California statute of limitations

This table is the fast answer. Each period is followed by the code section it comes from. Personal-injury periods are stamped Exact because we verify them against the statute every quarter; the others are cited to the controlling section and were confirmed July 2026.

Most California injury claims run two years from the date of the wrongful act, under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 — "an action for assault, battery, or injury to, or for the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another." The two-year clock is the same for car, motorcycle, bicycle, pedestrian, and truck accidents, slip-and-falls, dog bites, and defective-product injuries, because all of them are negligence claims governed by the one statute.

The clock normally starts on the date of the injury — not when treatment ends and not while you are negotiating with an insurer. That last point is the single most common way people lose a valid claim: the insurance conversation feels like progress while the filing deadline quietly runs out underneath it.

The discovery rule. When an injury could not reasonably have been discovered right away — a surgical error, a toxic exposure that surfaces years later — the two years can run instead from the date you knew or should have known you were harmed. This is the exception, not the rule; for an ordinary accident, the date of the accident is the date the clock starts.

You have one year from discovering the injury, or three years from the injury itself, whichever comes first. Medical malpractice has its own deadline under § 340.5: the sooner of one year from when you discovered (or should have discovered) the injury, or three years from the injury itself. Fraud, intentional concealment, or a foreign object left in the body can extend the three-year outer limit. Claims for a minor generally follow the same three-year rule, with special provisions for children under six.

Most debt in California has a four-year deadline. A written contract — which includes nearly all credit-card debt, personal loans, and installment agreements — carries a four-year deadline under § 337. The clock generally starts on the date of your first missed payment. An oral contract is two years (§ 339). A court judgment can be enforced for ten years and renewed (§ 337.5).

One practical warning the statute doesn't spell out: making a payment or acknowledging the debt in writing can restart the four-year clock. If you are being contacted about an old debt, that is worth understanding before you respond.

You have just six months to file a claim against a government entity in California. If your injury involved a city, county, the state, a public transit agency, a public hospital, or a government employee on the job, the ordinary two-year rule does not apply first. You must present a written claim to the public entity within six months of the injury under Government Code § 911.2. Miss that, and the right to sue is generally extinguished before the two-year lawsuit deadline ever matters. This is the shortest and most dangerous deadline on the page.

A statute of limitations is an affirmative defense. If you file late, the defendant raises the expired deadline, and the court must dismiss the case — regardless of how clear the liability or how serious the injury. Insurers know these dates precisely. A handful of narrow exceptions can pause the clock: the plaintiff was a minor or legally incapacitated, the defendant left California, or the discovery rule applies. None of them are safe to rely on without legal advice.

Each period above is cited to the controlling California code section and was verified against the official statute on July 12, 2026. Primary source: the California Legislature's official code (leginfo.legislature.ca.gov). Personal-injury periods are additionally cross-checked every quarter and stamped Exact in the calculator.