After an accident, medical care, bills and insurance calls can quickly take over your attention. But while you focus on recovery, Virginia’s filing deadline keeps moving. In most cases, you have two years from when you sustain the injury, even if the resulting harm becomes clearer later.
When can the two-year deadline change?
Deadlines and notice requirements that may apply include:
- Claims involving minors: For most personal injury claims involving a child who is not legally emancipated, Virginia law generally pauses the filing deadline until age 18. If the child has not been legally emancipated before turning 18, the usual two-year filing period generally follows. Medical malpractice follows different rules. If the child was younger than 8 when the malpractice occurred, Virginia law generally gives the child until their 10th birthday to file the claim. Otherwise, the two-year filing period generally runs from the last act or failure to act involved in the malpractice.
- Claims against local governments: If Virginia law allows your negligence claim against a county, city or town, you generally must give written notice within six months.
- Claims against the state: Virginia Tort Claims Act claims have a one-year notice deadline. You generally must send written notice to the designated official within one year after your right to bring the claim begins.
These notice deadlines are separate from the deadline to sue. Check early whether a government entity may be involved.
Does Virginia use a discovery rule?
Virginia generally does not apply a broad discovery rule to ordinary personal injury claims. However, narrow medical malpractice exceptions may give you more time. One exception may apply when a provider leaves a foreign object with no treatment or diagnostic effect in your body. Others involve fraud or concealment that prevents discovery, or failure to diagnose certain cancers, malignant tumors or nerve tumors called schwannomas.
These extensions generally cannot move the deadline beyond 10 years from when the legal claim begins. Limited disability exceptions may affect that limit.
Why calculating your deadline can take extra care
More than one rule may affect how much time you have. That can make it easy to rely on the wrong date. Legal guidance can help you sort through the rules that apply to your situation and avoid a timing mistake that could limit your options.