I get some version of this call almost every week. Someone was hurt in a crash on the 5 or the 805, they've been dealing with the pain and the doctor visits and the insurance adjuster who keeps calling, and months have gone by. Then a friend or a family member asks the question that makes their stomach drop: "Wait, isn't there a deadline to sue?"

Yes. There is. In California, most personal injury claims come with a two-year clock, and once it runs out, it usually doesn't matter how strong your case was. The court can throw it out no matter how badly you were hurt. So let me walk you through how this actually works, where the tricky exceptions hide, and why I tell people not to sit on an injury claim.

The basic rule: two years from the date you were hurt

California's main personal injury deadline lives in Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. It gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a lawsuit for harm caused by someone else's negligence or wrongful conduct.

That covers most of the cases I handle. A car accident on Interstate 8. A motorcycle crash where a driver turned left across your path. A slip and fall at a store that let a spill sit. A dog bite in a City Heights front yard. In each of those, the clock generally starts ticking the day the injury happened, and you have two years to get a lawsuit on file.

A quick but important point: the deadline is about filing the lawsuit in court, not about settling. A lot of injury cases resolve with the insurance company before anyone ever files anything. But if the insurer is dragging its feet, lowballing you, or denying fault, the lawsuit is your leverage. If you let the two years pass without filing, you lose that leverage completely. The adjuster knows the exact date your claim expires, and some of them are happy to run out the clock.

Why the deadline exists at all

People sometimes ask me why the law cuts them off like this. It feels unfair when you were the one who got hurt. The honest answer is that these deadlines, called statutes of limitations, are meant to keep things fair on both sides. Evidence goes stale. Witnesses move away or forget what they saw. Skid marks wash away, surveillance footage gets recorded over, and the mechanic who could have inspected the vehicle has long since scrapped it.

I'm not defending the rule so much as explaining it. The point for you is practical. The longer you wait, the harder it gets to prove what happened, even before the deadline hits. The best cases I work on are the ones where we started building the file early, while the evidence was fresh and people still remembered the details.

The exceptions that trip people up

Here's where it gets complicated, and where a lot of people get burned by assuming the two-year rule is the whole story. It isn't.

Claims against a government or public entity

If your injury involves a city, a county, the State of California, a public transit agency, a public school, or another government body, the ordinary two-year rule does not apply the way you'd expect. Before you can even sue a public entity, California generally requires you to file an administrative claim first, and that deadline is often just six months from the date of injury.

Think about how common these situations are in San Diego. A pothole or a dangerous road design. A crash with a city vehicle or an MTS bus. A fall on public property. A pedestrian accident at a poorly designed intersection. If a government entity might be responsible, the six-month clock can be running while you're still in physical therapy. I've talked to people who waited a year, thinking they had plenty of time, only to find out the real deadline passed months earlier. If there's any chance a public entity is involved, please don't guess. Call and ask.

The discovery rule

Sometimes you don't know you were hurt right away, or you don't realize someone else caused the harm until later. In certain situations, California lets the clock start when you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, both the injury and its cause. This comes up in cases involving harm that shows up slowly, like some medical situations or exposure to a defective product.

I want to be careful here. The discovery rule is narrower than people hope, and courts look hard at when you "should have known." It is not a safe assumption to lean on. If you think it might apply to you, that's a conversation to have with a lawyer, not a reason to relax.

Injuries to a minor

If the person hurt is a child, the deadline usually works differently. In many cases the two-year clock is paused until the child turns eighteen, which can give them until their twentieth birthday to file for their own injuries. That said, claims for a child's medical bills often belong to the parents and can run on a different, shorter timeline. And if a government entity is involved, the short claim deadlines can still apply. It gets tangled fast, which is exactly why you don't want to sort it out on your own.

Wrongful death

When a family loses someone because of another party's negligence, a wrongful death claim generally carries its own two-year deadline, measured from the date of death. Losing a loved one is not the moment anyone wants to think about legal deadlines, and I understand that completely. But the clock runs regardless, and the same public-entity exceptions can shorten it.

Different injuries, different rules

Not every claim runs on the CCP 335.1 two-year track. Some injury-related claims have their own timelines. Certain claims tied to written contracts, some product-related theories, and specific kinds of professional negligence can follow different rules. Even within a single accident, you might have more than one type of claim, each with its own deadline.

This is one of those areas where a general article can only take you so far. Whether you were hurt in a truck accident, a bicycle accident in North Park, or a rideshare accident coming home from the Gaslamp, the safest move is to have someone look at your specific facts and confirm the real deadline rather than assuming.

What the deadline does not do

A common misunderstanding: people think filing a lawsuit means going to trial, and that scares them off. It doesn't. Filing preserves your right to recover. Most cases still settle after a suit is filed, often well before a courtroom is ever involved. Filing on time simply keeps every option open.

Something else worth understanding while we're talking about your rights. California is a pure comparative-fault state. That means even if you were partly at fault for what happened, you can still recover, and your recovery is reduced by your share of the fault rather than wiped out. Adjusters love to argue you were partly to blame to shrink what they pay. Meeting your filing deadline keeps you in the position to push back on that.

Why I tell people to move early

Even setting the legal deadline aside, waiting hurts your case in practical ways. Insurance companies use delay against you. If there's a gap between your accident and your medical treatment, the adjuster will argue you weren't really hurt or that something else caused your pain. Evidence disappears. Memories fade. And on top of all that, building an injury case takes time. We gather medical records, sort out personal injury damages like lost wages and future care, deal with medical liens, and prepare the file properly. Handing that to a lawyer with two years on the calendar is a very different situation than handing it over with two weeks left.

None of this costs you anything to find out. At Crudo Law, consultations are free and confidential, and most injury cases are handled on contingency, which means no fee unless we recover for you. If you're not sure where your deadline stands, that's the whole reason to call. Better to hear "you've got time" from a lawyer than to assume it and be wrong.

A note on how to use this article

This is general information about California law, not legal advice about your specific situation, and it is not a substitute for talking with an attorney. Deadlines depend on the facts, exceptions apply, and laws change. Nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship. If you were hurt and you're worried about a deadline, the right move is a real conversation about your case. You can also look through our frequently asked questions for more on how injury claims work.

Don't let the clock decide your case for you

The two-year deadline is real, the exceptions are shorter than people expect, and the cost of missing it is total. If you or someone in your family was hurt in San Diego and you're not sure how much time you have, find out now while you still have options.

Call Crudo Law at (858) 622-7280 or reach out through our contact page for a free, confidential consultation. I'm Joe Crudo, I grew up here, and I'll give you a straight answer about your deadline and your case.