Statute of Limitations for Personal Injury in Tennessee

How Long Do You Have to File an Injury Lawsuit in Tennessee?

One year from the date of injury, in most cases.

The deadline comes from T.C.A. § 28-3-104, and no state gives injury victims less time.^[1]

It applies to most negligence claims: car accidents, slip and falls, dog bites, medical malpractice, and wrongful death.

File on day 366 and the court dismisses the case, no matter how strong it was.

A handful of exceptions extend the clock, and a few traps quietly shorten it.

Guessing wrong about which applies to you is how good cases die.

A free consultation with a Tennessee personal injury attorney at Lawsuit Legal is the fastest way to know your exact deadline.

Why Tennessee's One-Year Deadline Catches People Off Guard

Most states give injury victims two or three years to file. Georgia allows two. Texas allows two. Florida allows two. Tennessee allows one, and the difference changes how a claim has to be handled from the first week.

Twelve months sounds like time. It is not. In a serious injury case, those months are consumed by treatment, by waiting for the injury to stabilize enough to value, and by an insurance conversation the adjuster has no reason to hurry. The deadline for the vehicle damage is three years,^[2] so the claim can feel active while the injury clock, the one that matters, runs toward zero.

The cheapest claim an insurer ever closes is the one that times out. In our experience the deadline defense is the one insurers like best: it asks nothing of them but patience. Tennessee hands them the shortest fuse in America, and our first job on every case is to take that hope off the table.

Tennessee Injury Deadlines at a Glance

The Criminal-Charges Extension to Two Years

When the conduct that injured you is also being prosecuted as a crime, Tennessee can extend your civil deadline to two years. The extension is real, and it is also narrow. All three of these have to be true:

• Criminal charges were brought against a person alleged to have caused or contributed to your injury
• The criminal prosecution began within one year of the incident
• Your civil lawsuit targets the person who was actually prosecuted

This matters most for the victims of drunk drivers, where a DUI prosecution is routine. But the extension protects you only against the defendant who was charged. A claim against anyone else involved, an employer, a bar, another driver, still runs on the one-year clock. Never assume the extension covers your case without a lawyer confirming all three legs.

Exceptions That Pause the Clock

Tennessee law recognizes a short list of circumstances that stop the deadline from running:

• Minors: A child's own claim generally waits until age 18, then runs for one year, giving an injured minor until their nineteenth birthday under T.C.A. § 28-1-106.^[3] The family's related claims may still run on the adult clock, so waiting is a risk even when the injured person is a child.
• Mental incapacity: When the injured person lacked legal capacity at the time of injury, the deadline can be paused until capacity returns, with documentation required and important limits for guardians who had authority to act sooner.
• The discovery rule: When an injury could not reasonably have been discovered right away, the clock can start at discovery rather than at the event. Latent medical injuries are the classic example.
• Fraudulent concealment: A defendant who hides their role in the injury cannot ride the clock they corrupted. The deadline extends until the concealment is or should have been discovered.
• Absent defendants: Time a defendant spends out of state after causing the injury may not count against you.

Every one of these is construed narrowly, and the insurer will contest every one of them. Treat the exceptions as arguments a lawyer makes, never as extra time you can plan around.

Medical Malpractice: A Deadline Inside a Gauntlet

A Tennessee malpractice claim runs on the same one-year deadline, wrapped in extra procedure. Before filing, you must send each defendant a formal pre-suit notice at least 60 days ahead. Sending that notice inside the original year extends your statute of limitations by 120 days under T.C.A. § 29-26-121, and only one extension applies per defendant.^[4] A certificate of good faith, confirming a qualified expert supports the claim, is required as well.

An outer limit sits behind all of it: in most cases, three years from the negligent act, discovery or not, with narrow exceptions for concealment and foreign objects left in the body. The paperwork is unforgiving, and malpractice cases in Tennessee are lost on timing as often as on medicine.

Wrongful Death: The Clock Starts at the Injury

This is the trap that catches grieving families. Tennessee treats a wrongful death claim as the injured person's own claim passing to the family, so the one-year deadline runs from the date of the fatal injury, not from the date of death.

When someone is hurt in a crash on March 1 and passes on March 20, the family's deadline is the following March 1. A family that counts a year from the funeral has already lost nineteen days it did not know it was losing. When an injury proves fatal, the safest assumption is that the clock has been running since the crash.

Suing the Government: Twelve Months and No Second Chances

A claim against a city, a county, or the State of Tennessee, a crash with a government vehicle, a fall on public property, an injury at a public school, runs under the Governmental Tort Liability Act. The deadline is twelve months under T.C.A. § 29-20-305, courts apply it strictly, and the savings statute that sometimes rescues a refiled case does not apply against the government.^[5]

GTLA cases also work differently once filed: a judge decides them, not a jury, and damages are capped. If a government entity might be among the defendants, that twelve-month clock controls your planning.

Defective Products: The Repose Traps

A product injury claim runs on the one-year rule like any other, and Tennessee's Products Liability Act stacks two outer limits on top of it under T.C.A. § 29-28-103: the suit must be brought within six years of the injury, and within ten years of when the product was first purchased for use, or one year after the end of the product's anticipated life, whichever comes first.^[6]

Those outer limits are called statutes of repose, and they can kill a claim before the injury even happens, as with a machine sold eleven years ago. Narrow carve-outs exist, including for asbestos exposure, and a lawyer should map them against your facts early.

What If the Deadline Has Already Passed?

Ask anyway. Whether a deadline has actually passed is a legal conclusion, not a date on a calendar: the discovery rule, the criminal-charges extension, concealment, and the tolling rules can each move the answer, and which one applies is rarely obvious from the outside.

The deadline is also only one of the rules shaping your recovery. Tennessee reduces or bars claims based on your share of fault, a rule the Tennessee Supreme Court adopted in McIntyre v. Balentine,^[7] which is one more reason the early evidence matters. How the 49 percent bar works is covered on our Tennessee personal injury lawyers page.

There is no cost to asking, and no fixing a missed deadline that a call this week could have protected.