Statute of Limitations

A statute of limitations is a law that sets how long you have to file a lawsuit after being harmed. The time limit depends on the type of claim and the state or federal law involved. Personal injury, product liability, fraud, breach of contract, and wage claims can all have different deadlines, and the same claim can have different deadlines in different states.

Federal statutes often set their own limits. For example, most damages claims under the federal Truth in Lending Act must be filed within one year of the violation. Other laws allow two, three, four, or more years. Wage claims under federal law generally have two years, or three for willful violations.

The clock does not always start on the day of the harm. Under the "discovery rule," many states start the clock when you knew, or reasonably should have known, about the injury and its likely cause. That matters in drug, device, and toxic exposure cases, where illness can appear years later. Deadlines can also be paused ("tolled") for minors, for people who are legally incapacitated, or when a defendant concealed the wrongdoing. Separately, some states have "statutes of repose," hard cutoffs measured from when a product was sold, that apply even if you did not know about the harm.

In class actions, filing a class case usually pauses the deadline for everyone in the proposed class until class certification is decided, but relying on that is risky. Do not wait to get advice once you suspect a claim. See our guides on how long class actions take, how to join a class action, and open versus closed settlements.