How Long After An Accident Can You Sue For Personal Injury?

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 31 million people are injured in the country every year. These people are hurt enough to require medical treatment. Out of this number, 2 million are injured enough to require hospitalization, and 162,000 succumb to their injuries. 

Whether you are the injured party or you just lost a loved one from a personal injury, the time following an injury can be extremely stressful. The last thing on your mind is beating court deadlines and, much less, lawsuits. 

However, it’s essential to know that should you choose to sue, you must do so within specific timelines. Let’s look at personal injuries and personal injury claims and statutes.

What Constitutes Personal Injury?

Personal injury means physical, mental, and property damage caused to you by another person’s negligence.

The person who caused the injury must be seen to have owed you a duty of care but neglected this duty, which resulted in your injuries. As such, the law allows you to sue the at-fault party to recover compensation for your financial losses. 

Examples of accidents that can be classified under personal injuries include: 

• Road accidents (truck, motorcycle, and car accidents)

• Construction accidents

• Defective devices and products

• Wrongful death

• Premises liability

• Slip and fall accidents

There are personal injuries one can suffer outside of accidents. An excellent example of this is medical malpractice.

How Long After An Accident Can You Sue?

Unfortunately, you do not have forever to sue for compensation after an injury. 

The law, in Georgia and other states, requires that you file suit within stipulated timelines. This principle is known as the Statute of Limitations.

Under the Georgia code, you have two years to bring a personal injury claim against the at-fault party. The clock on this begins ticking from when the ”right of action accrues”. In simpler terms, the two-year countdown starts on the day of the injury or accident date or when you should have reasonably been aware that you are hurt. 

This statutory time limit applies to most personal injury claims, whether or not they are founded on intentional tort or negligence. 

There are some exceptions as below:

• You get two years for wrongful death, and this begins from the date of death.

• You have two years for product liability, beginning when you discovered the injury. For example, a medication’s harmful effects can manifest after years of use. So, the clock starts to tick when you note the adverse effects.

• You get a two-year timeline from the date of the injury or from the date you discovered a malpractice-related injury to sue. 

• Four years from the date of injury when filing a property damage suit

• Four years from the date of injury or death when filing for loss of consortium.

• For worker’s compensation, you have one year from the injury date or the date you discovered the injury to file. 

In some circumstances, you have more or less time to file a claim. As you may have noticed from the above, medical malpractice and product liability provide ‘extra time’ to file a claim. This is known as the ”Statute of Repose” and applies in cases where injuries caused are not immediately apparent.

For example, if a surgical tool is left in your body, you might begin experiencing symptoms later on. The clock on this starts ticking when you notice something is off, not necessarily on the day the surgery was performed.

Still, the State of Repose provides hard limits on the amount of time a person can file a suit. Together with the Statute of Repose, the Statute of Repose prevents people from filing suites decades after the fact.

The statute of Repose on medical malpractice is five years. This means you must file a negligent action suit within five years of the medical care or health service.

You have ten years for product liability, meaning you can only file an injury suit within ten years of when you first purchased a product.

Statutes of Limitations for Filing Personal Injury Suits against Government

Thanks to something known as ‘’sovereign immunity’’, you typically can’t sue a government entity in Georgia. The exception to this rule is if you are injured because a government employee or entity is negligent. 

The rules for suing the state are slightly different. A key difference is that you must file a personal administrative claim with the at-fault government agency before filing suit in civil court.  

You have months to file the administrative claim. The number of months depends on the specific government agency you are suing.

For municipalities in Atlanta, you get six months from the date of the injury to file the administrative claim and a year for the state or a county in Georgia.

What Happens If You File A Suit After The Statute Has Expired?

Once the statute on personal injury expires, you no longer have the right to file a suit and seek compensation. 

The court clerk, upon filing, will flag this and decline to proceed with the filing. A suit has to be filed for the legal process to begin. If the filing request is denied based on statute expiration, then you can’t proceed. 

Secondly, late filing and other technical issues are the easiest way to win a suit. So, the defendant’s attorney will likely check and flag the statute expiry before looking into anything else. Once they note the late filing, this is sufficient grounds for them to request the matter to be dismissed. 

But why have time limits to bring a suit against an at-fault party?

Here are three reasons why statutes of limitations are deemed necessary:

Timelessness

It’s essential that claims are managed in a timely manner. When a person desires to file a personal injury suit, they must pursue it with reasonable diligence. Part of this means filing sooner rather than later. 

To maintain the facts of the case

Take a minute to think about it: what did you have for breakfast ten days from today?

Few people can tell you what they had for breakfast five days ago, let alone 10.

Statutes of Limitations compel people to file suits as soon as possible to maintain clarity and prevent case details from becoming stale and indiscernible. 

If you can’t recall what you had for breakfast five days ago, the chances of remembering the details of an injury suffered nine months, a year, or a year and a half ago are slim at best.

Memories fade and become inaccurate; people holding certain information might become incapacitated or pass away. A lawsuit with due diligence ensures that information and facts of the case are fresh, accurate, and discoverable. 

Protect both parties

While an injured party has the right to file a suit, this should not hand over the defendant’s head forever. Statutes of Limitations prevent long drawn-out suits and stale claims filed for harassment purposes. 

This stipulation allows the injured party time to seek justice. But it also prevents an accused party from grappling with the potential of a lawsuit for past misdeeds for decades to come. 

The legal system also places notable exceptions. For example, severe crimes like murder, child trafficking, and kidnap are exempt from statutes. The same goes for sex crimes involving minors. 

Similarly, an advocate can petition a court to extend exceptions in extraordinary situations, like someone who goes into a coma after an injury.  

Outside of these, the statute of limitations must be adhered to, and there isn’t much wiggle room. Instead, you can take preemptive measures to buy yourself more time. This can be done by stopping the clock on an existing statute. This is possible through a process known as tolling. 

Statute of Limitations Tolling

A tolling agreement is a formal, written document that suspends or puts the statute of limitations on pause for an agreed amount of time. 

After signing a tolling agreement, the plaintiff can still pursue a civil suit if they wish to, albeit within the new agreed-upon timelines. 

One crucial aspect of tolling agreements is that they allow for out-of-court settlement. Suppose you were misdiagnosed and want to file a malpractice suit. The defendant might engage you in settlement discussions to avoid a long, drawn-out, expensive, draining, and damaging suit. 

While this could work well for the plaintiff, it’s never certain that the offered damages would be reasonable. Further, if the negotiations take too long and the statute expires, the plaintiff would have no options. 

In such a scenario, the defendant and plaintiff can enter into a tolling agreement to allow time for the negotiations, and if they fail, the plaintiff can proceed to court. This ensures the plaintiff is covered both ways.

Have You Been In An Accident?

If you or a loved one has been in an accident, it’s unclear whether you can get compensated. The best way to go about it is to talk to a personal injury attorney, and they can make that determination. 

If you can file a suit, your attorney will take on all aspects of the case, including sticking to the deadlines. This takes a lot of your hands so you can focus on recovering and getting your life back to some normalcy. 

At the Cumberland Law Group, we also understand that you might not be in a position to pay for a consultation at this time. For this reason, we extend you a free consultation to discuss your matter with a qualified personal injury attorney. This can give you some clarity on how to proceed with the matter. Reach out to us today.