You have two years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit in California, under Code of Civil Procedure 335.1. Property damage to your car has a three-year deadline. If the other vehicle belonged to a city, county, Caltrans, Metro, LAUSD or any other public entity, or if a road defect caused the crash, you have only six months to file a written government claim, and missing it usually ends the case. The insurance claim itself has no statutory deadline, but it is worthless once the lawsuit deadline passes, because the carrier no longer has any reason to pay.
What decides real cases on this question is the difference between making a claim and filing a lawsuit. People call the other driver’s insurance company a week after the crash, get a claim number, and believe the clock has stopped. It has not. An open claim with an adjuster does not extend the two years, and adjusters know it. A carrier that is still “reviewing” a demand at month 23 is not being slow. It is waiting for month 25, when the claim becomes a request for charity. In the files we see, the two-year mark is the reason a lawsuit gets filed in Los Angeles Superior Court more often than any other, because the negotiation can continue after filing and the deadline cannot be fixed afterward.
How long do I have to file a car accident claim in California?
Two years from the date of the accident to file a lawsuit for injuries, under Code of Civil Procedure 335.1. Three years for damage to your vehicle. Six months to file a written claim with a government entity if a public vehicle, employee or road condition is involved, under Government Code 911.2. Report the crash to your own insurer promptly, usually within days, because policies require it.
The deadlines, one by one
The personal injury statute of limitations is two years from the date of injury. For a crash, that is the date of the crash. A collision on the 101 at Winnetka on March 3, 2026 has to be filed by March 3, 2028. The lawsuit has to be on file with the court by that date. A demand letter, a claim number, an email from the adjuster saying “we are still evaluating” counts for nothing.
Property damage has three years under Code of Civil Procedure 338. This matters rarely, because vehicle damage is almost always resolved within weeks, but it means a dispute over a total loss value can outlive the injury deadline.
Government claims have six months. If you were hit by an LADOT bus, a City of Los Angeles truck, a Caltrans vehicle, a county sheriff’s car or an LAUSD van, or if the crash was caused by a dangerous condition of public property, a missing stop sign, a malfunctioning signal at Roscoe and Reseda, a pothole on a state route, you must file a written claim with that entity within six months of the crash under Government Code 911.2. The entity has 45 days to accept or reject. After a rejection, you have six months to file the lawsuit. A late claim application is possible within a year in limited circumstances, but the standard is strict and most are denied.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist claims against your own insurer have their own rules. The policy will require prompt notice, and Insurance Code 11580.2 requires that within two years you either settle with the other driver, file suit against them, or formally demand arbitration with your own carrier. Clients who think the UM claim can wait until the liability claim is done sometimes find that it cannot.
Wrongful death has two years from the date of death, which may be later than the date of the crash.
Minors get a different clock. A child’s injury claim is tolled until the child turns 18, so a 10-year-old passenger has until age 20. The six-month government claim deadline, though, is not tolled for minors in the same way, and the claim still has to be filed.
What the insurance company does with the deadline
The carrier tracks it more closely than most claimants do. Adjusters know the crash date and the filing deadline on every file. In the months before it, some carriers slow down, request more records and make no offer, because an unrepresented claimant who misses the date has no case. After the date, the carrier’s offer is zero and it does not need to explain why.
A carrier will sometimes agree in writing to extend the deadline, called a tolling agreement, when both sides want to keep negotiating. Those agreements exist, they are signed by attorneys, and they are rare. A verbal reassurance from an adjuster that “we’ll work with you on timing” is not one.
What you should do now
Write down the crash date and count two years. Then count six months and ask whether any vehicle, driver or road involved could belong to a public entity. If the answer is maybe, treat the six-month deadline as the real one.
Report the crash to your own insurer within days. Your policy requires it, and the UM coverage you paid for depends on it.
Get treatment and keep records, because the deadline is only one half of the problem. A lawsuit filed on the last day with no medical records is a lawsuit that will be dismissed or settled for little.
Talk to an attorney well before the deadline. A complaint takes time to prepare properly, the defendant has to be identified and served, and a filing on day 729 against the wrong entity is a filing that cannot be fixed.
Mistakes that end cases
The claim-versus-lawsuit confusion is the main one. The second is assuming a government entity is just another defendant and filing at month 18, when the six-month claim was never filed. The third is suing the driver when the real defendant was the driver’s employer or a rental company and not discovering that until after the deadline. The fourth is a client who moves out of state, loses touch with the attorney, and whose case cannot be filed because the attorney cannot get a signature or confirm the facts. The fifth is relying on a tolling agreement that was never actually signed.
Questions people ask next
Does the two years start from the accident or from when I found out I was hurt? From the accident in almost every car crash case, because the injury is known that day. The discovery rule that delays the start applies only when the injury could not reasonably have been discovered, which is rare in a collision.
What if the other driver was uninsured? Your claim is against your own uninsured motorist coverage, and the two-year deadline still applies to demanding arbitration or filing suit.
Can I still get money if I missed the deadline? Almost never for the lawsuit. The carrier has no obligation to pay a time-barred claim. The exceptions are narrow: the defendant was out of state, the plaintiff was a minor or legally incapacitated, or a government entity’s late claim application was granted.
Manoukian Law Firm handles car accident cases throughout Los Angeles County, and the attorney personally calendars every deadline from the first call, including the six-month government claim when a public entity is involved. If you were in a crash and are unsure how much time you have, call (818) 818-5031 for a free consultation.
