What Is the Statute of Limitations in California?

The statute of limitations in California sets the deadline for filing a lawsuit or bringing criminal charges, and it depends entirely on the type of case. Most personal injury claims must be filed within two years. Written contract disputes get four years. Property damage and fraud claims get three. Misdemeanors generally must be charged within one year, standard felonies within three, and the most serious crimes, including murder, have no deadline at all. Missing a cutoff almost always ends the case, no matter how strong the evidence is.¹

Civil Deadlines by Case Type

Personal Injury and Wrongful Death

The general deadline for a personal injury lawsuit is two years from the date of the injury.² That covers car accidents, slip-and-fall injuries, dog bites, assault, battery, and most other situations in which someone else’s conduct causes you physical harm.

Wrongful death claims use the same two-year window, but the clock starts on the date of death rather than the date of the underlying incident.² That matters when someone dies days or weeks after the accident that caused their injuries.

Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice runs on its own schedule. You must file within one year of discovering the injury or within three years of the date it occurred, whichever comes first. The three-year outer limit stretches only in narrow situations: fraud or intentional concealment by the provider, or a foreign object with no medical purpose left inside the patient. A minor under six years old has until the eighth birthday, with further extension possible if a parent and the provider’s insurer colluded to prevent the claim.³

Contract Disputes

A written contract gives you four years from the date of the breach.⁴ An oral contract gives you two.⁵ Written terms are easier to prove years later, which is the reason for the longer window. If you are defending a breach of contract case filed after the deadline, you can ask the judge to dismiss it.⁶

Property Damage and Fraud

Lawsuits over damage to real estate or personal property must be filed within three years of the date of the damage.⁷ That covers trespass, destruction of a vehicle, theft of belongings, and similar harms.

Fraud claims also get three years, but the clock starts on the date you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the facts behind the fraud, not the date the fraud happened.⁷

Employment Discrimination

For discrimination, harassment, or retaliation at work, you generally have three years from the date of the discriminatory act to file a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department, formerly the DFEH.⁸ Filing with the CRD is typically a required first step before you can take the case to court. Federal claims brought through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission run on a much shorter timeline, generally 300 days in California, with separate rules for Equal Pay Act violations.⁹

Construction Defects

Construction defect deadlines are measured from the date the project was substantially completed, not from the date you noticed the problem. For patent defects, the ones a reasonable inspection would reveal, you have four years.¹⁰ For latent defects, the ones that stay hidden, the window extends to ten years.¹¹ A foundation crack discovered in year eight may still be actionable; the same crack discovered in year eleven is not.

Claims Against a California Government Agency

Suing a city, county, or state agency comes with a much shorter clock and an extra procedural layer. Before filing a lawsuit, you must present a formal administrative claim to the agency itself. No claim, no lawsuit, with very few exceptions.¹²

The deadline for that administrative claim depends on the type of case:

Personal injury, property damage, or wrongful death claims must be presented within six months of the incident.
All other claims, such as breach of contract, must be presented within one year of the date the cause of action arose.

Both deadlines come from the same statute.¹² Once the agency rejects your claim, you have six months from the date the rejection notice was mailed to file suit in court.¹³

One more thing to know: the usual tolling rules that pause the clock for minors and people who lack mental capacity do not apply to claims against government entities.¹⁴ A child injured by a city vehicle faces the same six-month administrative deadline as an adult.

Criminal Charges

The time prosecutors have to file criminal charges tracks the severity of the offense.

Misdemeanors: generally one year from the date of the offense.
Standard felonies: three years from the date of the crime.
Serious felonies punishable by eight or more years in prison: six years.¹⁵
No time limit at all: murder, any offense carrying a life sentence, embezzlement of public money, and certain serious sex crimes.

For fraud and embezzlement, the clock often starts when the crime is discovered rather than when it was committed, because a scheme designed to stay hidden would otherwise outlast its own deadline.

When the Clock Actually Starts

California follows what is called the discovery rule. The statute of limitations does not necessarily start on the day the harm occurred; it starts when you discover, or reasonably should have discovered, both the injury and its connection to someone else’s conduct.¹ The qualifier matters. If the warning signs were plain and you did not look into them, a court may decide the clock started on the day a reasonable person would have investigated.¹⁶

Some statutes build the discovery rule directly into their text. Fraud under Code of Civil Procedure section 338(d) runs three years from discovery, not from the fraudulent act itself.⁷

When the Clock Pauses

In some situations the statute of limitations stops running entirely. California calls this tolling. The most common grounds are:

The injured person is a minor. The clock pauses until the person turns 18, then the normal deadline begins to run.
The injured person lacks the mental capacity to manage their own affairs. The clock pauses until they regain capacity.

Both rules come from Code of Civil Procedure section 352.¹⁴ Neither one applies to claims against government entities, which is what makes government deadlines so unforgiving for children and incapacitated adults.

Fraudulent concealment by the defendant can also toll the deadline. If someone actively hides the wrongdoing, the clock may stay paused until the concealment is discovered or could reasonably have been discovered.

What Happens If You Miss the Deadline

An expired statute of limitations does not erase the case automatically. You can still file. The problem is that the defendant can raise the expired deadline as an affirmative defense in their response to the complaint.¹⁷ When they do, and the court agrees the deadline has passed, the case is dismissed regardless of what the evidence shows.

In practice, any competent defense attorney raises this defense when it applies. The strongest facts cannot save a filing that arrives one day late, which is why calendaring the right deadline is often the most consequential decision in the entire case. If you are unsure which deadline governs your situation, confirm it with an attorney well before the earliest possible cutoff, not close to it.

1
California Courts. Deadlines to Sue Someone
2
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 335.1
3
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 340.5
4
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 337
5
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 339
6
California Courts. Breach of Contract
7
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 338
8
California Civil Rights Department. Employment Discrimination
9
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits for Filing a Charge
10
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 337.1
11
Justia. CACI No. 4551 – Affirmative Defense – Statute of Limitations
12
California Legislative Information. California Government Code 911.2
13
California Legislative Information. California Government Code 945.6
14
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 352
15
California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 800
16
Justia. CACI No. 455 – Statute of Limitations – Delayed Discovery
17
Justia. CACI No. 454 – Affirmative Defense – Statute of Limitations