Most people assume they have two years. In California that is only the default, and four different rules can shorten it to six months or extend it past a child's eighteenth birthday. Answer three questions and this shows every deadline that applies to your situation, with the statute behind each one.
California's general personal injury deadline is two years from the date of injury under Cal. Code Civ. Proc. section 335.1. That is the number nearly every article quotes, and for a straightforward collision between two private drivers it is correct. The problem is how often something else applies.
Cal. Gov. Code section 911.2 requires a claim against a city, county, state agency or other public entity to be presented to that entity within six months of the injury. This covers far more than people expect: a pothole or dangerous road design, a collision with a city vehicle, a fall on public property, an injury on a transit platform. Presenting that claim is a prerequisite — filing a lawsuit without it generally ends the case regardless of merit. If the entity rejects the claim in writing, section 945.6 gives you six months from that rejection notice to file suit.
Cal. Code Civ. Proc. section 340.5 runs one year from when you discovered or reasonably should have discovered the injury, capped at three years from the act itself. Section 364 separately requires 90 days' written notice to the provider before filing. Serving that notice inside the final 90 days extends the period by 90 days — a detail that has saved claims and, when missed, ended them.
Because California's dog bite liability is created by statute — Cal. Civ. Code section 3342, which imposes strict liability without any need to prove the owner knew the dog was dangerous — the filing deadline comes from section 338 and is three years, not two. Property damage also runs three years under section 338. A collision therefore frequently carries two different deadlines: two years for the injury, three for the vehicle.
Under Cal. Code Civ. Proc. section 352, the limitations period for an injured minor is generally paused until their eighteenth birthday, so a two-year claim can run to age twenty. Two exceptions matter: the six-month government claim deadline is not tolled in the same way, and medical malpractice involving a minor follows its own rule inside section 340.5.
Filing on the last available day is legal and almost always a bad outcome. The evidence that decides a claim degrades long before the statute runs. Traffic and business camera footage is routinely overwritten within 72 hours unless somebody sends a preservation demand. Vehicles get repaired or sold for salvage, taking the crash data with them. Witnesses move and stop answering the phone. Treatment gaps that seemed reasonable at the time get characterised later as evidence the injury was minor.
By the time a claim approaches its deadline, the version of it that could have been proven is usually gone. The deadline governs whether you can file. What you can actually prove is decided in the first weeks.
When the correct deadline is genuinely unclear — a defendant who might be a public contractor rather than a public employee, an injury that surfaced months after the incident, a claim that could be malpractice or could be ordinary negligence — the safe move is to work to the shortest plausible date rather than the most likely one. Presenting a government claim that turns out to have been unnecessary costs a form and a stamp. Failing to present one that was required ends the case.
The same logic applies to the identity of the defendant. In a collision involving a commercial vehicle it is frequently unclear at first whether the driver was an employee, an independent contractor, or working through a staffing company — and whether a public agency contracted the work. Each answer changes which deadline governs. Identifying the correct defendant early is not a detail; it decides which clock you are actually on.
For most injuries the trigger is the date of the incident. For injuries that were not immediately apparent, California's delayed discovery rule can move the start to the date you knew, or reasonably should have known, that you were injured and that someone else's conduct caused it. That is a narrower doctrine than people assume — suspicion is generally enough to start the clock, and waiting for certainty is not a defence to a late filing.
Delayed discovery can move a start date. A defendant who leaves California can pause the clock. Fraud or active concealment can extend it. Claims against certain professionals, product manufacturers, or under federal law follow separate rules entirely. A written agreement can change the analysis. None of that is visible from three questions, which is why the output above is a starting point rather than an answer.
The two-year rule in Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 335.1 is the one most people know, and it is the one that misleads them. Several categories of California claim run on far shorter clocks, and missing one of those is usually fatal regardless of how strong the underlying claim is.
Government claims — six months. Cal. Gov. Code § 911.2 requires a written claim presented to the public entity within six months when a city, county, transit agency or state body is involved. That covers a collision with a municipal vehicle, a VTA bus, and injuries caused by a dangerous condition of public property under Cal. Gov. Code § 835 — a defective roadway, a missing sign, a malfunctioning signal. This deadline is jurisdictional. Once it passes, the two-year statute does not rescue the claim, because the claim was never properly presented.
Medical malpractice — one year from discovery. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 340.5 sets one year from when the injury and its negligent cause were discovered or reasonably should have been, with an outer limit of three years from the injury itself. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 364 separately requires ninety days written notice before filing.
Workers compensation — one year. Cal. Lab. Code § 5405 gives one year from the date of injury, with notice to the employer within thirty days under § 5400. For injuries that developed gradually, Cal. Lab. Code § 5412 sets the date of injury at the point the worker first suffered disability and knew or should have known it was work related, which is frequently later than when symptoms began.
Property damage — three years. Longer than the injury deadline, under Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 338. This matters when a vehicle claim and an injury claim arise from the same collision: they are separate claims on separate clocks, and people focused on the car routinely let the shorter injury deadline pass.
Minors — tolled until eighteen. Under Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 352, the statute of limitations is generally tolled while a claimant is under eighteen, so the two-year clock begins on the eighteenth birthday. Government claim deadlines are treated differently and are not tolled in the same way, which is a trap in cases involving a child injured by a public entity.
Delayed discovery. In limited circumstances a deadline runs from when an injury and its cause were discovered rather than when the injury occurred. This is narrower than people assume and it is fact-specific. Relying on it without confirming that it applies is how claims are lost.
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