Two years for most injury claims
Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 gives you two years from the date of injury to file a lawsuit for personal injury or wrongful death. For a crash, that generally runs from the date of the collision. For a wrongful death claim, it generally runs from the date of death rather than the date of the injury that caused it.
Two things about this deadline are regularly misunderstood. It is a deadline to file a lawsuit in court, not to notify an insurance company or open a claim. And nothing an adjuster does stops the clock. You can be in active, friendly negotiation on day 729 and still lose the claim entirely on day 731.
Property damage is separate and longer: three years under CCP 338. That is why a vehicle damage claim can be resolved on its own track while an injury claim is still open.
Six months against a government entity
This is the deadline that destroys the most otherwise-viable California claims, and it is short enough that people routinely blow it before they have finished physical therapy.
Under Government Code section 911.2, a claim against a public entity generally requires a written administrative claim filed with that entity within six months of the incident. Only after the entity rejects the claim, or is deemed to have rejected it, does a lawsuit become possible, and after a written rejection you generally have six months to sue.
The range of situations this covers is wider than most people expect:
- A collision with a city, county or state vehicle, including police and fire.
- A transit bus, or an injury as a bus passenger.
- A dangerous condition of public property under Government Code section 835: a pothole, a badly designed intersection, a failed traffic signal, an unlit street, a missing guardrail, a broken sidewalk.
- A government employee driving on the job in their own car.
- A public hospital, a public school district, a community college, a public university.
- A publicly operated toll road or transportation authority.
There is a late-claim procedure for applications made within a year in defined circumstances, and it is discretionary and frequently denied. It is a salvage operation, not a plan. If anything about your injury involves a government entity, the operative deadline is six months and the case needs to start immediately.
The uninsured motorist deadline
A claim against your own insurer for uninsured or underinsured motorist benefits is a contract claim, and Insurance Code section 11580.2 imposes its own requirement that operates differently from the ordinary statute of limitations.
Generally, within two years of the date of the accident, you must have done one of three specific things: filed a lawsuit against the uninsured or underinsured driver, reached a written agreement with your insurer on the amount owed, or formally demanded arbitration under the policy.
Negotiating with your adjuster is not one of the three. Having an open and active claim is not one of the three. This is the deadline we see missed by people who did everything they thought they were supposed to do, including staying in regular contact with their own insurance company for nearly two years. If you are approaching the two-year mark with an unresolved UM or UIM claim, that is urgent.
The other deadlines
Injured children
Under CCP 352, the statute is tolled while a person is under 18, so a minor's two-year period generally runs from the 18th birthday. Important exceptions: claims against public entities still require the six-month administrative claim, and medical malpractice claims involving minors follow their own rules.
Medical malpractice
CCP 340.5 sets one year from when you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the injury, and in no event more than three years from the date of injury. There is also a notice requirement before filing.
Delayed discovery
Some claims accrue when the injury is or should have been discovered rather than when the negligent act occurred. This arises with latent injuries and misdiagnosis rather than with crashes, where the injury date is obvious.
Defendants who leave the state
CCP 351 tolls the statute while a defendant is absent from California, though the rule has constitutional limits in cases involving interstate commerce and should not be relied on as a plan.
Dram shop and product claims
Product liability injury claims generally follow the two-year personal injury period. Claims involving alcohol service are narrow in California under Business and Professions Code section 25602 and Civil Code section 1714, and run on the same two-year clock.
Why the deadline is the wrong thing to plan around
Every deadline on this page is the outer limit of when a claim can be brought. None of them is when a claim should be started, because the evidence decays on a completely different and much faster schedule.
- Surveillance video: commonly overwritten in 14 to 30 days, sometimes less.
- Commercial truck electronic logs and engine data: short retention cycles, with no duty to preserve until someone demands it in writing.
- Vehicle event data recorders: usually lost when a car is repaired or sold for salvage.
- Road hazards: frequently repaired within days of a reported crash, which is also the evidence in a dangerous-condition claim.
- Witnesses: phone numbers change, and visitors go home.
- Skid marks and debris: gone with the next rain.
A case started at two months is a different case from the same case started at eighteen months, even though both are inside the statute.
Reviewed October 2026. General information about California law, not legal advice. Statutes and case law change; confirm anything you intend to rely on.