How Long Do You Have to File a Claim?

General Personal Injury Deadlines, by State

Direct Answer: Among the four states covered on this site, the general personal injury deadline is 2 years in California, Texas and Florida, and 3 years in New York. These figures are for ordinary negligence claims only — medical malpractice, product liability and wrongful death often run on a different clock within the same state.

Don't see your state? The rule still exists — it just isn't one of the four this site currently covers in full. An attorney licensed in your state can confirm the exact period and when it starts running.

The Deadline Within the Deadline: Claims Against the Government

Direct Answer: If your claim is against a city, county, state agency, public school, transit authority or other government body, the general personal injury deadline above usually does not apply. Most states require formal written notice of the claim within a much shorter window — sometimes as little as 90 days — as a condition of being allowed to sue at all.

This trips people up because the underlying injury looks identical to any other personal injury claim — a fall on a public sidewalk, a collision with a city bus, an injury at a public school — but the entity responsible is protected by sovereign immunity unless the claimant follows a specific notice procedure, on a specific timetable, that has nothing to do with the general statute of limitations.

Texas is a particular trap: the state default is 6 months, but many home-rule cities set a shorter notice period by their own charter or ordinance. Always check the specific city's rule, not just the state statute, before assuming you have 6 months.

Why the Deadline Can Be Later Than the Injury Date

Most general personal injury claims run from the date of the injury. Some claim types instead apply a "discovery rule," running the clock from when the injury was, or reasonably should have been, discovered — relevant where harm isn't immediately obvious, such as some medical malpractice or latent product-defect cases. Whether a discovery rule applies, and how it interacts with a separate statute of repose (an outer limit that can bar a claim even if it was not yet discovered), is claim-type- and state-specific — check the rule for your actual claim rather than assuming either the injury date or discovery controls.