The Arizona Personal Injury Statute of Limitations, Explained

Every injury claim in Arizona comes with an expiration date. Miss it, and the strength of your case stops mattering. The courthouse door simply closes. The Arizona personal injury statute of limitations gives most people two years to file a lawsuit. That headline number hides several exceptions, though. Some stretch the deadline. Others pause it. The dangerous ones shrink it to a fraction of what you expected. Here is how the clock actually works.

The two-year rule

The general deadline comes from Arizona Revised Statutes § 12-542. It gives claims for “injuries done to the person of another” two years. In practice, that covers most personal injury cases. Car, motorcycle, and truck crashes fall under it. So do pedestrian and bicycle collisions, slip and falls, and most other negligence claims.

Two clarifications matter here.

First, this is a filing deadline, not a finishing deadline. You must file a lawsuit within two years. You do not have to settle or finish a trial by then. Filing preserves the claim.

Second, the deadline applies to lawsuits, not insurance claims. You can and should open an insurance claim right away. However, an insurance claim does not stop the clock. Some people negotiate with an adjuster for twenty-five months and then learn they can no longer sue. That mistake is among the most painful in this area of law. Adjusters have no duty to warn you about it.

When the clock starts

For most injuries, the clock starts on the date of the injury. Rear-ended on March 1? In the ordinary case, your two years run from March 1.

That sounds simple, and usually it is. Still, Arizona recognizes a discovery rule for a narrow situation. Sometimes a person did not know about an injury or its cause, and reasonably could not have known. Then the clock generally starts later — when the person knew or reasonably should have known. The classic examples come from medical settings, where a problem reveals itself months afterward. The principle is not limited to them, though.

Two honest cautions apply. First, the discovery rule is the exception, not the norm. After a typical crash or fall, you knew about the harm that day, so the clock started then. Second, the injured person carries the burden of showing the delay was reasonable. In short, treat it as a safety valve, not a strategy.

What can pause the clock

Arizona law “tolls” — pauses — the limitations period in a few defined situations:

• Minors. For an injured person under 18, the clock generally waits until their 18th birthday. As a result, they have until age 20 to file for a childhood injury. Parents should not treat this as a reason to wait, though. Evidence fades on its own schedule, and some related deadlines do not toll.
• Mental incapacity. The period generally pauses while a person is of “unsound mind” in the legal sense. That means someone unable to manage their own affairs or understand their legal rights.
• A defendant who leaves the state can pause the clock in some circumstances. Modern service rules have narrowed how much this helps, however.

Tolling rules are technical and fact-specific, and lawyers fight over them constantly. So if your case depends on one, get case-specific advice. Do not rely on any article — this one included.

The government exception: 180 days, not two years

This is the trap that catches the most people. Suppose your claim runs against a public entity or public employee. Think of a city bus, a police vehicle, or a road hazard the county failed to fix. For these claims, Arizona law adds two much shorter deadlines:

1. You must serve a formal notice of claim within 180 days of when the claim accrues. The notice must also meet strict content requirements, including a specific settlement demand. A late or defective notice can end the claim entirely.
2. Even after a proper notice, you generally must file the lawsuit within one year, not two.

Roughly six months is not much time when you are also recovering from an injury. Government entities also appear in more cases than people expect, from road design to public vehicles. So if one might be involved, treat the deadline as urgent from day one. The full plain-English guide to the rule is here: suing the government in Arizona. And remember one line: government defendant, short fuse.

Shorter clocks hiding in ordinary cases

A few claim types run on their own timelines. Some are shorter than two years:

• Liability created by statute carries a one-year deadline in Arizona. The everyday example is the dog-bite statute. It creates strict liability against the owner — a powerful claim — but you must bring the statutory version within one year. A separate negligence theory for the same bite can still follow the two-year rule. That split is exactly why dog-bite timing confuses people.
• Claims against government entities, as above. A 180-day notice, then a one-year suit.
• Wrongful death claims generally get two years. However, that clock runs from the date of death, which is not always the date of the injury.

Notice the pattern. The deadline depends on more than what happened. It also depends on who the defendant is and which legal theory applies. Two claims from the same incident can therefore expire on different days.

What happens if you miss the deadline

Nothing dramatic happens on the day itself, and that is the problem. The claim does not disappear. Instead, it becomes unenforceable. File suit after the Arizona personal injury statute of limitations has run, and the defense will raise the deadline. Courts then dismiss the case, no matter how strong the facts were. Insurers understand this too. Once the deadline passes without a lawsuit on file, your leverage effectively drops to zero. The polite alternative to their offer no longer exists.

Courts grant exceptions rarely and reluctantly. So plan around the deadline, not around the hope of an exception.

Why waiting hurts even when you have time left

Suppose you sit comfortably inside the two years. Waiting still costs you, for reasons that have nothing to do with the statute:

• Evidence decays. Surveillance systems overwrite footage in days or weeks. Skid marks fade. Repair shops fix or scrap vehicles. Businesses discard logs.
• Witnesses scatter and memories blur. A witness statement from the first week is worth several from year two.
• Insurers exploit treatment gaps. A delay between the incident and medical care becomes their favorite argument that something else caused the injury. That is one more reason acting early matters after any crash.

The deadline is the outer wall. The strength of the claim, however, gets decided much closer to day one.

The bottom line

Here is the Arizona personal injury statute of limitations in five lines. Most injury claims: two years from the injury to file suit. Injured minors: the clock usually waits until 18. Injuries you could not reasonably discover: the clock may start at discovery. Government defendants: a 180-day notice and a one-year suit deadline. Statutory claims like the dog-bite statute: one year, and wrongful death runs two years from the death.

Underneath all of it sits one rule with no exceptions. The earlier you learn which deadline applies to your facts — including who was at fault and whose insurance is on the hook — the more options you keep. Deadlines reward the people who check them first.

Keep reading: How long a settlement takes in Arizona · The 180-day government notice-of-claim deadline · or browse all guides from Awesome Attorneys.

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This article is general information about Arizona law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Limitation periods depend heavily on specific facts, laws change, and exceptions are narrow — confirm the deadline that applies to your situation with a licensed Arizona attorney before relying on it. If you may be injured, seek medical care first.