Personal Injury Lawsuit Deadlines: Know Your Time Limit

If you’ve been hurt in a car accident, slip and fall, workplace mishap, or other accident, you may be eligible to win a financial award if someone else’s carelessness, reckless behavior, or negligence caused the accident and your injuries. Collecting the evidence to show negligence from another party can take some time, though. So how long do you have to sue for personal injury? In most cases, the answer is six years from the date of the accident in Minnesota and three years in Wisconsin.

The six-year statute of limitations for Minnesota personal injury lawsuits can be found at Minnesota Statutes section 541.05. The three-year Wisconsin personal injury statute of limitations is explained in Wisconsin Statutes section 893.54. Some very limited exceptions to these time frames exist in each state.

Getting injured, especially through no fault of your own, can mean mounting medical bills, time away from work, lost wages, stress on your family, and a great deal of uncertainty about your future. If this has happened to you, you don’t have to suffer alone. Learn more about how our skilled and experienced Wisconsin and Minnesota personal injury attorneys can help.

What Does a Statute of Limitations Mean?

The statute of limitations sets a deadline for filing a personal injury lawsuit. Unless you’re eligible for one of the rare exceptions, you have a certain amount of time to file a lawsuit with the local court where the accident occurred. Failure to meet the deadline could invalidate your claim.

Each state has its own statute of limitations deadline. The state where the accident occurred will determine which statute of limitations applies in your case. You do not have to reach a claim settlement with the insurance company within the deadline; but if you need to file a lawsuit, it must be done before the statute of limitations expires.

When you hire our injury accident attorneys to represent you, we will ensure that your case is handled within the proper statute of limitations. As long as you contact us early enough, you do not have to worry about this deadline when we’re helping you.

Why Is There a Deadline to File a Personal Injury Claim?

States set a legal deadline for settling the claim to protect defendants from unfair injury lawsuits. Without a statute of limitations, an injured victim could theoretically wait 30 years or longer to file an injury claim. By this time, evidence in the case might no longer be available, making it difficult for the defendant to try to refute the injury claim.

On the other side of the equation, the full extent of some injuries from accidents is not clear for a year or longer. The victim of the accident needs time to receive a clear diagnosis from doctors and to determine the long-term consequences of the injuries from the accident. That’s why the statute of limitations gives victims at least a few years to decide whether to file a lawsuit.

How the Personal Injury Claim Process Works

If you’ve been injured due to someone else’s negligence, you may be entitled to damages. Understanding personal injury law and how it works can be confusing for victims, though.

Damages You Could Receive

Damages can be both economic and non-economic. They include:

Medical and rehabilitation expenses (current and future)
Lost wages
Loss of future earnings
Pain and suffering
Loss of consortium
Emotional distress (including trauma, humiliation, and disfigurement).

In some instances, punitive damages are possible, such as when a court finds evidence of gross negligence by a defendant who knowingly or recklessly placed persons in danger.

What are punitive damages? As the name implies, they are designed to punish a defendant and prevent any other would-be wrongdoers from being similarly negligent. Damages can range from thousands to millions of dollars, depending on the unique circumstances of each case. There is no average settlement compensation amount for personal injury claims, because the awards in every case are highly fact dependent.

How Much Time Do You Have to Bring a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

Whatever your injury, you want to make sure you bring a personal injury lawsuit within the time frame allotted. If you miss your window of opportunity to file, your case will likely be thrown out of court. It’s imperative that you take action right away.

If You’re Laid Up in the Hospital, How Long Do You Have to Sue for an Injury?

There are some narrow exceptions to the statute of limitations for a personal injury lawsuit, but being in the hospital isn’t one of them. Even if you’re injured and hospitalized, you must still abide by the statute of limitations. However, some rare instances exist to extend the statute of limitations.

Exceptions to Minnesota’s Statute of Limitations

There are a few scenarios in which the “clock” on Minnesota’s six-year statute of limitations for personal injury lawsuits might be delayed. These include:

If the injured person is not a legal adult, the statute’s clock does not start until the person turns 19 years old.
If the injured person is legally insane, the clock won’t start running until the period of legal disability is over and mental competence is restored. However, this filing delay won’t be extended beyond five years. Once sanity is restored, the suit must be filed within one year, according to Minnesota Statutes section 541.15.
If the injured person dies because of the accident, the surviving family members have three years from the date of death to file a claim with the help of our Minnesota wrongful death attorneys.

Exceptions to Wisconsin’s Statute of Limitations

Wisconsin also has a few scenarios that could delay the “clock” for its three-year statute of limitations. These include:

If a plaintiff is under the age of 18, he or she will have two years to file a claim after turning 18.
A mentally ill person has two years to file a claim after mental competence is restored. However, the filing deadline will not be extended beyond five years from the date of the accident in cases involving injured parties that are mentally ill, according to Wisconsin Statutes section 893.16.
If the defendant – after the injury occurs but before a lawsuit can be filed – leaves and resides outside of Wisconsin (and therefore cannot be served with a lawsuit), the period of out-of-state absence usually won’t count toward the three-year statute of limitations, according to Wisconsin Statutes section 893.19.

How Do You Prove Negligence in a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

In a personal injury lawsuit, our attorneys will need to prove negligence from the other party that caused the accident and your injuries. A defendant can be a person, a business, an insurance company, a government entity, or any combination of these. We must prove four elements in your lawsuit, including:

Duty: The defendant owed the plaintiff a legal “duty of care” to ensure that an environment or location was safe.
Breach: A plaintiff must show that the defendant breached this duty by doing, or failing to do, something that a reasonable person would have done in a similar situation.
Causation: A plaintiff must show that the defendant’s actions, or inaction, caused the accident and injuries.
Damages: Damages represent a monetary way of compensating a plaintiff for injuries and property damage.

Contact Tyroler Leonard Injury Law Today

If you’ve been injured in an accident and want to get the justice you deserve, contact our skilled and experienced Wisconsin or Minnesota personal injury lawyers at Tyroler Leonard Injury Law. We fight aggressively for our clients and will hold the responsible parties accountable. We are compassionate and committed to the well-being of every client. To find out more about how we can help, call us for a free initial consultation at (651) 259-1113 today.

Attorney Isaac Tyroler

Attorney Isaac Tyroler has been a strong advocate for injured people his entire legal career. He has a passion for righting wrongs, and he deeply cares about representing injured clients who may feel overwhelmed or uncertain about how to navigate the legal system. He is compassionate toward clients and aggressive with insurance companies and defendants. He is on the elected Board of Governors of the Minnesota Association of Justice (MAJ), the top personal injury lawyers’ group in Minnesota. And is currently the chair of MAJ’s legislative committee. [ Attorney Bio ]