What Is the Statute of Limitations in Washington State?

The statute of limitations in Washington state sets how long you have to file a lawsuit before the court will refuse to hear it. Most personal injury and property damage claims must be filed within three years; written contract disputes get six years; medical malpractice, construction defects, product liability, and claims against the government each follow their own rules. The clock usually starts on the date of the incident, but several Washington rules shift or pause that starting point.

Common Civil Deadlines at a Glance

Personal injury, wrongful death, property damage, trespass: 3 years
Oral contracts and most general debts: 3 years
Fraud: 3 years from discovery
Written contracts: 6 years
Medical malpractice: 3 years from the act, or 1 year from discovery (whichever is later), with an 8-year outer cap
Product liability: 3 years from discovery, subject to a 12-year useful safe life presumption
Construction defects: 6-year statute of repose from substantial completion

Personal Injury, Wrongful Death, and Property Damage

Three years is the standard window for negligence-based claims in Washington. That covers car crashes, slip-and-fall incidents, dog bites, and similar situations where someone else’s carelessness caused harm.¹ File after three years and the court will almost certainly dismiss.

Wrongful death claims use the same three-year window, measured from the date of death. The suit must be brought by the deceased person’s personal representative, typically the executor of the estate.¹

Lawsuits for damage to real property (land and buildings) or personal property (a vehicle, equipment, or other belongings) also run three years, and so does trespass on real property.¹

Contracts and Debts

The deadline for a breach-of-contract claim depends on whether the agreement was in writing. Written contracts carry a six-year statute of limitations.² Oral agreements get three years.¹ That three-year period also covers most general debt collection suits when the underlying obligation isn’t based on a written agreement. For credit card debt, the written-contract treatment often applies, and the clock typically starts when the account went into default rather than when it was opened.

Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice has layered deadlines. You have three years from the date the healthcare provider’s error occurred, or one year from the date you discovered (or reasonably should have discovered) that the error caused your injury. Whichever falls later is the deadline that applies.³ This matters because harm from a surgical mistake or misdiagnosis sometimes doesn’t surface for years.

Washington caps the whole thing at eight years. No medical malpractice lawsuit can be filed more than eight years after the act that caused the injury, no matter when you discovered it.³ The only exceptions involve fraud, intentional concealment, or a foreign object left inside your body (such as a surgical sponge). In those situations, the deadline pauses until you learn about the fraud, concealment, or object, and you then have one year from that discovery to sue.

Fraud

Fraud claims carry a three-year deadline, but with a built-in discovery rule: the clock doesn’t start until you discover the fraud. The statute provides that a fraud claim “shall not be deemed to have accrued until discovery by the aggrieved party of the facts constituting the fraud.”¹ A fraud victim has, by definition, been deceived and may not realize they’ve been harmed until much later.

Product Liability

Product liability claims follow a three-year deadline from the date you discovered, or should have discovered, both the harm and its cause. Washington also uses a useful safe life concept: if more than twelve years have passed since the product was first delivered to a consumer, the manufacturer or seller gets a legal presumption that the product had already exceeded its safe useful life. Overcoming that presumption takes strong evidence.⁴

Construction Defects

Washington imposes a six-year statute of repose on construction-related claims. Any claim against an architect, contractor, builder, or engineer must arise within six years after substantial completion of the project, or six years after the professional’s services ended, whichever comes later. If the defect doesn’t surface within that window, the claim is barred entirely.⁵ One exception: building owners, tenants, or others in possession and control of the property when the cause of action accrues cannot use that six-year cutoff as a defense.

When the Clock Can Be Paused

Washington law tolls (pauses) the statute of limitations in several situations, giving some people more time than the standard deadlines suggest.

Minors and Incapacitated Individuals

If you were under 18 when your claim arose, the clock doesn’t start running until your 18th birthday. For a standard three-year personal injury claim, that means you have until age 21 to file. The same tolling applies to individuals incapacitated to the degree they cannot understand legal proceedings, and to people imprisoned on criminal charges before sentencing. The deadline pauses for the entire duration of the disability.⁶ No statutory cap limits how long tolling can last for incapacity, so the pause continues as long as the condition persists.

Active-Duty Military

The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act excludes the entire period of military service from any statute of limitations calculation. If you’re serving on active duty when a claim arises, that time doesn’t count against your deadline.⁷ This federal protection stacks on top of any Washington tolling rules.

The Discovery Rule

Several claim types start the clock not from the date of the wrongful act but from the date you learned about the harm. Medical malpractice, fraud, and product liability all include some version of a discovery rule, as described in their sections above. When a discovery rule applies, the real question isn’t “when did this happen” but “when did I know or should I have known.”

Suing the Government

Lawsuits against the state or a local government in Washington require a mandatory pre-suit step that catches many people off guard. You must first submit a formal tort claim on the standard form before you can file suit.

For claims against Washington state or its officers and employees acting in their official capacity, the tort claim form goes to the Office of Risk Management. No lawsuit can be filed until 60 days after the claim is presented, and the statute of limitations is tolled during that 60-day waiting period.⁸

Claims against cities, counties, school districts, and other local entities follow essentially the same process but go to the agent each governing body designates, whose name and address must be on file with the county auditor.⁹ The same 60-day waiting period applies, and the statute of limitations pauses during those 60 days. The tort claim itself must be presented within the applicable statute of limitations for the underlying claim. For a personal injury, you still need to get the form in within three years.

Skipping this step is fatal. A court will dismiss a lawsuit against any government entity if the tort claim wasn’t properly filed first.

Criminal Prosecution Deadlines

Washington also sets time limits on criminal charges. The most serious crimes have the longest windows, and the deadlines scale down with offense severity. Identity theft, money laundering, and theft-by-deception carry a six-year deadline measured from the date the crime was committed or discovered, whichever is later. Gross misdemeanors generally must be charged within two years, and simple misdemeanors within one year.¹⁰ Murder and certain sex offenses carry no statute of limitations at all. The clock also pauses any time the accused person is not “usually and publicly resident” in Washington.

Federal Claims Arising in Washington

Some claims that happen in Washington aren’t governed by state deadlines. If you’re suing the federal government for injuries caused by a federal employee or agency, you must first file an administrative claim with the responsible agency within two years of the incident. If the agency denies your claim, you then have six months from the denial to file suit in federal court.¹¹

Civil rights claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the statute people typically sue under for police misconduct or other constitutional violations by state actors, borrow Washington’s three-year personal injury deadline. Federal law controls when the claim accrues, meaning the clock starts when you knew or should have known about the violation, not necessarily when it happened.

1
Washington State Legislature. Revised Code of Washington 4.16.080
2
Washington State Legislature. Revised Code of Washington 4.16.040
3
Washington State Legislature. Revised Code of Washington 4.16.350
4
Washington State Legislature. Chapter 7.72 RCW – Product Liability Actions
5
Washington State Legislature. RCW 4.16.310 – Actions or Claims Arising From Construction, Alteration
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Washington State Legislature. RCW 4.16.190 – Statute Tolled by Personal Disability
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 U.S. Code 3936 – Statute of Limitations
8
Washington State Legislature. RCW 4.92.100 – Tortious Conduct of State or Its Agents – Claims – Presentment and Filing – Contents
9
Washington State Legislature. RCW 4.96.020 – Tortious Conduct of Local Governmental Entities and Their Agents – Claims – Presentment and Filing – Contents
10
Washington State Legislature. RCW 9A.04.080 – Limitation of Actions
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States