Tennessee’s statute of limitations sets some of the tightest civil filing windows in the country and a tiered set of criminal deadlines that run from six months up to no limit at all. Personal injury claims must be filed within one year. Property damage gets three. Contract disputes range from four to ten years depending on the type of agreement. On the criminal side, misdemeanors expire after 12 months, felonies after two to fifteen years based on class, and murder, rape, and certain crimes against children can be prosecuted at any time.
Civil Deadlines at a Glance
- Personal injury, wrongful death, libel, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution: 1 year
- Medical malpractice: 1 year (3-year outer cap)
- Legal and accounting malpractice: 1 year (5-year outer cap)
- Property damage, conversion: 3 years
- Sale of goods (UCC): 4 years
- General breach of contract, unpaid rent: 6 years
- Demand notes: 10 years
- Childhood sexual abuse (civil): 15 years from age 18
Personal Injury and Wrongful Death
You have one year from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit in Tennessee. The deadline, set by Tennessee Code 28-3-104, covers car accidents, slip-and-fall incidents, libel, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution.1Justia. Tennessee Code 28-3-104 – Personal Tort Actions Most states give two or three years. Tennessee gives one, and courts enforce it strictly. Miss the anniversary of the incident by a day and the case will almost certainly be dismissed.
Wrongful death claims follow the same one-year clock, counted from the date of death rather than the date of the act that caused it.1Justia. Tennessee Code 28-3-104 – Personal Tort Actions
Medical Malpractice
Health care liability actions also carry a one-year statute of limitations, but with a discovery exception that matters in practice. If you did not and could not have known about the injury during that first year, you get one year from the date you actually discover it.2Justia. Tennessee Code 29-26-116 – Statute of Limitations
A hard outer limit applies regardless. No malpractice suit can be filed more than three years after the negligent act, no matter when you discovered it. The only exceptions are fraudulent concealment by the provider and cases where a surgical instrument or other foreign object was left inside the patient. In those situations you get one year from discovery, with no three-year cap.2Justia. Tennessee Code 29-26-116 – Statute of Limitations
Malpractice claims against attorneys and accountants work similarly: one year from accrual, with an absolute five-year ceiling from the date of the act or omission. Fraudulent concealment again restarts the clock at one year from discovery.1Justia. Tennessee Code 28-3-104 – Personal Tort Actions
Property Damage
Damage to your vehicle, home, land, or belongings gets a three-year window under Tennessee Code 28-3-105. The same three years applies to conversion, which in plain terms means someone wrongfully keeping or destroying your property.3Justia. Tennessee Code 28-3-105 – Property Tort Actions – Statutory Liabilities
When one event causes both bodily injury and property damage, the deadlines split. The injury piece must be filed within one year; the property piece has three. The safer practice is to bring both in a single lawsuit within the one-year window, so the injury claim is not lost while the property claim waits.
Contract Disputes
Tennessee uses three tiers for contracts, and the type of agreement controls which one applies.
General breach of contract claims get six years under Tennessee Code 28-3-109. That same six-year window covers landlords suing for unpaid rent.4Justia. Tennessee Code 28-3-109 Contracts for the sale of goods fall under Tennessee’s Uniform Commercial Code at Tennessee Code 47-2-725, which imposes a four-year deadline from the date of breach. The parties can agree in the contract to shorten this to as little as one year, but they cannot extend it.5Justia. Tennessee Code 47-2-725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale Demand notes get the longest window at ten years from accrual.
The clock on a contract claim starts at the breach, not at discovery. For warranties on goods, breach happens at delivery unless the warranty explicitly extends to future performance, in which case the clock runs from when the breach is or should have been discovered.5Justia. Tennessee Code 47-2-725 – Statute of Limitations in Contracts for Sale
Statutes of Repose
A statute of limitations starts running when you are injured or discover the harm. A statute of repose starts from a fixed event (completion of a building, sale of a product) and cannot be stretched by the discovery rule. It is an absolute outer deadline.
For construction defects, Tennessee Code 28-3-202 gives property owners four years from substantial completion to sue. If the injury occurs during that fourth year, one additional year is allowed, making five years the longest anyone can wait.
Product liability claims carry layered deadlines under Tennessee Code 29-28-103. The usual personal injury (one year) or property damage (three years) deadline applies, capped at six years from the date of injury. On top of that, the claim must be brought within ten years from the date the product was first purchased for use, or within one year after the product’s anticipated useful life expires, whichever is shorter. Asbestos claims are exempt from these outer limits.6Justia. Tennessee Code 29-28-103 – Limitation of Actions
Misdemeanor Prosecutions
Prosecutors must bring misdemeanor charges within 12 months of the offense under Tennessee Code 40-2-102. Gaming offenses have an even shorter six-month deadline.7Justia. Tennessee Code 40-2-102 – Misdemeanors If no warrant or indictment is issued in that window, prosecution is barred.
Felony Prosecutions
Felony deadlines scale with the class of the offense under Tennessee Code 40-2-101:8Justia. Tennessee Code 40-2-101 – Felonies
- Class E felonies: 2 years
- Class C and D felonies: 4 years
- Class B felonies: 8 years
- Class A felonies: 15 years
The clock runs from the date of the offense, and the state must at least obtain an indictment or issue a warrant before it expires.
Crimes With No Deadline
Tennessee removes the statute of limitations entirely for the most serious offenses. Any crime punishable by death or life imprisonment can be prosecuted at any time, which covers first-degree murder. Second-degree murder committed on or after July 1, 2019 also has no deadline.8Justia. Tennessee Code 40-2-101 – Felonies
Rape and aggravated rape of adults can be prosecuted at any time if the victim reported the offense to law enforcement or the district attorney within three years of the crime and the offense occurred on or after July 1, 2014.8Justia. Tennessee Code 40-2-101 – Felonies
Sexual offenses against children get the broadest treatment. When the victim was under 13 at the time of the offense, there is no deadline at all. When the victim was 13 to 17 and reported the crime before turning 23, there is also no deadline. Even when the reporting threshold is not met, prosecution can still proceed; more than 25 years after the victim turns 18, however, the state must present corroborating evidence or evidence of similar acts by the defendant.8Justia. Tennessee Code 40-2-101 – Felonies On the civil side, victims of childhood sexual abuse have 15 years from turning 18 to file a lawsuit, or three years from discovering the injury if the abuse was not recognized at the time.
What Can Pause the Clock
Several circumstances toll (pause) or shift the start of a limitations period in Tennessee.
The Discovery Rule
In many civil claims, the clock does not start on the date of the incident but on the date you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, that you had a claim. The rule requires awareness of two things: the injury itself and the identity of the person who caused it. It matters most for latent harm, like a slowly developing medical condition or hidden contamination, where the link between someone’s conduct and your injury is not obvious at the time.
Minors and Incapacitated Persons
Tennessee Code 28-1-106 pauses the clock for people who cannot manage their own legal affairs when a claim arises. If you are under 18 when injured, the limitations period does not begin until you turn 18. If you have been adjudicated incompetent or otherwise lack capacity, it starts when that incapacity is removed.9Justia. Tennessee Code 28-1-106 – Accrual of Right if Person Under Eighteen Years of Age, Adjudicated Incompetent, or Lacking Capacity
There is a ceiling. Once legal rights are restored, you get the normal limitations period for that claim or three years, whichever is shorter. A minor injured in a car accident therefore has one year from turning 18 to file, since one year is shorter than three.10Justia. Tennessee Code 28-1-106
Defendant Outside Tennessee
Tennessee Code 28-1-111 excludes time a defendant spends out of state from the limitations calculation. If someone injures you and then moves away, the months or years they spend outside Tennessee do not count against your deadline.11Justia. Tennessee Code 28-1-111 – Suspension During Absence From State If the defendant was already outside Tennessee when the cause of action arose, the full limitations period begins only when they enter the state.
Active Military Service
The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act excludes periods of active duty from state statutes of limitations. Time you spend on active duty when a claim accrues or a deadline is running does not count against you.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations The protection does not reach federal tax deadlines but covers nearly every other civil or criminal proceeding in state or federal court.