Statute of Limitations vs. Statute of Repose: Your Guide to Legal Time Limits

Last updated 1 week ago. Our resources are updated regularly but please keep in mind that links, programs, policies, and contact information do change.

A statute of limitations is a deadline for filing a lawsuit. It generally starts when the person can first sue, which in an injury case can be the day the harm happens or is discovered. A statute of repose is a separate outer cutoff, counted from what the defendant did, such as designing or making a product, and it can end before anyone is hurt.

Both can apply to the same claim. Because the outer cutoff can pass before an injury is even discovered, a person who sues soon after discovering harm can still be too late. In Texas, for example, a suit over a defective product generally must be filed against its maker or seller within 15 years after that company sold the product.

Two clocks can govern the same lawsuit

The Supreme Court explains that a limitations period ordinarily begins when a claim accrues, meaning the plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief. In a personal-injury or property-damage case, that can be when the injury occurs or is discovered.

A repose period instead measures time from the defendant’s last relevant act or omission, rather than from the claim’s accrual. It can bar an action even before the resulting injury occurs. The two clocks are answering different questions: when the injured person could sue, and how long the defendant remains exposed to a suit.

The Supreme Court describes limitations periods as encouraging diligent pursuit of claims and repose periods as implementing a legislative decision to end the defendant’s liability after a set time. A court applying an outer cutoff is carrying out that legislative choice, not judging whether the claimant acted quickly after discovery.

The Court describes the pairing of a shorter limitations period and a longer repose period as a common feature of statutory time limits. The longer outer period is not extra time added to the ordinary filing period; where both apply, a claim has to meet both.

Discovery and tolling solve different timing problems

California Courts explains that, where the discovery rule applies, the clock can run from when the problem was discovered or reasonably should have been discovered, whichever comes first. A person who noticed a problem late still needs to address whether reasonable diligence would have revealed it earlier.

Tolling means that a specified period of time does not count against a filing deadline. California’s court guidance gives a minor’s age as an example of a circumstance that may toll a limitations period. Discovery changes when a clock starts; tolling changes how time is counted.

Equitable tolling allows a court to pause a limitations period when a diligent litigant is prevented from timely filing by extraordinary circumstances. Statutes of repose generally cannot be paused this way, even when circumstances beyond the plaintiff’s control caused the delay.

For certain state-law claims over exposure to hazardous substances, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act replaces an earlier state starting date with a later, discovery-based one. Owners of the former CTS property and neighboring landowners sued CTS, the electronics company, over alleged contamination; the Fourth Circuit initially ruled that the federal provision overrode North Carolina’s statute of repose. In CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, decided June 9, 2014, the Supreme Court reversed the Fourth Circuit, a federal appeals court, and concluded that this provision does not override state statutes of repose, so the later start applies only to statutes of limitations.

The statute controls the exceptions

In a separate case, about a pension fund’s late lawsuit, the Supreme Court explained that when a repose statute contains its own express exception, lawmakers have shown they meant the period to be extended in those circumstances. When a general tolling rule sits elsewhere in the code, such as one suspending time limits until a plaintiff reaches adulthood, courts must analyze how the provisions relate. Calling a deadline a statute of repose is therefore not enough to conclude that it has no exceptions.

The Court’s CTS opinion notes that legal writers and courts have not always used the two labels consistently. Read the rule itself, not just a heading that calls it a limitation: what starts the clock, how long it runs, which defendants it covers and what exceptions apply.

What the distinction looks like in actual laws

The examples below come from California, Texas and federal law. They are examples to investigate, rather than a nationwide deadline chart.

Ordinary personal injury and medical negligence in California

California Courts lists the ordinary personal-injury deadline as two years from injury. For a professional-negligence claim against a health care provider over an injury or death, California Code of Civil Procedure section 340.5 instead sets the deadline at three years after the injury or one year after the plaintiff discovers it, or should have discovered it through reasonable diligence, whichever comes first.

Section 340.5 permits tolling of the three-year limit on proof of fraud, intentional concealment, or a foreign object in the patient’s body that has no therapeutic or diagnostic purpose or effect. Those are specified statutory grounds, not a general promise that every hidden medical injury receives an extension.

The statute gives minors a separate rule: a suit must generally be filed within three years of the alleged wrongful act. A child under six must file within three years or before the eighth birthday, whichever gives more time. The time limit is also paused for any period in which a parent or guardian and the defendant’s insurer or health care provider commit fraud or collusion in failing to bring the minor’s claim.

Products and construction in Texas

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 16.012 generally requires a products-liability action against a manufacturer or seller before the end of 15 years after that defendant’s sale of the product. The clock starts with the defendant’s sale, not with the later discovery of a defect.

If a manufacturer or seller expressly warrants in writing that the product has a useful safe life longer than 15 years, a suit against that company must instead be filed within the warranted number of years after the sale. An exception covers diseases whose symptoms appear late: the claimant must allege exposure before the end of 15 years after the product was first sold and a disease caused by that exposure. The claimant must also allege that, before 15 years after the defendant’s first sale, symptoms had not appeared with enough severity and duration to put a reasonable person on notice of injury.

Section 16.009 generally uses 10 years from substantial completion for covered claims against people who construct or repair improvements to real property, subject to its other provisions. For covered residential work, a contractor’s qualifying written warranty can shorten the period to six years after substantial completion. That warranty must cover at least one year for workmanship and materials, two years for plumbing, electrical, heating and air-conditioning delivery systems, and six years for major structural components.

When damage, injury or death occurs in the last year of the applicable construction period, section 16.009 allows suit within two years after the claim accrues. Its exclusions include actions based on willful misconduct or fraudulent concealment in the construction or repair, and actions on contracts expressly providing a longer effective period. The section also does not bar an action against someone who actually possessed or controlled the property when the damage, injury or death occurred. It expressly says it does not extend or affect a period for bringing an action under another state law. A claimant relying on one of these exceptions still needs to check any other deadline that governs the claim.

Federal criminal charges use a different inquiry

Federal criminal law has its own filing deadlines, which run from the offense. Federal law generally requires prosecutors to bring formal criminal charges within five years after an offense not punishable by death was committed, unless another law specifies a different rule. An indictment for an offense punishable by death may be found at any time without limitation. These provisions govern the government’s criminal prosecution; they do not set the deadline for a civil lawsuit over the same events.

A class action does not pause a statute of repose

A lawsuit by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest public pension fund in the country, shows how an outer cutoff can collide with a class action. The fund had bought securities that Lehman Brothers sold in public offerings in 2007 and 2008, and the suit alleged that financial firms that underwrote the offerings were liable under the federal Securities Act. For those claims, section 13 of the act required filing within one year after the inaccurate statement or omission was discovered or reasonably should have been discovered. A separate outer limit required filing no later than three years after the security was genuinely offered to the public.

In February 2011, the fund, a member of a proposed class action, filed its own complaint making the same allegations, more than three years after the relevant offerings. After a proposed settlement was reached in the class action, the fund opted out of the class. The trial court rejected its argument that the class-action filing tolled that period, and the Second Circuit affirmed. In 2017, the Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the court-made rule that pauses a deadline while a class action is pending, from American Pipe & Construction Co. v. Utah, could not extend section 13’s repose period.

Justice Ginsburg’s dissent warned that class members filing their own protective claims before the three-year period expires would increase the costs and complexity of litigation and burden the courts. Where the deadline is a statute of repose, being part of a class action should not be treated as automatic protection for a separate lawsuit.

Finding the deadline that governs the claim

California’s court guidance explains that deadlines depend on the reason for suing and sometimes on who is being sued. Start by identifying the claim and the governing jurisdiction before selecting a number from a chart. Collect the dates the relevant rule uses, including discovery, sale or substantial completion where those events apply.

The same California guidance says claims against a government agency, or someone who was working for one, have different deadlines and other requirements, such as first submitting a claim to the agency by a much earlier deadline.

California Courts directs readers to the applicable statutory section and the cases interpreting it, and recommends legal help when the deadline or tolling is uncertain. Ask the lawyer to check both the ordinary filing period and any outer cutoff, including which exceptions actually apply.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California lists legal-aid organizations and clinics and explains that free legal help may be available in limited circumstances depending on the program.

California Courts warns that a person will generally lose a case filed after the deadline. If a deadline appears to have passed, take the dates and the applicable statute to a lawyer rather than treating either discovery or an exception as a guaranteed rescue.