Understanding Statute of Limitations

What is the Statute of Limitations? It is a legal rule under which any lawsuit arising from an injury or accident must be filed within a specified time period. If not, the injured person’s legal claim will be barred and the right to sue will be lost forever. This statute of limitations can vary depending on the type of injury, and can also vary according to state. This is why it is necessary for you to consult with a personal injury accident attorney as soon as possible after the accident to file your legal claim. Every state has enacted its own statute of limitations, which requires that any personal injury suit be filed in court within a specified time period after the incident or injury. For example, the time period within which such lawsuits need to be filed is one year in the states of Kentucky and Tennessee while in Maine and North Dakota, it is six years.

Based on what’s stated above, there are different time limits specified for different types of personal injury claims. In some states, the type of personal injury claim may also affect the time period for filing the suit. This is why it is extremely important for you to consult a vehicle accident attorney as soon as possible after the incident. To understand better how the type of claim affects the associated time period, consider certain defamation cases and claims involving minors for which the time periods granted may be longer.  Also, medical malpractice statutes of limitations may grant shorter time periods for filing lawsuits. Usually, the statute of limitations in a lawsuit for injuries to a minor does not begin to run until one turns 18. For example, if a minor suffers injury in a car accident at the age of 17 in a state that has a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury lawsuits, that person will have a period of three years within which a lawsuit can be filed for injuries suffered in that accident.

But it isn’t limited to that. There is also the ‘Discovery of Harm’ rule that needs to be considered when evaluating claims. These are aspects for which you will need to consult an accident and injury lawyer. The statute of limitations only stipulates the amount of time within which a person needs to file a suit after an accident or injury. However, that time period does not usually begin to run until the point when the person is aware (or is expected to be aware according to reasonable standards) that they have actually suffered harm and the nature of that harm. To understand this better, consider the example of a case where a surgeon mistakenly left a temporary bandage in the abdomen of a patient. However, this was not discovered by the patient until years later when the patient was undergoing another surgical procedure. In such a case, there is no way that the patient could have known about this and the lack of this knowledge could not be termed as unreasonable under the given circumstances.

For those of you looking for a competent personal injury lawyer in the South Florida area, Mark Schiffrin P.A. is definitely a firm worth considering.