Statute of Limitations by State

Every state puts a deadline on injury lawsuits, and the range is wider than most people guess.

Tennessee and Kentucky give you one year. Maine, Minnesota, and North Dakota give you six.

Two states rewrote their deadlines mid-decade, so the same crash can sit under different clocks depending on when it happened.

And in nine jurisdictions, the wrongful death deadline is shorter than the injury deadline it sits next to.

The table below carries every state's general injury deadline, the statute behind it, and the wrongful death number where it differs.

Last verified: August 14, 2026. Legislatures amend these rules; treat any chart, this one included, as the starting point and get a current answer for your own case.

Call (888) 713-6653 for a free case review before your state's clock decides for you.

The 50-State Table: Deadline, Statute, and the Wrongful Death Number

Years run from the injury unless the row says otherwise. "Same" in the wrongful death column means the death claim carries the same number of years, generally running from the date of death.

One Year in Tennessee, Six in Maine: Why the Range Is So Wide

Tennessee's one-year limit is the shortest general injury deadline in the country, and it has one merciful wrinkle: when the injury arises from criminal conduct, the window extends to two years.^[1] Kentucky also runs one year for most injury claims, though its motor vehicle cases generally get two under the no-fault statute.

At the other end, Maine allows six years, the longest in the nation.^[2] Minnesota and North Dakota sit at six as well, and Minnesota deserves a special note: its two-year statute covers intentional torts, not negligence, and popular charts conflate the two.^[3] Someone who reads a bad chart and assumes two years in Minnesota gives up four years they actually had; someone who assumes a "standard" two years in Tennessee has already lost the case.

Florida and Louisiana Split Their Clocks Mid-Decade

Florida cut its negligence deadline from four years to two in 2023, and the trigger is the accrual date: causes of action accruing after March 24, 2023 get two years, while older claims keep four.^[4] Louisiana went the other direction in 2024, extending its one-year prescription to two years, but only for injuries sustained on or after July 1, 2024.^[5]

Both changes mean two people hurt on the same road, months apart, live under different deadlines. Louisiana's wrongful death rule adds its own wrinkle: the claim prescribes one year from the death or two years from the underlying injury, whichever is longer. In a transition year, the safest assumption is that the shorter deadline applies until a lawyer confirms otherwise.

Nine Places Where the Death Claim Expires Before the Injury Claim Would

North Dakota gives an injured person six years and a grieving family two. Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming cut their four-year injury windows in half for death claims. Vermont, the District of Columbia, New York, and North Carolina each trim a year off. Wisconsin runs three years for most wrongful deaths but two when the death came from a motor vehicle crash.^[6]

The pattern is a trap because families researching after a death find the state's general injury deadline first, and it overstates their time. A family that lost someone deserves the real number, which is why the wrongful death column in the table above is never blank.

What the Table Cannot Tell You: Tolling, Discovery, and Notice Rules

A fifty-state table states the general rule, and general rules have exceptions running in both directions. Deadlines can pause for minors and for incapacity. Discovery rules can delay the start of the clock for injuries nobody could have found earlier, and statutes of repose can cut off claims regardless of discovery. Medical malpractice runs on separate, usually shorter periods in most states. What happens when the deadline passes, and the narrow exceptions that survive it, are covered on our page about missing the statute of limitations.

The deadline that catches the most people is not on this table at all: the notice-of-claim rules that apply when the defendant is a government, some as short as 90 days. Those are mapped on our page about suing the government by state, and the rest of the state-law variables live in our index of personal injury laws by state.

The statute of limitations deadline is not something you want to guess. You need to know the clock with confidence. A Texan hurt in Tennessee has a Tennessee problem on a Tennessee clock. Some claims involve discovery rules, tolling, or different accrual rules. You need to get it right, because there are no second chances.

The Deep State Pages Behind Eight of These Rows

For the states where this site goes deepest, the deadline gets a full page: the exceptions, the tolling rules, and the traps specific to that state's courts.