The general answer in Texas is two years. The useful answer is that the two-year rule has enough exceptions, shorter alternatives, and tricky starting points that claims get lost when you rely on it without checking.
A missed deadline is not a setback. It is the end of the claim, regardless of how badly someone was hurt or how clear the other party’s fault was.
The General Rule
Most Texas personal injury claims must be filed within two years of the day the cause of action occurred — generally the date of the injury.
This covers car and truck collisions, premises liability, most product claims, ms and general negligence. Wrongful death claims also carry two years, running from the date of death rather than the date of the injury that caused it.
Filing means actually commencing suit in court. Negotiating with an insurer does not extend anything, and adjusters have been known to keep discussions pleasant and unhurried while a deadline approaches.
Government Claims Are Much Shorter
This is the exception that catches the most people.
Claims against a Texas governmental unit — a city, a county, a school district, a transit authority, a state agency — require formal notice within a short period, often within months. Some municipalities impose even shorter notice periods by charter.
A crash with a city vehicle, an injury on government property, or a claim involving a public hospital falls into this category. The notice requirement is separate from and earlier than the limitations period, and failing it defeats the claim even if suit is later filed within two years.
Texas also limits when governmental units can be sued and caps the damages recoverable against them.
The Discovery Rule
Where an injury is inherently undiscoverable and objectively verifiable, Texas may delay accrual until the claimant knew or reasonably should have known of the injury.
The rule is applied narrowly. It arises most often in cases involving latent disease from toxic exposure, a foreign object left after surgery, or fraud that concealed the wrong.
It is not a general safety net for people who simply did not appreciate the seriousness of an injury. Relying on it as a plan rather than an argument is a mistake.
Minors and Legal Incapacity
Limitations are generally tolled for a child, with the period beginning when the minor reaches eighteen. A child injured at eight therefore has until twenty to bring their own claim.
A parent’s claim for medical expenses incurred on the child’s behalf is separate and not tolled in the same way, meaning part of the family’s claim can expire while the child remains alive.
Tolling also applies for persons of unsound mind, though the analysis is fact-specific and should not be assumed.
Medical Malpractice Has Its Own Framework
Texas health care liability claims are governed by a distinct set of rules, including a two-year limitation period measured in a particular way, a notice requirement before suit, and an outer limit that can bar claims regardless of when they were discovered.
These cases also require an expert report served within a short window after filing. Failing to serve a compliant report results in dismissal and an award of the defendant’s attorney fees.
Malpractice cases need to be evaluated by The Burkett Law Firm well before the deadline because the expert work required takes months to assemble.
Maritime and Federal Claims
Jones Act and unseaworthiness claims generally have a three-year statute of limitations rather than two, and claims under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act follow their own rules.
Where an injury occurred offshore, on navigable waters, or in a maritime context, the applicable framework may not be Texas law at all. Make that determination early rather than assume it.
Claims Against Employers and Product Manufacturers
Two categories carry their own timing rules that differ from the general two-year period.
Where a workplace injury involves a subscribing employer, the workers’ compensation system has its own notice and claim deadlines measured in days and months rather than years, and these deadlines run independently of any third-party claim arising from the same incident.
Product liability claims are subject to the two-year limit and a statute of repose that can bar claims a set number of years after the product was first sold, regardless of when the injury occurred. A machine that failed after fifteen years in service may be outside the window even where the injury was recent.
Amending to Add Defendants
Filing a claim on time against one defendant does not automatically preserve claims against others.
In multi-party cases — a truck crash involving a carrier and a shipper, an oilfield injury involving several service companies — identifying every responsible party before the deadline matters because adding a new defendant after the limitations period has run is often not permitted.
This is another reason early investigation pays. The parties who ultimately carry the coverage are not always obvious from the crash report, and discovering them a year later can be too late.
Why Waiting Damages a Case Even Within the Deadline
Filing on the last available day is legally sufficient and practically poor.
- Surveillance and dashcam footage is routinely overwritten within days or weeks.
- Vehicles are repaired or salvaged, destroying event data and physical evidence.
- Witnesses relocate, change numbers, and forget details.
- Scene conditions change, particularly at commercial and industrial locations.
- Gaps in medical treatment are used to argue the injury was not serious.
- Company records reach the end of their retention cycles.
The strongest cases are built in the first weeks. A claim filed at the deadline with none of that evidence preserved is technically timely but substantively weak.
Contractual Deadlines Shorter Than the Statute
Limitations periods are not the only clocks running, and some of the tightest are contractual.
Insurance policies frequently impose their own notice requirements — prompt notice of a loss, cooperation obligations, and in the case of uninsured motorist coverage, a duty to notify the carrier before settling with the at-fault driver.
Settling with the other driver’s insurer without notifying your own underinsured carrier can forfeit that coverage entirely, even where the limitations period has years to run. It is one of the more expensive mistakes someone handling a claim alone can make.
Employment agreements, benefit plans and some commercial contracts also impose shortened periods, and Texas enforces reasonable contractual limitations provisions.
Tolling by Agreement and Filing to Preserve
Where a deadline approaches and the parties are genuinely negotiating, they can sometimes agree in writing to extend it. Insurers agree to this less often than people hope, and a verbal assurance is worth nothing.
The more reliable step is simply filing suit. A petition filed within the period preserves the claim and does not prevent settlement—the vast majority of filed cases still resolve without trial.
Filing also has practical benefits. It opens discovery, which compels the production of records an insurer has been declining to provide voluntarily.
If a Deadline Is Approaching
If you are close to two years and have not filed, that is not a reason to give up on the claim. It is a reason to speak to someone immediately, because a suit can be filed quickly where the facts support it.
Do not sign anything an insurer sends in the meantime. Releases are often presented as routine paperwork, and they permanently end the claim.
If you were injured in or around Corpus Christi and are unsure how long you have, call The Burkett Law Firm. The answer takes a short conversation, and it is better to have it early.
There is no cost to finding out where you stand, and a claim that is still within time can usually be preserved quickly. A claim that has expired cannot be revived at any price, which is why the conversation is worth having sooner rather than later.
