California Code of Civil Procedure Section 340 gives you one year to file a specific set of civil claims, including libel, slander, false imprisonment, actions to collect a statutory penalty, suits against a bank over a forged or unauthorized check, veterinary negligence, certain actions against officers who seize property, and good faith improver claims. One year is one of the shortest filing windows in California civil law, and if your claim falls under this section, the clock is already running.
What Claims Fall Under the One-Year Deadline
Section 340 applies to a narrow list of claims. If yours is on it, you have one year to file.1California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 340 – Actions Within One Year
- Libel and slander. Written defamation (libel) and spoken defamation (slander) both run from the date of the statement.
- False imprisonment. The clock starts when the unlawful restraint occurs.
- Statutory penalties and forfeitures. When a California statute lets a private person sue to collect a penalty for a violation, the default deadline is one year, unless the statute itself sets a different one.
- Forged, altered, or unauthorized checks. A bank depositor who discovers one of these has one year to sue the bank.
- Veterinary negligence. Claims against someone who boards, feeds, or provides veterinary care for an animal, where negligence causes injury or death to the animal, fall within the one-year window.
- Property seized by an officer. An action against an officer for damages from seizing property under a statutory forfeiture gets one year.
- Good faith improvers. Someone who built improvements on land they mistakenly believed they owned has one year from discovering the mistake to seek relief.
If your claim isn’t on this list, Section 340 isn’t your statute. A different code section applies, usually with a longer deadline.
When the One-Year Clock Starts
For most Section 340 claims, the one year runs from the date the harm occurs: the date the defamatory statement was made, the date of the false imprisonment, the date the penalty was incurred.
Two situations inside Section 340 work differently. A good faith improver’s year doesn’t begin until they discover they don’t actually own the land they built on. And for a forged or unauthorized check, the depositor’s year runs from discovery of the forgery or alteration.1California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 340 – Actions Within One Year
California’s broader discovery rule, which starts the clock when a plaintiff learns of the injury or reasonably should have, applies in limited circumstances across the Code of Civil Procedure.2California Courts. Deadlines to Sue Someone Courts read the “should have known” standard strictly. If a reasonable person in your position would have investigated and uncovered the problem earlier, the clock started then, whether or not you actually looked.
What Can Pause the One-Year Clock
Several circumstances toll the statute of limitations, meaning the time doesn’t count against you while the condition lasts.
Minors and People Lacking Legal Capacity
Under CCP Section 352, if the person with the claim is under 18 or lacks legal capacity when the claim arises, the time spent in that condition is not counted against the filing deadline. This tolling does not apply to claims against government entities, which run on their own administrative schedule.3California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 352 – Disability of Plaintiff
The Defendant Is Out of State
CCP Section 351 pauses the clock for any time the defendant spends outside California after the claim arises. If the defendant was already outside California when the claim arose, the clock doesn’t start until they return.4California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 351 This provision has drawn legal challenges, so if your case turns on a defendant who moved away, get legal advice before relying on it.
Active Military Service
The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, at 50 U.S.C. ยง 3936, excludes time on active military duty from any filing deadline in state or federal court. The protection runs in either direction, whether the servicemember would be the plaintiff or the defendant.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations
Fraudulent Concealment
When a defendant actively hides their wrongdoing to keep the plaintiff from discovering the claim, courts have allowed the deadline to be tolled. The reasoning is that a defendant should not benefit from their own cover-up.
What Section 340 Does Not Cover
Many people searching for Section 340 are looking for a different California filing deadline. Picking the wrong statute can cost you the case, so it helps to know what sits elsewhere in the code.
Personal injury claims, including assault, battery, and injuries from negligence like car accidents and slip-and-falls, get two years under CCP Section 335.1.6California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 335.1
Medical malpractice has its own rule at CCP Section 340.5: three years from injury or one year from discovery, whichever comes first, with extensions for fraud, intentional concealment, foreign objects left in the body, and specific provisions for young children.7California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 340.5 – Medical Malpractice Despite the “340” in the number, this is a separate section with a different clock.
Property damage and claims based on fraud or mistake get three years under CCP Section 338.8California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 338 Written contracts get four years under CCP Section 337;9California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 337 – Actions Within Four Years oral contracts get two under CCP Section 339.10California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 339 – Actions Within Two Years
Claims against a California city, county, or state agency run on a shorter administrative track that sits outside the Code of Civil Procedure entirely. For death, personal injury, or property damage, you have six months to file an administrative claim with the government entity. For other claims, you have one year.11California Legislative Information. California Government Code 911.2 You can’t skip the administrative claim and go straight to court. Courts routinely dismiss suits where the claimant missed that step, no matter what the Code of Civil Procedure deadline might otherwise be.
What Happens If You Miss the One-Year Deadline
If you file after the one-year window has closed, the defendant can move to dismiss the case as time-barred. Courts grant these motions almost reflexively. The strength of your underlying claim stops mattering once the clock has run.
Section 340 claims burn through their year quickly. Defamation plaintiffs often spend weeks or months trying to resolve the dispute informally, demanding retractions, exchanging letters, before deciding to sue. By the time they’re ready to file, much of the window may be gone. The same pattern shows up in forged-check disputes with a bank and in good faith improver cases where the parties try to work out ownership before anyone goes to court.
If you think your claim falls under Section 340, calendar the one-year date from the start, and build any pre-litigation effort around it rather than against it.