The Ohio personal injury statute of limitations gives you two years from the date of the injury to file most lawsuits, but that window drops to one year for medical malpractice and for intentional harms like assault and battery. The clock usually starts on the date you were hurt, and missing the deadline almost always ends the case regardless of how strong it would have been on the facts.
The Two-Year Default
Ohio Revised Code Section 2305.10 sets a two-year deadline for lawsuits involving bodily injury or damage to personal property.1Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 2305.10 – Bodily Injury or Injury to Personal Property This is the deadline that governs the claims most people picture when they think about personal injury: car crashes, slip-and-falls, dog bites, and general negligence.
The two years runs from the date the injury occurs, not from the date you hire a lawyer or finish medical treatment. A car accident on March 15 produces a filing deadline of March 15 two years later. Waiting until the final weeks of that window puts even a strong claim at risk, because gathering medical records, investigating the facts, and drafting a complaint all take time.
The One-Year Claims: Medical Malpractice and Assault
Two important categories run on a much tighter one-year timeline. Confusing them with the general rule is one of the costliest mistakes an injured person can make.
Medical Malpractice
Claims against doctors, dentists, optometrists, and chiropractors must be filed within one year after the cause of action accrues. If you send the healthcare provider written notice of a possible lawsuit before that one-year period expires, you get an additional 180 days from the date of the notice to file.2Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Revised Code 2305-113 – Medical Malpractice Actions That notice can buy critical time when you are still waiting on records or a second opinion.
Ohio also imposes a four-year statute of repose on medical malpractice. No matter when the injury is discovered, you cannot sue more than four years after the act or omission that caused it. The one exception involves a foreign object left in the body: you have one year from the date you discovered it or should have discovered it, even if that falls outside the four-year window.2Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Revised Code 2305-113 – Medical Malpractice Actions
Assault and Battery
If someone intentionally harms you, the deadline is one year from the date the assault or battery occurred.3Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 2305.111 – Assault or Battery; Childhood Sexual Abuse It feels counterintuitive that a deliberate act carries a shorter deadline than a negligent one, but Ohio treats these as distinct causes of action with their own statutory clock. If you didn’t know who attacked you at the time, the clock starts when you learn the attacker’s identity or when you reasonably should have.
Wrongful Death
When someone dies because of another party’s wrongful act, the personal representative of the estate has two years from the date of death to file.4Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 2125.02 – Parties; Damages The clock runs from the death, not from the underlying injury. If someone is hurt in January and dies from those injuries in June, the two years starts in June.
Wrongful death claims belong to the estate, not to individual family members, so an estate representative has to be appointed before the lawsuit can be filed. That probate process takes time and should be started early.
When the Clock Starts
For most personal injury claims, the limitations period begins on the date of the injury. That is straightforward when the harm is obvious and immediate. Ohio does recognize a discovery rule in narrow circumstances, but it does not apply across the board.
Under ORC 2305.10(B), the deadline for injuries caused by exposure to hazardous chemicals, certain drugs, or medical devices begins when a medical professional tells you the injury is connected to the exposure, or when you should have made that connection through reasonable diligence.1Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 2305.10 – Bodily Injury or Injury to Personal Property For a standard car accident or slip-and-fall, the discovery rule generally does not delay the start of the clock. If you are dealing with a straightforward accident, do not count on the discovery rule to rescue a late filing.
Medical malpractice has its own discovery provision. If you couldn’t reasonably have discovered the injury within three years of the error but do discover it before the four-year repose period expires, you get one year from that discovery to file.2Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Revised Code 2305-113 – Medical Malpractice Actions Even this narrow extension still cannot push past the four-year outer boundary, except in the foreign-object scenario.
When the Clock Pauses
Some circumstances stop the statute of limitations from running at all. Ohio recognizes three main categories.
Minors
If you were under eighteen when you were injured, the statute of limitations does not begin running until your eighteenth birthday.5Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 2305.16 – Tolling Due to Minority or Unsound Mind A child injured at age ten in a car accident would have until age twenty to file a general personal injury claim. Parents or guardians can and often should file sooner, since evidence and memories fade.
Unsound Mind
A person who is of unsound mind when the cause of action accrues gets the same protection. The limitations period stays frozen until the disability is removed, at which point the standard deadline begins.5Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 2305.16 – Tolling Due to Minority or Unsound Mind The term covers cognitive impairments and mental health conditions severe enough to prevent someone from understanding and pursuing their legal rights.
Active Military Service
Federal law adds another pause. Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, the period of a servicemember’s active duty is excluded from the limitations calculation.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations If six months of your two-year window had run before you were called to active duty, the remaining eighteen months would be waiting when you returned. The protection covers actions brought by or against the servicemember.
Suing a Government Entity
Claims against the state must be filed in the Ohio Court of Claims within two years of accrual, or within any shorter period that applies to similar claims between private parties. A medical malpractice claim against a state hospital would still carry the one-year deadline. The tolling rules for minors and people of unsound mind still apply.7Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 2743.16 – Statute of Limitations for Actions Against the State
Claims against cities, townships, counties, and other political subdivisions must be brought within two years under ORC Chapter 2744.8Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Revised Code Chapter 2744 – Political Subdivision Tort Liability Ohio does not add a separate pre-lawsuit notice-of-claim requirement for political subdivisions, which is unusual compared to many other states.
Product Liability: A Hard Ten-Year Ceiling
Tolling and discovery rules can extend your time to file in most contexts, but Ohio’s product liability statute of repose creates an absolute outer boundary. Under ORC 2305.10(C), no product liability claim can be brought against a manufacturer or supplier more than ten years after the product was delivered to its first purchaser or lessee.1Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 2305.10 – Bodily Injury or Injury to Personal Property It does not matter when the defect was discovered or when symptoms appeared. If ten years have passed since the product entered the stream of commerce, the claim is gone. A statute of repose differs from a statute of limitations in exactly this way: limitations periods can be paused, repose periods cannot.
The Saving Statute
Sometimes a lawsuit gets dismissed for reasons unrelated to the merits, such as a failure of service or a procedural defect. Ohio’s saving statute, ORC 2305.19, allows a plaintiff to refile within one year of the dismissal or within the original limitations period, whichever is later.9Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 2305.19 – New Action After Reversal or Failure The same one-year refiling right applies when a judgment in your favor is reversed on appeal.
The saving statute is a real safety net, but it only works when the original case was filed on time and then dismissed on procedural grounds. It does nothing for a claim that was never filed within the statute of limitations to begin with.
What Happens If You Miss the Deadline
File after the statute of limitations expires and the defendant will raise it as a defense. The court will dismiss the case. That is true even when the injuries are severe, fault is obvious, and the evidence is overwhelming. There is no general good-cause exception that lets a judge overlook a missed deadline.
The dismissal is permanent. You cannot refile the same claim, try a different court, or repackage the lawsuit under a different legal theory to work around the expired deadline. The only remaining path would be a legal malpractice claim against an attorney who failed to file on time, which is a separate lawsuit with its own one-year deadline. If a deadline is anywhere near, contacting a lawyer is the most urgent thing you can do.