In most Texas personal injury cases, you have two years from the date you were hurt to file a lawsuit. Texas courts strictly enforce that deadline, and a judge can dismiss a strong case without ever hearing the facts if the petition is filed a day late. What catches people off guard is that two years is only the default. Some claims run on a much shorter clock, and one type of claim has a hard outer wall that closes even if you never knew you were injured. If you were hurt in Anderson County or Houston County, an East Texas personal injury attorney can tell you quickly which deadline governs your case.
What the Two-Year Clock Actually Measures
The two-year period runs from the day your cause of action accrues. In a straightforward injury case that is normally the day of the incident, and Texas courts decide accrual case by case when it is not obvious. A rear-end collision on US-287 on March 3 generally gives you until March 3 two years later to get a lawsuit on file.
Two details trip people up. First, the deadline is about filing a suit, not about finishing your case. Your claim does not have to be settled or tried within two years, but the petition has to be filed. Second, an insurance claim is not a lawsuit. Adjusters can keep a friendly negotiation going right up to the deadline, and once it passes, their reason to pay you anything disappears.
Texas measures a death claim from a different starting point. When an injury results in death, the two-year period runs from the date of death rather than the date of the original injury. That distinction matters when someone is badly hurt in a wreck and survives for months before passing away.
Claims Against a City, County, or School District Move Much Faster
If a government vehicle or a government property condition caused your injuries, a second and far shorter deadline lands first. Under the Texas Tort Claims Act, a governmental unit is entitled to receive notice of a claim no later than six months after the day the incident occurred, and that notice has to reasonably describe the injury claimed, the time and place of the incident, and the incident itself.
You will see this described elsewhere as a 180-day rule. The statute says six months, and the difference matters less than what comes next in the same section: Texas ratifies and approves city charter and ordinance notice provisions. Cities set those periods themselves, so the only safe assumption is that your window may be shorter than six months and that no one knows how short until someone reads that city’s charter.
The list of entities this covers is broad. The state’s rules for claims against government entities reach the State of Texas and its agencies, cities, counties, school districts, junior college districts, water and drainage districts, public health districts, river authorities, and emergency service organizations such as qualifying volunteer fire departments and rescue squads. There is a narrow exception when the governmental unit already has actual notice that a death, an injury, or property damage occurred, but that exception is heavily litigated and is no substitute for sending formal written notice.
When an Injured Child Has More Time
Texas treats a minor differently. A person younger than 18 is under a legal disability, and the time that disability lasts is not counted in the limitations period. In practice, a child injured at 10 generally has until age 20 to bring the child’s own personal injury claim, because the two-year clock does not start running until the 18th birthday.
Legal disabilities cannot be stacked to buy more time. A disability that begins after the limitations period has already started does not pause it. Medical malpractice claims follow a separate and more complicated set of rules, which the next section explains.
Waiting is still a bad idea even when the law allows it. Witnesses move away, vehicles get repaired or sold for salvage, and business records are purged long before a child turns 18. A claim that is technically alive on paper can be nearly impossible to prove a decade later.
The Medical Malpractice Deadline Has a Second Wall
Health care liability claims run on their own statute, and it is stricter in two directions. The claim must be filed within two years from the occurrence of the breach or tort, or from the date the treatment or the hospitalization at issue was completed. Layered on top of that, Texas sets an absolute outer limit of 10 years from the date of the act or omission. The Legislature called that provision a statute of repose and wrote that all claims must be brought within 10 years or they are time-barred, which means a claim discovered in year 11 is gone on the face of the statute. If an injury did not surface until long after the treatment, do not decide on your own that the door has closed, because that situation has its own body of Texas law.
The Texas chapter that governs medical liability claims also speaks directly to the minority rule described above. On its face, it applies to all persons regardless of minority or other legal disability, with one carve-out written into the text.
Minors under the age of 12 have until their 14th birthday to file. Texas courts have found that cutoff unconstitutional as applied to children and have generally held that a child’s own malpractice claim is paused until the child turns 18, much like an ordinary injury claim. The rule is not fully settled at the highest court; other traps still apply, such as the 10-year outer limit, and a parent’s separate claim for the child’s medical bills runs on the ordinary two-year clock. For all of those reasons, do not try to calculate a child’s malpractice deadline on your own. If you think you may have a medical malpractice claim, get it looked at early.
Why Waiting Costs You Long Before the Deadline
Even when the legal deadline sits comfortably in the future, the practical deadline does not. The evidence that decides your case has a far shorter shelf life than the statute does. In the weeks after a crash on US-287 or a fall at a business in Grapeland, Palestine, or Crockett, these things routinely disappear:
- Surveillance video, which many businesses overwrite within days
- Skid marks, debris, and roadway conditions at the scene
- The vehicle itself, once it is repaired or sold for salvage
- Witnesses who move, change phone numbers, or stop remembering details
- A clean treatment record, once gaps appear, an adjuster can call proof you were not really hurt
Attorney Chris Sbrusch began his career defending insurance companies, so he has seen from the inside how much a few months of delay is worth to the other side. The sooner preservation letters go out, and records get pulled, the less of your case is left to argue later.
Talk With PINEYWOODS LAW™ Before Your Clock Runs Out
You should not have to guess which deadline is running against you. A conversation costs nothing, and we can tell you quickly whether a government notice window, the minor’s tolling rule, or the medical malpractice repose period changes your timeline. Contact PINEYWOODS LAW™ to speak with attorney Chris Sbrusch. We meet at our Grapeland office on US-287, by phone, by video, or at your home or hospital room if that is easier. Se Habla Español, and there are no attorney fees unless we win.
