit of four years from when the malpractice occurred. The clock doesn’t start until you’ve actually suffered harm from the attorney’s mistake. If the attorney continues to represent you on the matter in which the error occurred, the deadline is paused until that representation ends. The same pause applies if the attorney knowingly conceals the facts.

Sexual Assault Claims

California has expanded the filing window for sexual assault cases well beyond the general personal injury deadline. For assaults that occurred on or after your 18th birthday, you can file a civil lawsuit within 10 years of the last assault or within three years of discovering that an injury resulted from the assault, whichever is later.⁷

For childhood sexual assault, the window is longer. You may file within 22 years of turning 18 (effectively until age 40) or within five years of discovering that psychological harm from the abuse occurred after reaching adulthood, whichever period runs longer.⁸ Claims against institutions that knew or should have known about the risk of abuse can also be filed after age 40 if the institution failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it.

California has also revived previously time-barred claims for adult sexual assault that occurred on or after January 1, 2009. These revived claims can be filed through December 31, 2026.⁷ If you’ve been sitting on a claim you assumed was too late to bring, this revival window closes at the end of 2026. Claims that were already fully litigated or settled in writing before January 1, 2023, cannot be revived.

Claims Against Government Entities

Suing a California state or local government agency involves a much shorter deadline that trips up more people than any other statute of limitations issue. Before you can file a lawsuit, you must first submit an administrative claim directly to the government entity. For personal injury, wrongful death, and damage to personal property, that claim must be filed within six months of the incident.⁹ For all other claims, you have one year.

Miss that administrative deadline and your lawsuit is dead before it starts, regardless of how strong your case is. The standard tolling rules for minors and incapacitated persons do not apply to government claims.¹⁰ Being a minor doesn’t buy you extra time here.

If the government entity rejects your administrative claim, you have six months from the date it mails the rejection notice to file your lawsuit in court. If the entity doesn’t respond within 45 days, your claim is considered denied by default, and you then have two years from the date the cause of action accrued to file suit.

Claims Against the Federal Government

Claims against federal agencies follow a separate process under the Federal Tort Claims Act. You must file an administrative claim with the responsible agency within two years of the incident. If the agency denies your claim, you have six months to file a lawsuit in federal court. The FTCA uses a discovery rule for accrual, so the two-year clock starts when you knew or reasonably should have known about the injury and its cause.

Workplace Discrimination

Employment discrimination claims don’t start with a lawsuit. You must first file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 180 calendar days of the discriminatory act.¹¹ Because California has its own civil rights enforcement agency (the Civil Rights Department), that deadline extends to 300 days for most types of discrimination. The exception is age discrimination, where the extension to 300 days applies only if a state law and a state agency specifically address age discrimination in employment. Weekends and holidays count toward the total, but if the deadline falls on a weekend or holiday, you get until the next business day.

When the Clock Starts

For most claims, the statute of limitations begins on the date the harmful event occurs. Get in a car accident on March 1, and your two-year deadline runs to March 1 two years later. Contract breaches start the clock on the date of the breach.

The delayed-discovery rule is the main exception. When the harm isn’t immediately obvious, the clock starts when you actually discover the injury and its cause, or when a reasonable person in your position would have discovered it. This rule applies automatically to fraud claims and medical malpractice cases, and courts apply it to other claim types on a case-by-case basis. The rule doesn’t reward willful ignorance. If the facts were available and you simply didn’t look into them, a court will treat the discovery date as whenever a reasonable investigation would have revealed the problem.

When the Clock Pauses

Tolling pauses the statute of limitations, giving you additional time to file once the tolling condition ends. California recognizes several tolling situations, and federal law adds a couple more.

Minors and Incapacitated Persons

If you were under 18 or lacked the legal capacity to make decisions when the cause of action arose, the time you spent in that condition doesn’t count against your deadline.¹⁰ A child injured at age 10 in a personal injury case would have until age 20 to file (18 plus the two-year period). One critical exception: this tolling does not apply to claims against government entities. If a five-year-old is injured by a city bus, the six-month government claim deadline still applies.

Defendant Absent From California

When a defendant leaves California after the cause of action accrues, the time they spend outside the state doesn’t count toward the statute of limitations. If the defendant was already out of state when the claim arose, the clock doesn’t start until they enter California. In practice, California’s long-arm jurisdiction reaches most out-of-state defendants directly, so this rule matters mainly when the defendant cannot be reached.

Active-Duty Military Service

Under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a servicemember’s period of active duty is excluded from any statute of limitations calculation for civil claims by or against them.¹² This applies to state court proceedings and to actions before state agencies. Deployed for 18 months on a claim with a two-year deadline? Those 18 months don’t count. The protection extends to the servicemember’s heirs and legal representatives.

Bankruptcy

When a defendant files for bankruptcy, the automatic stay prevents creditors from pursuing most civil claims. Federal bankruptcy law ensures that if the statute of limitations on your claim hasn’t expired when the bankruptcy petition is filed, it won’t expire until at least 30 days after the stay is lifted or the bankruptcy case closes.¹³ This prevents defendants from using bankruptcy strategically to run out the clock.

What Happens If You Miss the Deadline

The consequence is blunt: your claim is permanently barred. Once the statute of limitations expires, the defendant can ask the court to dismiss the case, and the court will almost certainly grant it. Courts treat these deadlines as foundational, not discretionary. A judge won’t give you extra time because your case is strong or because the delay was short.¹⁴

The defendant doesn’t have to wait for trial. A statute of limitations defense can be decided at the earliest stage of the case, on a motion to dismiss, if the complaint itself shows the filing was late. At that point the court never considers the merits. Overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing does not save an untimely case.

Given how strict these deadlines are, identifying the correct one is the first task after any injury, breach, or dispute. Consult with an attorney well before the deadline approaches. Tolling and discovery rules can buy time in specific situations, but they’re the exception. Treat the standard deadline as firm and work backward from there.

1
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 335.1
2
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 338
3
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 337
4
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 339
5
Cornell Law School. U.C.C. 2-725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale
6
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 340.5
7
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure CCP 340.16
8
California Legislative Information. Assembly Bill 218
9
California Legislative Information. California Government Code GOV 911.2
10
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 352
11
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits for Filing a Charge
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 U.S. Code 3936 – Statute of Limitations
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 108 – Extension of Time
14
United States District Court for the District of Maryland. Memo and Order Regarding Motion to Dismiss Claims as Time Barred Under California Law