What Injury Clients Need To Know About Statutes Of Limitations

Statutes of limitations hang over many injury cases, threatening to nullify the efforts of clients and lawyers. A personal injury law firm needs to file a client's case before the deadline based on the statute of limitations. However, this isn't always a single date. Let's look at how a personal injury attorney determines what the statute of limitations for a case is.

Normal Cases

A standard case is one that involves a physical accident that arose from someone else's negligence. Vehicle accidents and slip-and-fall incidents are classic injury cases. In the vast majority of these cases in most states, the statute of limitations is either two or three years.

That means the claimant or plaintiff has that many years from the time of the accident to formally notify the defendant of their intent to seek compensation. Notably, this doesn't mean you have to wrap things up at that time. Instead, it means a client and personal injury lawyer must send a formal demand package to the defendant or their insurance company before the limit expires. In theory, you could take years or even decades to sort things out.

Government-Involved Cases

One thing that often shortens the statute of limitations is if the defendant is either a government agency or the designee of one. Each state has its laws, and these can lead to limitations that are just months long. That can be tricky to deal with when you're waiting to get results back from a specialist or for swelling to go down to see what happened. It's wise to speak with a personal injury attorney as soon as possible after an accident of this type to learn what your state's rules are.

Longer Statutes of Limitations

In some cases, the statute of limitations may be longer or unlimited. For example, the clock on most chemical exposure cases doesn't start until you learn that you've been affected. If you developed cancer years after exposure to a chemical used to treat your lawn, the clock wouldn't start until you learned that your health issues were tied to the chemical.

Similarly, many states have no limitations on child sex abuse claims. However, some of these statutes only involve cases where people in positions of authority, such as clergy members, engaged in sexual abuse.

The clock on repetitive stress injuries works similarly to how it does for exposure cases. However, you'll likely need to show that you didn't suffer the injuries in the interim.