California Negligence Statute of Limitations: Deadlines and Exceptions

The California negligence statute of limitations is two years for most personal injury claims, but the deadline changes based on what was harmed and who caused it. Property damage gets three years. Medical malpractice can be as short as one year from discovery. Claims against a city, county, or state agency require an administrative filing within just six months. Miss the window that applies to your situation and the case is almost always gone for good.

Two Years for Personal Injury and Wrongful Death

If someone’s carelessness causes you physical harm, you have two years to file a lawsuit under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1.¹ The clock usually starts on the date of the injury itself: the day of the car crash, the day you fell on the broken sidewalk, the day the dog bit you. Once two years pass, the defendant can ask the court to throw the case out, and the court will almost certainly agree.

The same two-year deadline covers wrongful death, but the clock starts on the date the person died rather than the date of the negligent act.¹ That distinction matters when a person lingers with injuries for months or years before dying. The surviving family’s two-year window doesn’t begin until the death occurs.

A common and expensive mistake: assuming the deadline pauses while you’re getting medical treatment or negotiating with an insurance adjuster. It doesn’t. The statute keeps running no matter what else is happening. Some adjusters will happily stretch negotiations past the two-year mark if you let them.

Three Years for Property Damage

When negligence damages your property instead of your body, you get an extra year. Code of Civil Procedure section 338 provides a three-year window for damage to real property like a house or commercial building, and for damage to personal property like a vehicle or equipment.²

A single accident can trigger both deadlines at once. If a driver hits your parked car while you’re sitting inside, you have two years to sue for your physical injuries but three years to sue for the damage to the car. Treating these as one unified deadline costs people cases. The injury claim expires a full year before the property claim does.

Section 338 also contains a three-year window for fraud or mistake, and that clock doesn’t start until you actually discover the fraud.² If a contractor uses substandard materials and hides it, your deadline runs from the date you found out, not the date the work was finished.

Medical Malpractice: One Year From Discovery, Three Years Outer Limit

Under Code of Civil Procedure section 340.5, a medical malpractice lawsuit must be filed within one year of discovering the injury or within three years of the date the negligent treatment occurred, whichever comes first.³ The three-year cap is unforgiving. If you don’t learn about a surgical error until four years later, you’re too late even though only moments have passed since you found out.

Three narrow exceptions can push past the three-year ceiling: proof that the provider committed fraud, evidence of intentional concealment, or a foreign object left inside your body that serves no medical purpose.³ Outside those situations, the three-year wall is firm.

Minors get different rules here. A child’s medical malpractice claim must be filed within three years of the negligent act. For children under six, the deadline extends to their eighth birthday if that gives them more time.³ The general rule that pauses deadlines for all minors until they turn 18 does not override this timeline.

Legal Malpractice: One Year From Discovery, Four Years Outer Limit

Code of Civil Procedure section 340.6 gives you one year from discovering an attorney’s error, or four years from the date the error happened, whichever comes first.⁴ The four-year outer limit is one year longer than the medical malpractice cap, reflecting the reality that legal errors often stay buried in case files for years.

The statute lists specific tolling events that pause the four-year clock, including periods when the attorney continues to represent you on the same matter in which the alleged malpractice occurred.⁴ That makes sense. You’re unlikely to sue your lawyer while they’re still handling your case.

Six Months for Claims Against California Government Agencies

Suing a city, county, or state agency in California is a two-step process with a deadline so short that many people miss it before they think about hiring a lawyer. Before filing a lawsuit, you must submit a written administrative claim to the responsible government body. For personal injury and property damage, that claim must be filed within six months of the incident.⁵ For other types of claims, the deadline is one year.

Once the agency rejects your claim in writing, you have six months from the date of that rejection notice to file a lawsuit in court.⁶ If the agency never sends a formal written rejection, you get two years from the date your cause of action arose.

Miss the six-month administrative deadline and one rescue valve remains. You can apply directly to the government entity for permission to file a late claim, but that application must be submitted within one year of the incident. If the agency denies the late-claim application, you can petition a court to override that denial within six months of the refusal.⁷ The court can grant relief if the delay resulted from mistake, inadvertence, or excusable neglect, or if the injured person was a minor or was physically or mentally incapacitated during the filing window.

A critical trap: the general tolling rules that pause deadlines for minors and incapacitated individuals in private lawsuits do not apply to government tort claims.⁸ A six-year-old injured by a city bus does not get to wait until age 18 to file the administrative claim. The six-month clock runs the same as it would for an adult, and only the late-claim petition process offers any flexibility.

Two Years for Federal Government Claims

When negligence involves a federal employee acting within the scope of their job, the Federal Tort Claims Act controls instead of California law. You must file a written administrative claim with the responsible federal agency within two years of the date the claim arises.⁹ Missing that two-year window permanently bars the claim.

The agency then has six months to investigate. If it denies your claim or fails to act within six months, you have six months from the date of the denial letter to file a lawsuit in federal court.¹⁰ No lawsuit can proceed at all until the administrative claim step is complete. This applies to accidents involving federal vehicles, injuries at Veterans Affairs hospitals, and incidents on military bases.

Construction Defects: The Ten-Year Outer Wall

Property damage from bad construction follows its own rules. California Code of Civil Procedure section 337.15 imposes a hard ten-year cutoff for claims against anyone who designed, built, or supervised construction of an improvement to real property.¹¹ This is a statute of repose, and it works differently from a standard statute of limitations. A regular limitations period starts when you discover the harm. A repose period starts when construction is substantially complete, whether or not any defect has surfaced.

The ten-year clock begins on whichever event happens first: the final inspection by a public agency, the recording of a notice of completion, the first use or occupancy of the improvement, or one year after work stops.¹¹ A “latent deficiency” under this statute is one that wouldn’t show up during a reasonable inspection. If a hidden plumbing defect causes water damage in year nine, you still have to file before year ten expires. Discover it in year eleven and the door is already closed.

The ten-year bar does not protect someone who committed willful misconduct or fraudulently concealed the defect.¹¹

When the Clock Pauses

Several doctrines can freeze or delay these deadlines. Tolling doesn’t erase the deadline; it pauses the clock and lets the remaining time resume once the condition ends.

The Discovery Rule

The most broadly applicable doctrine delays the start of the limitations period until you know, or reasonably should know, that you’ve been harmed and that someone’s negligence caused it. California applies this rule across many negligence categories, and it’s written directly into the medical and legal malpractice statutes.³ The test isn’t whether you had absolute proof. It’s whether a reasonable person in your position would have suspected something was wrong and looked into it. Once that threshold is met, the clock starts whether or not you actually investigate.

Minors

If a person entitled to bring a negligence claim is under 18 when injured, the time spent as a minor doesn’t count toward the deadline.⁸ A 15-year-old hurt in a bicycle collision would have until age 20 to file, since the two-year clock doesn’t start until the 18th birthday. This tolling does not apply to government claims, and medical malpractice has its own child-specific deadlines that override the general rule.

Mental Incapacity

The same tolling provision that protects minors also covers individuals who lack legal capacity to make decisions at the time the injury occurs.⁸ The incapacity must exist at the moment the cause of action first arises. If you were competent when the negligence happened and later became incapacitated, this tolling won’t help. Once the incapacity ends, the standard deadline resumes.

Active Military Service

Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, the entire period of active duty is excluded from any statute of limitations calculation.¹² The tolling is automatic. A servicemember doesn’t need to prove that military duties actually prevented filing, and it doesn’t matter whether they were deployed overseas or stationed domestically.

1
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 335.1 – Time of Commencing Actions
2
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 338 – Time of Commencing Actions
3
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 340.5 – Professional Negligence
4
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 340.6 – Actions Against Attorneys
5
California Legislative Information. California Government Code 911.2 – Presentation and Consideration of Claims
6
California Legislative Information. California Government Code 945.6
7
California Legislative Information. California Government Code 946.6
8
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 352
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2675 – Disposition by Federal Agency as Prerequisite
11
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 337.15
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations