California Statute of Limitations: Civil, Criminal, and Tolling

The California statute of limitations sets the deadline for filing a civil lawsuit or bringing criminal charges, and it varies sharply by the type of claim. Personal injury runs two years. Property damage and fraud run three. Written contracts get four years, oral contracts two. Defamation is just one year. Claims against a city, county, or state agency require an administrative filing within six months. And at the far end, murder and certain sex offenses have no deadline at all. Miss the applicable date, even by a day, and the case is almost always gone.

Civil Filing Deadlines by Claim Type

Every civil claim has its own clock, its own starting trigger, and its own set of exceptions. The sections below cover the deadlines people ask about most.

Personal Injury, Assault, and Wrongful Death

California gives you two years to file a lawsuit for physical harm caused by someone else’s wrongful act or negligence. That same window covers assault, battery, and wrongful death.¹ The clock starts on the date of the injury, not the date you hire a lawyer or figure out who was at fault. A car crash on March 15, 2025 carries a filing deadline of March 15, 2027.

Property Damage and Fraud

Damage to your property gets an extra year. Under Code of Civil Procedure Section 338, you have three years to sue for harm to real or personal property, whether that means a totaled car, a damaged fence, or structural harm from a neighbor’s negligence.²

Fraud claims fall under the same three-year statute with an important twist. The clock doesn’t start when the fraud happens; it starts when you discover, or reasonably should have discovered, the facts behind it.² Someone who forges your signature in 2024 that you don’t find out about until 2026 has until 2029 to sue.

Breach of Contract and Debt

Written contracts carry a four-year statute of limitations beginning when the breach occurs, such as the day a payment is missed or a delivery fails to arrive.³ Oral contracts get only two years.⁴ The shorter window reflects the reality that memories of spoken promises fade quickly.

Contracts for the sale of goods follow the Uniform Commercial Code. UCC Section 2-725 sets a four-year deadline running from the date of breach, regardless of whether the buyer knows. The parties can agree in the original contract to shorten that period to as little as one year, but they cannot extend it.⁵

Medical Malpractice

Medical negligence claims operate under tighter deadlines than standard injury cases. Code of Civil Procedure Section 340.5 requires filing within one year after you discover, or should have discovered, the injury, with an absolute outer limit of three years from the date the injury actually occurred. Whichever deadline arrives first controls.⁶

Three narrow exceptions can push the three-year ceiling further out: proof that the provider committed fraud, intentionally concealed the error, or left a foreign object such as a surgical sponge inside the patient’s body.⁶ Outside those situations, the three-year wall holds even if the patient had no way to know about the mistake. This is where malpractice cases routinely die.

Defamation

Libel and slander carry one of the shortest deadlines in California civil law: one year from the date the statement is made. Code of Civil Procedure Section 340(c) covers both written defamation (libel) and spoken defamation (slander).⁷ Because social media posts and online reviews create a permanent record, the publication date can become contested, but the year runs from when the statement first appears.

Construction Defects

Construction defect claims are governed by a statute of repose, an absolute outer deadline that runs regardless of when you discover the problem. Under Code of Civil Procedure Section 337.15, no lawsuit for a latent construction defect can be filed more than ten years after substantial completion of the improvement. Once ten years pass, the claim is dead even if the defect has just surfaced. Tolling and discovery rules generally cannot override this cutoff.

Suing a California Government Entity: The Six-Month Trap

Suing a California city, county, school district, or state agency follows a completely different process with a much shorter fuse. Before you can file a lawsuit, you must first submit a written administrative claim to the entity. Without that claim, a court will throw out your lawsuit.⁸

The deadline is severe. Six months from the date of the incident for personal injury, wrongful death, or property damage. One year for all other claims against a government entity.⁹ This is the deadline most likely to blindside people. Someone injured in a fall on a broken city sidewalk has six months to file, not the two years they would get against a private property owner. Missing that window almost always kills the case.

Childhood Sexual Abuse

California eliminated the statute of limitations for childhood sexual assault claims arising from conduct on or after January 1, 2024. Under Code of Civil Procedure Section 340.1, survivors can bring civil actions against the perpetrator and against any person or entity whose wrongful, negligent, or intentional acts contributed to the abuse, with no filing deadline whatsoever. For assaults that occurred before that date, the filing deadline is governed by the version of the law in effect on December 31, 2023. Survivors with older claims should consult an attorney to determine which version applies.

Criminal Prosecution Deadlines

The government’s power to prosecute crimes also faces time limits, though the most serious offenses have none at all.

Misdemeanors

Prosecutors have one year to file charges for most misdemeanor offenses. Penal Code Section 802 starts the clock on the date the crime is committed, and once a year passes without charges, the prosecution is barred.¹⁰

Felonies

Most felonies carry a three-year prosecution window under Penal Code Section 801.¹¹ Felonies punishable by eight or more years in state prison get six years under Penal Code Section 800.¹² The distinction matters for crimes like robbery and certain drug offenses that fall in that middle severity range.

Crimes With No Deadline

Penal Code Section 799 removes the statute of limitations entirely for the most serious offenses. Murder and any other crime punishable by death or life imprisonment can be prosecuted at any time. The same rule covers embezzlement of public money. Since 2017, California has also eliminated the time limit for specified felony sex offenses, including rape and sexual abuse of a child.¹³

Discovery Rule for Financial Crimes

Financial crimes often go undetected for years, and California law accounts for that. Penal Code Section 803(c) delays the start of the criminal clock for felonies where fraud or breach of a fiduciary duty is a key element. The list includes grand theft, forgery, falsification of public records, bribery, welfare fraud, insurance fraud, and Medi-Cal fraud. For these crimes, the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the offense is actually discovered.¹⁴ An embezzlement scheme that runs quietly for a decade doesn’t get a free pass.

When the Clock Pauses or Starts Late

Several situations can delay the start of a deadline or pause one already running. These rules exist because rigid deadlines would sometimes punish people for circumstances beyond their control.

The Discovery Rule

The most common reason a clock starts late is that the injured person didn’t know about the harm. California courts have long held that a cause of action does not accrue until the plaintiff discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, the injury and its cause. Once a person has enough information to suspect wrongdoing and investigate, the clock starts, even if they don’t yet know every detail needed to prove the case. Specific statutes also codify discovery-based start dates for fraud under Section 338(d)² and medical malpractice under Section 340.5.⁶

Minors and Incapacitated Persons

Code of Civil Procedure Section 352 pauses the statute of limitations for plaintiffs who are minors (under 18) or lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs at the time the claim arises. The clock stays frozen until the person turns 18 or regains capacity.¹⁵ A child injured at age five doesn’t lose the right to sue because no adult filed on their behalf; the normal deadline begins once they turn 18.

Incarceration

Under Code of Civil Procedure Section 352.1, a person incarcerated when a civil cause of action accrues gets tolling of up to two years. Time in prison does not count against the statute of limitations, capped at two years regardless of sentence length. Only people serving a term less than life qualify.

Active Military Service

The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act pauses the statute of limitations on any civil action by or against a person on active military duty. The entire period of service is excluded from the filing clock, and this protection applies in every state and federal court and before state administrative agencies.¹⁶ Tolling does not apply to IRS deadlines under the internal revenue code.

Equitable Tolling

Even without a statutory pause, courts can extend a deadline through equitable tolling if the plaintiff shows two things: that they diligently pursued their rights, and that some extraordinary circumstance beyond their control prevented timely filing. Examples include a defendant who insists on arbitration and then refuses to participate, a case that must be refiled for technical reasons, or a defendant who actively induced the plaintiff to delay. Courts grant this sparingly.

Defendant Absent From California

Code of Civil Procedure Section 351 provides that if the person who wronged you leaves California, time spent out of state does not count toward the statute of limitations. Modern courts have substantially narrowed this rule. The Ninth Circuit has ruled it unconstitutional as applied to interstate commerce cases, and the California Law Revision Commission has recommended its repeal.¹⁷ It also does not apply to corporations or limited partnerships. Relying on Section 351 to save an otherwise expired claim is risky, and treating it as a dependable safety net would be a mistake.

1
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 335.1 – Two Years, Actions for Assault, Battery, or Injury to, or for Death of, Individual Caused by Wrongful Act or Neglect
2
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 338
3
CaseMine. California Code of Civil Procedure 337 – Of the Time of Commencing Civil Actions
4
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 339
5
Legal Information Institute. UCC 2-725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale
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California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 340.5
7
Justia. CACI No. 1722 – Affirmative Defense – Statute of Limitations
8
California Legislative Information. California Government Code 945.4
9
California Legislative Information. California Government Code 911.2
10
California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 802 – Limitation of Time for Commencement of Prosecution for Misdemeanors
11
California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 801 – Prosecution for Felony
12
California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 800
13
California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 799
14
California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 803
15
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 352
16
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations
17
California Law Revision Commission. Tolling Statute of Limitations When Defendant Is Out of State