How long you have to sue someone depends on the type of claim and the state where you file, but most civil lawsuits must be brought within one to six years of the event that gave rise to them. Personal injury cases commonly run two or three years. Contract disputes stretch longer. Claims against a government entity can require formal notice within as little as 90 days. Miss the deadline, called the statute of limitations, and a court will almost certainly dismiss your case regardless of how strong the facts are.
Deadlines by Type of Claim
Every state sets its own filing windows, and they vary by the kind of case. The ranges below reflect the spread across the fifty states.
Personal injury. Car accidents, slip-and-fall incidents, assaults, and similar harms carry deadlines ranging from one to six years. Most states land at two or three years from the date of injury.
Wrongful death. When someone dies because of another person’s negligence or intentional act, surviving family members usually have one to three years, with two years being most common. The clock typically runs from the date of death.
Medical malpractice. Healthcare negligence claims tend to have shorter deadlines, usually one to three years. Many states also impose an outer cap called a statute of repose, which cuts off the right to sue after a fixed number of years from the procedure or treatment even if you haven’t yet discovered the injury. A state might allow two years from discovery but cap total time at seven or eight years from the procedure itself.
Breach of contract. For the sale of goods, the Uniform Commercial Code sets a default four-year deadline from the date of breach, though parties can shorten that to as little as one year by agreement.1Legal Information Institute. U.C.C. 2-725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale Other written contracts, such as service agreements or leases, get four to ten years depending on the state. Oral contracts get a shorter window, typically two to three years.
Property damage. Damage to a car, home, or other belongings usually carries a deadline of two to four years from the date the damage occurred.
Fraud. Civil fraud claims run two to six years depending on the state. Because fraud involves deception, the clock in most states doesn’t start until you discovered the fraud or reasonably should have discovered it.
Defamation. Libel and slander have some of the shortest deadlines in civil law, typically one to three years, running from when the false statement was first published or spoken.
When the Clock Starts
Knowing the length of the deadline is only half the calculation. The other half is figuring out when it began. The default rule is straightforward: the deadline begins on the date the injury or harmful event occurred. In a car accident, that’s the day of the collision. For a broken contract, it’s the day the other party failed to perform.
Some injuries aren’t obvious when they happen, and the law accounts for that through the discovery rule. Under this principle, the clock doesn’t start until you knew or reasonably should have known about both the injury and its cause. Medical malpractice is the classic example. If a surgeon leaves an instrument inside you during an operation, you might not experience symptoms for years, and the deadline would begin when you discover the problem rather than on the date of surgery.
The discovery rule doesn’t apply to every type of claim. Defamation follows a single publication rule in most jurisdictions: the clock starts when the statement is first published, even if it stays online and you don’t see it until much later. Each new view of a website doesn’t restart the deadline.
What Can Pause the Deadline
Even after the clock starts running, certain circumstances can freeze it temporarily. The legal term is tolling. It doesn’t reset the deadline; it pauses the countdown and then lets it resume where it left off.
Age and Mental Capacity
If the injured person is a minor, the statute of limitations is paused until they turn 18. A five-year-old hurt in a car accident doesn’t lose the right to sue just because the case wasn’t filed by the time the child was eight. A similar rule applies when someone is mentally incapacitated: the clock pauses until capacity is restored.
Defendant Evasion and Fraudulent Concealment
If the person you need to sue leaves the state or actively hides to avoid being served, courts can pause the deadline until they can be located. A related doctrine, fraudulent concealment, applies when a defendant deliberately hides wrongdoing. A contractor who conceals shoddy structural work behind drywall is the standard example. To invoke this doctrine you generally must show the defendant took active steps to conceal the problem, you didn’t know about your claim, and reasonable diligence wouldn’t have uncovered it sooner.
Active-Duty Military Service
Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, time spent on active duty doesn’t count toward any statute of limitations, whether the servicemember is suing or being sued.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 U.S. Code 3936 – Statute of Limitations The one exception is federal tax deadlines, which are not paused by military service.
Tolling Agreements
The parties themselves can sometimes agree to pause the clock. A tolling agreement is a written contract in which both sides suspend the deadline, usually to allow time for settlement talks or investigation without the pressure of a looming filing date. These agreements need to spell out which claims are covered, the exact tolling period, and what happens when the agreement expires.
Suing the Government Is Different
Deadlines are shorter and more procedurally complex when the defendant is a government entity. This is where people most often lose cases they could have won.
Federal Government
If your claim is against the United States or a federal employee acting in an official capacity, the Federal Tort Claims Act controls. You can’t go straight to court. You must first file a written administrative claim with the responsible federal agency within two years of the date your claim arose.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States Skip this step and a court will dismiss your lawsuit automatically. Once the agency denies your claim in writing, you have six months to file suit in federal court.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2675 – Disposition by Federal Agency as Prerequisite If the agency sits on your claim for more than six months without responding, you can treat that silence as a denial and go to court.
State and Local Government
Most states and municipalities require a formal notice of claim before you can sue, and the deadlines are often shockingly short. In many jurisdictions, you must submit written notice to the government entity within 90 days of the incident. Miss the notice deadline and you’re typically barred from suing at all, even if the underlying statute of limitations hasn’t expired. The notice usually must be in writing, contain specific details about the incident, and be delivered by certified mail. After satisfying the notice requirement, you still face a separate deadline to file the actual lawsuit, which is often shorter than the standard period for private-party claims.
Federal Claims With Their Own Deadlines
Several federal statutes create filing windows that operate independently of state deadlines, and they tend to be tight.
Employment discrimination. Before suing an employer for discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin, age, or disability, you must first file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The deadline is 180 days from the discriminatory act, extended to 300 days if your state has its own anti-discrimination enforcement agency, which most do.5U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits for Filing a Charge After the EEOC investigates and issues a right-to-sue letter, you have 90 days to file your lawsuit.6U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Filing a Lawsuit Courts enforce that 90-day window strictly.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 2000e-5 – Enforcement Provisions
Debt collection violations. If a debt collector violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act through harassment, deception, or other abusive practices, you have one year from the date of the violation to file suit.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1692k – Civil Liability The Supreme Court has confirmed that the clock starts when the violation happens, not when you discover it.
Federal tax refund claims. If you overpaid your taxes and want a refund, the IRS generally gives you three years from the date you filed the return, or two years from the date you paid the tax, whichever is later.9Internal Revenue Service. Time You Can Claim a Credit or Refund After that window closes, the money stays with the government regardless of whether you were owed it.
What Happens If You Miss the Deadline
The consequence is blunt: you lose the case. If you file after the statute of limitations has expired, the defendant can ask the court to dismiss the lawsuit, and courts grant that request almost without exception. The strength of your evidence, the severity of the harm, and the clarity of the defendant’s fault are all irrelevant once the deadline passes.
Technically, the statute of limitations is an affirmative defense, meaning the defendant has to raise it. A court won’t dismiss your late case on its own. In practice, no competent defense attorney fails to check the filing date, so counting on the oversight is not a strategy.
Once a case is dismissed on statute of limitations grounds, the claim is permanently dead. You can’t refile it elsewhere, and you lose any meaningful leverage for settlement. If you think you may have a claim, the safest move is to identify your deadline early and file well before it, not right up against it.