If you’ve been injured in an accident in Arkansas, understanding the time limits for filing your claim is critical to protecting your rights. Missing these deadlines could mean losing your chance to recover compensation for your injuries, medical bills, and other damages.
Time Limits for Filing Personal Injury Claims in Arkansas
In Arkansas, you generally have three years from the date of your injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. This three-year window applies to most accident cases, including car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle crashes, slip and fall incidents, and other injury claims. The clock starts ticking on the date the injury occurred, not when you discovered the full extent of your damages or when you finished medical treatment.
However, the three-year rule doesn’t apply to every situation. Some cases have shorter deadlines, while others may allow more time depending on specific circumstances. Understanding which deadline applies to your case is one of the first steps in protecting your right to compensation.
When the Deadline Is Shorter Than Three Years
Claims against government entities face much tighter deadlines in Arkansas. If your injury involves a city, county, or state entity, you must file a written notice of your claim within a much shorter timeframe. For claims against the state, you typically have only two years to file. For claims against cities or counties, the deadline can be as short as 90 days from the date of injury. These shortened windows make it extremely important to act quickly if your accident involved a government vehicle, occurred on government property, or involved a government employee.
Medical malpractice cases also follow different rules. In Arkansas, you generally have two years from the date of the alleged malpractice to file a lawsuit. There’s also a discovery rule that may extend this deadline if you didn’t immediately know about the harm caused by the medical error. Even with the discovery rule, there’s usually an absolute deadline of three years from the date of the act or omission that caused the injury, with limited exceptions.
Product liability claims, where a defective product caused your injury, typically follow the three-year statute of limitations. However, Arkansas law also includes a statute of repose for product liability cases, which can bar claims after a certain number of years have passed since the product was first sold, regardless of when the injury occurred. This makes it important to move forward with your claim as soon as possible if you were hurt by a defective product.
Special Circumstances That Can Affect Your Deadline
Certain situations can pause or extend the statute of limitations. If the injured person was under 18 years old when the injury occurred, the statute of limitations typically doesn’t start running until they turn 18. This means a minor injured in an accident may have until their 21st birthday to file a personal injury claim in most cases. Similarly, if the injured person was mentally incapacitated at the time of the injury, the deadline may be extended.
The discovery rule can also affect when the statute of limitations begins. In some cases where the injury or its cause wasn’t immediately apparent, the clock may not start until you knew or reasonably should have known about the injury and its cause. However, courts interpret this rule narrowly, and you can’t rely on it in most straightforward accident cases. It’s far safer to assume your deadline starts on the date of the accident.
If the person responsible for your injury leaves Arkansas after the accident but before you file your lawsuit, the time they’re out of state may not count toward the statute of limitations. This tolling provision exists to ensure that defendants can’t run out the clock simply by leaving the state. However, proving these circumstances and calculating the exact deadline can be complex, which is why getting legal guidance early is so important.
Wrongful Death Claims Have Different Rules
When an accident results in death, the family members or estate of the deceased person may be able to file a wrongful death claim. In Arkansas, wrongful death claims must be filed within three years of the date of death, not necessarily the date of the accident. This distinction matters in cases where someone survives for a period of time after an accident before passing away from their injuries.
The personal representative of the deceased person’s estate must file the wrongful death lawsuit. If there is no personal representative appointed within the first year after death, certain family members may be able to file the claim directly. The compensation available in wrongful death cases includes funeral expenses, medical bills related to the final injury, lost financial support, and the loss of companionship and guidance. Because these cases involve complicated legal procedures and strict deadlines, families dealing with the loss of a loved one should reach out for legal help as soon as possible.
Why Acting Quickly Protects Your Rights
Waiting to take action on your injury claim creates serious risks beyond just missing the filing deadline. Evidence disappears over time. Witnesses forget important details or become harder to locate. Surveillance footage gets deleted. Physical evidence from the accident scene gets removed or deteriorates. The sooner you start the claims process, the better chance you have of preserving the evidence needed to prove your case and hold the responsible party accountable.
Medical records and documentation are also easier to obtain when your treatment is recent. Doctors have clearer memories of your injuries and the connection to the accident. Insurance companies take claims more seriously when they’re filed promptly. On the other hand, waiting months or years to pursue compensation raises questions about the severity of your injuries and whether the accident actually caused them. Insurance adjusters will use any delay against you, arguing that someone who was truly injured would have sought help immediately.
Your own memory of the accident fades with time as well. The specific details that might prove who was at fault become less clear. You may forget important facts about how the accident happened, what you observed immediately after, or what was said at the scene. Starting your claim while everything is fresh in your mind helps ensure that your version of events is accurate and detailed.
How Insurance Companies Use Delay Against You
Insurance companies know about statutes of limitations, and their adjusters sometimes use these deadlines as a strategy to minimize what they pay out. They may drag out settlement negotiations, hoping you’ll accept a low offer as your filing deadline approaches and you feel pressured to take whatever is on the table. They may also wait to see if you miss the deadline entirely, at which point they can deny your claim completely because you’ve lost your right to sue.
Some insurance adjusters are friendly and helpful at first, leading you to believe they’ll make a fair offer without you needing legal representation. They may ask you to wait on hiring an attorney while they “investigate” your claim. This investigation can stretch on for months, and by the time you realize they aren’t going to make a reasonable offer, you’ve lost valuable time. You may also have made statements to the insurance company that hurt your case, or accepted an early offer that was far less than your claim was worth.
Another tactic involves making partial payments for property damage or some medical bills, creating the impression that the insurance company is handling your claim fairly. Meanwhile, they’re waiting to see if your injuries resolve on their own or if you’ll give up on pursuing full compensation. Once the statute of limitations expires, they have no incentive to negotiate fairly because you can’t take them to court.
Important Considerations When Timing Your Claim
Filing your lawsuit isn’t the same as settling your case. Many injury claims are resolved through settlement negotiations before ever going to trial. However, you need to have a lawsuit filed before the statute of limitations expires to preserve your ability to go to court if settlement talks don’t work out. You can continue negotiating after filing the lawsuit, but you cannot file the lawsuit after the deadline passes, no matter how strong your case might be.
This means you may need to file a lawsuit even if you’re still receiving medical treatment or haven’t reached maximum medical improvement. Your attorney can work with you to document ongoing treatment and include future medical expenses in your claim. Waiting until all your treatment is complete might seem like the logical approach, but if doing so means missing your filing deadline, you’ll lose your right to any compensation at all.
The complexity of your case also affects timing. Simple fender-bender cases with minor injuries might be straightable to evaluate and settle relatively quickly. Serious injury cases involving multiple parties, disputed liability, or catastrophic injuries require more investigation and preparation. Trucking accidents, for example, involve federal regulations, multiple potentially liable parties, and complex evidence like electronic logging devices and truck maintenance records. These cases take time to build properly, which is another reason to get started as early as possible.
What Happens If You Miss the Deadline
If you miss the statute of limitations for your injury claim, the consequences are severe and usually permanent. The defendant can file a motion to dismiss your case based on the expired statute of limitations, and the court will almost certainly grant that motion. Once your case is dismissed for this reason, you cannot refile it. The claim is dead, regardless of how strong your evidence might be or how badly you were injured.
This outcome leaves you responsible for all your medical bills, lost wages, and other damages with no way to recover compensation from the person or company that caused your injuries. Even if the defendant was clearly at fault, even if you have witnesses and documentation, and even if your injuries are severe and life-changing, missing the deadline ends your case. Arkansas courts very rarely make exceptions to statutes of limitations, and those exceptions apply only in specific, narrow circumstances.
The financial impact of missing this deadline can be devastating. Medical bills from serious injuries can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lost wages while you’re unable to work add up quickly. Long-term or permanent injuries may require ongoing care and treatment for the rest of your life. Without compensation from the responsible party, these costs fall entirely on you and your family. This is why understanding and meeting your filing deadline is so critical.
Other Deadlines That Affect Your Case
Beyond the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit, other deadlines can impact your ability to recover compensation. Many insurance policies require that you report an accident within a certain timeframe. If you were injured in an accident involving a commercial vehicle, specific regulations may impose notice requirements. Each insurance company and policy is different, so reviewing these requirements early helps avoid problems that could jeopardize your claim.
If you’re pursuing a claim against your own insurance company for uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, your policy will include specific deadlines for reporting the accident and filing your claim. Missing these policy deadlines can result in a denial of coverage, even if the statute of limitations for suing the at-fault driver hasn’t expired yet. Reading your insurance policy or having someone review it for you helps ensure you meet all applicable deadlines.
Workers’ compensation claims have entirely separate deadlines from personal injury lawsuits. In Arkansas, you generally must report a workplace injury to your employer within a certain timeframe and file a workers’ compensation claim within two years of the injury. If your workplace injury was caused by someone other than your employer or a coworker, you might have both a workers’ compensation claim and a personal injury lawsuit, each with its own deadlines.
Documenting Your Injuries and Treatment
From the moment an accident happens, documentation becomes your strongest tool. Seek medical attention immediately, even if your injuries seem minor. Some serious injuries don’t show symptoms right away, and gaps in medical treatment give insurance companies ammunition to argue your injuries weren’t severe or weren’t caused by the accident. Follow your doctor’s treatment plan, attend all appointments, and keep copies of every medical record and bill.
Photograph your injuries, the accident scene, and any property damage as soon as possible. Take pictures from multiple angles and include context that shows the conditions at the time of the accident. If there were witnesses, get their contact information. Write down your own recollection of how the accident happened while the details are fresh. All of this documentation becomes evidence that supports your claim and helps establish the timeline of events.
Keep track of how your injuries affect your daily life. Note the activities you can no longer do, the pain you experience, and how your injuries impact your work and family life. This information helps demonstrate the full extent of your damages beyond just medical bills and lost wages. The more thoroughly you document your injuries and their impact, the stronger your case becomes and the better position you’re in during settlement negotiations or at trial.
Need Help With Your Arkansas Injury Claim?
Time is not on your side when it comes to filing an injury claim in Arkansas. The statute of limitations creates a hard deadline that cannot be extended in most situations, and waiting too long puts your entire case at risk. As a personal injury law firm in Arkansas, we at Shamieh Law can help you understand the specific deadlines that apply to your case and take action to protect your rights. Our team gets started fast, using the latest technology to gather evidence and build your case while the details are still fresh. We treat every client like family and work hard to get results, having recovered over $200 million for our clients. Contact our team today by calling 501-361-1334.