Arizona Statute of Limitations for Personal Injury Claims

Every injury claim in Arizona has an expiration date. Miss it and it does not matter how badly you were hurt, how clearly the other side was at fault, or how much your medical bills came to — the court will dismiss the case and the insurance company walks away owing nothing.

Most people have heard that Arizona gives you two years. That is the general rule, and it is right most of the time. But two categories run on entirely different clocks: claims involving a government entity, which can expire in 180 days, and claims against your own insurer for uninsured or underinsured motorist benefits, which carry their own notice requirements on top of the ordinary deadline.

Neither of those situations announces itself at the scene. Here is how the deadlines actually work.

Deadlines at a Glance

The rest of this page explains the traps inside that table.

The General Rule: Two Years

Under A.R.S. § 12-542, most injury claims must be filed within two years of the date the cause of action accrues. That covers the overwhelming majority of cases: car and truck collisions, motorcycle and bicycle crashes, pedestrian injuries, slip and falls, and ordinary negligence claims.

Two things people routinely get wrong about this deadline.

It is a deadline to file a lawsuit, not to settle. Negotiating a claim does not stop the clock. If two years pass while you are still going back and forth with an adjuster, your leverage is gone — and experienced adjusters know exactly when your deadline falls. Slow-walking a claim toward its expiration is a recognized tactic.

It applies to the claim, not to your treatment. The clock does not pause because you are still in physical therapy or waiting on a surgical consult. It runs from the accrual date regardless of where you are in your recovery.

Claims Against a Government Entity: 180 Days

This is the deadline that destroys otherwise strong cases, and it is the one we see missed most often.

If a city, county, school district, transit authority, special district, or the State of Arizona may share responsibility for your injury, everything compresses. Under A.R.S. § 12-821.01, you must serve a formal notice of claim within 180 days of when the claim accrues. Under A.R.S. § 12-821, any lawsuit must be filed within one year. Both are strictly enforced.

A defective notice is treated like no notice at all. This is what makes the requirement so unforgiving. The statute does not simply ask you to notify the government that you were hurt — it requires the notice to contain specific content:

• Facts sufficient to let the public entity understand the basis on which liability is claimed
• A specific dollar amount for which the claim can be settled
• The facts supporting that amount

Arizona courts have applied that sum-certain requirement literally. A notice that says the claim is worth “an amount to be determined,” or that gives a range, or that demands policy limits without naming a figure, can be held insufficient — and once 180 days have run, there is no fixing it.

Service matters as much as content. The notice has to be delivered to the individual authorized to accept service for that entity, and identifying the right person is not always obvious across cities, counties, districts, and state agencies. If you are pursuing a claim against a public employee as well as the entity, both generally have to be served. Serving one and not the other is a common and fatal error.

When does a claim accrue? Under the statute, a cause of action accrues when the damaged party realizes they have been damaged and knows or reasonably should know the cause, source, act, event, instrumentality, or condition that caused or contributed to the damage. In a straightforward collision that is usually the date of the crash. Where the government’s role only surfaces during investigation, the analysis is more complicated — and not something to gamble on.

These claims arise more often than people expect:

• A collision with a city, county, or state vehicle, including police and fire
• A crash caused by a malfunctioning, obscured, or poorly timed traffic signal
• A dangerous roadway condition, unmarked hazard, missing sign, or defective road design
• A public transit bus or light rail incident
• A school bus collision, or an injury on school district property
• An injury on government property or in a public building

Nothing at the scene tells you a public entity is involved. You find out later — when the investigation identifies who owned the vehicle, or who was responsible for maintaining that intersection. By then, weeks of your 180 days are already gone.

We handle claims against public entities, and the first thing we do on any case with a possible government angle is calendar the notice deadline and start building the notice. If there is any chance a city, county, district, or the state played a role in your injury, that needs to be evaluated now — not after you finish treatment.

Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Claims

When the at-fault driver has no insurance or not enough of it, your own UM or UIM coverage becomes the source of recovery. That claim runs against your own insurer, and it has its own timeline under A.R.S. § 12-555.

Step one: written notice within three years. Your insurer is not liable for UM or UIM benefits unless you give written notice of your intent to pursue the claim within three years of the accident. For uninsured motorist claims, the statute also allows three years from the earliest of the date you knew the other driver was uninsured, the date you knew or should have known their insurer denied coverage, or the date you knew or should have known their insurer was insolvent. For underinsured motorist claims, there is a parallel provision running three years from when you knew or should have known the other driver’s liability limits were insufficient to cover your injuries.

Step two: arbitration or suit within three years of that notice. If the claim does not settle, you must request arbitration or file suit under the terms of your policy within three years after giving that written notice. If you do not, the insurer is not liable for the benefits.

The trap in the middle. For an underinsured motorist claim, the statute requires something in addition to the notice: you must also have made a claim against the at-fault driver’s insurer, or filed an action against that driver, within the time limits set by § 12-542 — the ordinary two-year deadline. So the longer UM/UIM notice period does not relieve you of the two-year clock on the underlying claim. People read “three years” and assume they have breathing room on the whole matter. They do not.

Because these deadlines interact with your policy terms, and because the insurer on the other side is the one you have been paying premiums to, UM/UIM claims are worth reviewing early rather than late.

Wrongful Death

Arizona’s wrongful death statute, A.R.S. § 12-611 and the sections following it, allows a surviving spouse, child, parent, or the estate to bring a claim when negligence causes a death.

The deadline is two years, but the accrual date differs in a way that matters: it generally runs from the date of death, not the date of the underlying injury. When someone is critically injured and dies weeks or months later, those are two different dates, and confusing them can cost a family its claim.

The 180-day government notice requirement applies to wrongful death claims as well. A fatal crash involving a public vehicle or a dangerous road condition puts a grieving family on a six-month clock at the worst possible time.

When Does the Clock Actually Start?

Every deadline above runs from accrual, not necessarily from the date of the incident. Accrual generally means the point at which you knew, or through reasonable diligence should have known, both that you were injured and what caused it.

For a car crash, those are usually the same day. For other injuries they are not. Arizona’s discovery rule delays accrual where an injury or its cause is not immediately apparent — a slowly developing condition, a latent injury, or a situation where the responsible party cannot be identified at first.

The discovery rule is genuinely useful, but it is not a safety net. It is a fact-intensive argument the other side will fight, and courts apply it narrowly. Never plan around it.

Tolling: Minors and Legal Disability

A.R.S. § 12-502 pauses the limitations period for a person who is under 18 or is of unsound mind when the cause of action accrues. For an injured child, the two-year clock generally does not begin until the eighteenth birthday, giving them until roughly age 20 to file.

Two cautions. First, tolling does not extend a parent’s own claims — medical expenses the parents paid, for example — which run on the normal schedule. Second, the interaction between tolling and the 180-day government notice requirement is fact-specific and heavily litigated. If a child was injured in an incident that might involve a public entity, do not assume the notice deadline is tolled. Get it evaluated immediately.

The Deadline Is Not the Only Clock

Even well inside a valid limitations period, waiting costs you money. Evidence has its own, much shorter shelf life:

• Traffic and surveillance camera footage is overwritten in weeks, not years
• Vehicles get repaired, sold, or scrapped, taking the crash data recorder with them
• Skid marks, debris fields, and roadway conditions disappear within days
• Witnesses relocate, and memories degrade measurably within months
• Commercial trucking records are subject to retention schedules that expire while you wait

Arizona also follows pure comparative fault under A.R.S. § 12-2505. Your recovery is reduced by whatever share of fault is assigned to you, which gives the other side a direct financial incentive to build a case that you were partly to blame. Every month you spend negotiating alone is a month they spend documenting that argument while the evidence that would rebut it disappears.

Not Sure Which Deadline Applies to You?

Most people cannot tell from the outside which clock is running on their case — and the shortest ones come with the fewest warning signs. A crash at a badly timed signal looks like an ordinary crash. A collision with an uninsured driver looks like an ordinary collision until you find out there is no policy behind it.

Finding out costs nothing. We will tell you what deadlines apply to your situation, what needs to be preserved right now, and whether you have a claim worth pursuing.

Call 480-634-7480, or start a live chat. The consultation is free, and there is no fee unless we win.

Frequently Asked Questions About Arizona Injury Deadlines

This page explains Arizona law in general terms and is not legal advice. Limitations periods depend heavily on the specific facts of a case, and exceptions apply. Speak with an attorney about your own circumstances before relying on any deadline described here.