If you were hurt in California by someone else's conduct, you generally have two years from the date of the injury to file a personal-injury lawsuit. The deadline comes from California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, and the clock starts on the date the harm occurred (or, in some cases, the date you reasonably should have discovered it). Miss the window and the courthouse door closes, even if the underlying case is strong.
That two-year number is the rule most California injury searches return. The pitfalls are everything around it: medical-malpractice has a different statute, a claim against a city or state agency has a six-month presentation deadline that comes long before any lawsuit, minors get tolling, and the discovery rule can stretch (or rarely shrink) the window. This post walks through what the two-year SOL really means in 2026, where the exceptions are, and the fact patterns we see trip people up most.
The default California PI window: two years under CCP 335.1
California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 sets a two-year statute of limitations for "an action for assault, battery, or injury to, or for the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another." It is the catch-all SOL for the vast majority of personal-injury cases in the state: car crashes, slip-and-falls, dog bites, premises liability, product-liability injuries, and most negligence claims.
The clock starts on the date of injury. For a car accident, that is usually the date of the crash. For a slip-and-fall, the date of the fall. For an injury that did not become apparent immediately, see the discovery-rule section below, which lets the clock start on the date you reasonably should have known.
California is a fault-based auto-insurance state, not a no-fault state. The injured party's path to recovery generally runs through the at-fault driver's insurer (or your own uninsured-motorist coverage if the at-fault driver was uninsured). That is a substantive point, not a deadline point, but it matters because it shapes who you are dealing with during the two-year window.
Exception one: claims against a government entity
This is the trap that turns a winnable case into a barred one. If your injury involves a public entity (a city bus, a county-owned property, a state vehicle, a public sidewalk, an injury at a public hospital), the California Tort Claims Act applies. Under Government Code section 911.2, you have to present a written claim to the public entity within six months of when the cause of action accrued. Six months. Not two years.
If the entity rejects the claim in writing, Government Code section 945.6 gives you six months from the rejection notice to file suit. If the entity does not respond, you have two years from accrual to file. The presentation deadline is the operative hard date, and getting it wrong is the most common way California PI cases die.
The claim has to comply with Government Code section 910's content requirements: the name and address of the claimant, the date and circumstances of the occurrence, a general description of the injury, the public entity employees involved if known, and the amount claimed if under $10,000 or a statement that the amount exceeds $10,000. Sloppy claim forms get rejected, and rejection starts a new short clock.
Exception two: medical malpractice (MICRA)
Medical-malpractice cases in California run under a completely different SOL set out in CCP section 340.5: the earlier of three years from the date of injury or one year from the date of discovery, whichever fires first. The three-year outer bound is the absolute cap for non-fraud cases; the one-year discovery clock runs from when the patient knew or reasonably should have known of the negligent act and the resulting injury.
CCP section 364 also requires the plaintiff to deliver a written 90-day notice of intent to sue before filing. The 90-day notice does not extend the SOL; it is a procedural prerequisite. If you serve the notice within 90 days of the SOL expiration, the SOL gets a 90-day extension under section 364(d), but otherwise it does not.
The MICRA damage cap changed in 2023. AB 35 (2022) raised the long-static $250,000 non-economic damages cap to $350,000 for non-death cases and $500,000 for wrongful-death cases starting January 1, 2023, with annual step-ups through 2033, after which the cap indexes at 2% per year. The amended cap lives in Civil Code section 3333.2. For a 2026 medical-malpractice injury, the applicable cap is the step-up figure for the year of judgment, not the year of injury.
Exception three: minors
If the injured party is under 18, the SOL is tolled until the 18th birthday under CCP section 352. A child injured at age 10 in a car crash has until age 20 to file a personal-injury lawsuit. There are exceptions to the exception (the most important being that the minor-tolling rule does NOT apply to a California Tort Claims Act presentation deadline against a government entity, which still must be presented within six months even when the injured party is a child). Parents and guardians of an injured minor cannot wait until the child turns 18 to act if a public entity is on the other side of the matter.
Exception four: the discovery rule
The discovery rule lets the SOL clock start running on the date the plaintiff reasonably should have discovered the injury, rather than the date the underlying act occurred. It comes up most often in toxic-exposure cases, surgical-instrument-left-behind cases, and latent-injury cases where the harm did not become apparent for months or years.
The standard is objective. The clock starts when a reasonable person in the plaintiff's position would have known of the injury and its negligent cause. It does not start when the plaintiff actually knew, if a reasonable person would have figured it out earlier. The discovery rule is a meaningful tool in the right fact pattern and a dangerous one to rely on without a lawyer's read of the facts.
What California's pure-comparative-fault rule means for your case
California is one of a small number of states that follows pure comparative fault, established by the California Supreme Court in Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 13 Cal.3d 804 (1975). Recovery is reduced by the plaintiff's own percentage of fault, but it is never barred outright. A plaintiff found 75% at fault still recovers 25% of damages. (Compare that to a "modified" comparative-fault state where a plaintiff 51% or more at fault recovers nothing, or a "contributory" state where 1% at fault bars recovery entirely.)
The practical effect: California defense lawyers and insurers will spend energy trying to put fault on the plaintiff because every percentage point matters. They are not trying to break 50%. They are trying to drive your recovery percentage down. Document the scene, the conditions, the other party's conduct, and your own conduct as cleanly as possible from day one. Photographs, statements, and contemporaneous records do most of the work later.
A common fact pattern that trips up California injury claimants
Here is one we see often. A driver is rear-ended at a red light. Mild soreness the first day, worse the next, an emergency-room visit the day after that. The other driver's insurer calls within a week, offers $3,000 to "close it out," and asks for a signed release. The injured driver, focused on getting back to work, signs.
Two months later the soreness has not gone away. An MRI shows a herniated disc. Surgery, lost wages, the whole second-order injury cascade follows. The two-year SOL has not run, but the signed release has already closed the case. Insurers know the early-release tactic works because injuries declare themselves on their own timeline, not on the insurer's.
Two takeaways: do not sign any release until you have a clear picture of your injury (most lawyers will say to wait until you've reached "maximum medical improvement"), and do not assume the SOL is your only deadline. The release closes the case the day you sign it.
Other California-specific PI rules worth knowing
Dog bites. California Civil Code section 3342 imposes strict liability on dog owners for bite injuries when the victim was in a public place or lawfully on private property, regardless of the dog's prior history. The two-year SOL under CCP 335.1 applies. For child victims, the minor-tolling rule applies.
Wrongful death. The two-year SOL under CCP 335.1 also covers wrongful-death actions, running from the date of death. Statutory standing is defined in CCP section 377.60. If the underlying claim is medical malpractice, the MICRA window in CCP 340.5 governs instead.
Premises liability and slip-and-fall. The two-year general SOL applies. The premises-owner duty analysis runs under Rowland v. Christian, the 1968 California Supreme Court decision that replaced the older invitee/licensee/trespasser categories with a single reasonableness-based balancing test.
How the LawSensai Personal Injury Recovery Center helps with California matters
We built the Recovery Center to handle the day-one organizational work in a California PI case so that nothing falls through the cracks during the two-year window. We document the incident through a calm, save-and-resume intake, build a medical-and-evidence timeline, and surface every applicable deadline, including the six-month Tort Claims Act presentation deadline when a public entity is involved, the MICRA one-year discovery clock, and the underlying CCP 335.1 two-year window. When the matter is well-documented and ready, we route it to a verified personal-injury attorney licensed in California. Start your California intake here.
We are not a law firm and we do not give legal advice. We are the file-organization and deadline-surfacing layer that sits in front of a real attorney.
Personal injury statute of limitations in other states
Each state has its own SOL window, government-notice deadline, comparative-fault regime, and case-type quirks. The deep-dive posts here cover the ten highest-volume jurisdictions. The full LawSensai PI Recovery Center routes 50-state coverage at /personal-injury.
- Texas (CPRC 16.003, TTCA 6-month notice, 51% bar)
- Florida (HB 837 2-year SOL, no-fault PIP)
- New York (CPLR 214(5), 90-day GML notice, serious-injury threshold)
- Illinois (1-year SOL for local public entities under the Tort Immunity Act)
- Pennsylvania (MVFRL limited tort, MCARE 7-year repose)
- Ohio (1-year medmal SOL, 180-day letter)
- Georgia (Tiered ante-litem notice, 50% comparative-fault bar)
- North Carolina (Pure contributory negligence)
- Michigan (No-fault threshold, 1-year PIP)
Informational only
LawSensai is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. The information in this post is general and does not account for your specific facts. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this post or by using the Personal Injury Recovery Center. Deadlines, exceptions, and procedural rules vary by case type and by the parties involved; verify your specific situation with a licensed attorney in California before relying on any window described here.
Last verified: 2026-06-03.