| July 1, 2026 | Maryland Law, Personal Injury

This content is marketing material and is not legal advice. Every case is unique and laws change frequently. Please contact our office to speak with an attorney about your specific situation before making any legal decisions.

By Hunter Duke, Attorney | Chief Operating Officer

Maryland’s personal injury statute of limitations is three years from the date of the accident. A statute of limitations is a hard filing deadline set by state law that ends your right to sue once it passes. Miss it, and even a strong case is usually gone for good.

Maryland also follows a pure contributory negligence doctrine, so being even 1% at fault can bar your ability to recover damages. That makes early action matter more here than in most other states. Need to know your deadline? Call WGK Personal Injury Lawyers at (410) 837-2144.

How Long You Have to File a Personal Injury Lawsuit in Maryland

You have three years from the date of the accident to file most personal injury lawsuits in Maryland. The rule lives in Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101, which says a civil action "shall be filed within three years from the date it accrues unless another provision of the Code provides a different period of time within which an action shall be commenced."1 That last phrase is important because most of the exceptions we cover in this article are "another provision" rules.

This content is marketing material and is not legal advice. Every case is unique and laws change frequently. Please contact our office to speak with an attorney about your specific situation before making any legal decisions.

For routine cases, the clock starts the day the accident happens, because Maryland measures the three years from the date the claim "accrues." In a car crash, slip and fall, dog bite, or pedestrian case, the injury is obvious that day, so the clock runs from the date of the incident and not from some later point when you feel worse.1

That accrual rule applies to a wide range of routine Maryland injury claims. It covers the car crashes, slip-and-falls, dog bites, and pedestrian cases that account for tens of thousands of reported incidents each year. They all run on the same three-year clock unless another rule we discuss below changes it.2

Knowing the rule is one thing; knowing how it can shift for certain cases is another.

How the Deadline Changes for Wrongful Death, Medical Malpractice, and Minors

Some claims run on a different clock than the basic three-year rule. Wrongful death, medical malpractice, and injuries to children each have their own timing, and the differences can decide whether a case succeeds or fails.

A Maryland wrongful death case must be filed within three years after the death, under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 3-904(g).3 That clock starts on the date of death, not the date of the underlying injury. The deceased person’s own injury deadline and the family’s wrongful death deadline are completely separate timers.

Occupational-disease deaths follow a narrower rule: the shorter of ten years from death or three years from when the cause of death was discovered.3

Medical malpractice is a different type of case entirely and follows its own rules. Under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-109, a claim must be filed within the earlier of five years from when the injury happened or three years from when it was discovered. That five-year limit is a statute of repose that bars old claims, no matter when the patient found out.4

Statutes of repose can result in harsh outcomes for a medical malpractice victim if they misunderstand how the rule applies. Always speak with an experienced Maryland personal injury lawyer to ensure you know how statutes of limitations and statutes of repose affect your individual case.

Children get more time. When a Maryland injury claim belongs to a minor, the three-year clock does not start until the child turns 18, under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-201.5 A child hurt at age 5 generally has until just before their 21st birthday to sue. But there is a trap here. In Mason v. Board of Education of Baltimore County, 375 Md. 504 (2003), Maryland’s high court held that a person legally turns a given age the day before their birthday. So the real deadline is the day before the 21st birthday, not the birthday itself.6

Shorter Deadlines When the Government Is Involved

If a government vehicle or property caused your injury, a much shorter notice deadline comes before the three-year statute of limitations. Missing it can end the case on its own. This is the most common trap in Maryland injury law, so read this section carefully.

Claims against a Maryland local government, such as a county, a city, or a county school board, require a written notice of claim within one year of the injury under the Local Government Tort Claims Act, Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-304.7 The notice has to state the time, place, and cause of the injury and be delivered in person or by certified mail, return receipt requested.

Many older law-firm articles still say the deadline is 180 days. That was the rule before October 2015. For injuries on or after October 2015, the deadline is one year. Any content you read that still says 180 days is out of date.7

Claims against the State of Maryland are governed by a separate law. Under the Maryland Tort Claims Act, Md. Code, State Government § 12-106, you must submit a written claim to the State Treasurer within one year of the injury, the Treasurer must deny it, and any lawsuit must still be filed within three years.8 The State Treasurer publishes an official Notice of Claim form for these submissions.9

These two government rules are easy to mix up, so check which entity caused the harm before assuming you have three years. Claims against the federal government, like a crash caused by a federal worker driving a federal vehicle, add another layer. A mandatory six-month waiting period runs after the federal agency is properly placed on notice, and suit cannot be filed until that window closes. That means you must begin the process of filing the claim with more than six months to spare before the three-year statute of limitations expires.

When the Clock Starts Later: The Discovery Rule and Fraudulent Concealment

A narrow set of doctrines can push the start of the clock to a later date, but they are far more limited than most people assume. Two come up the most: the discovery rule and fraudulent concealment.

The discovery rule is a Maryland doctrine that delays the start of the limitations clock until a plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known of an injury and its cause. It was set out in Poffenberger v. Risser, 290 Md. 631 (1981), a case about a hidden defect in a home.10

In our experience, the discovery rule rarely changes the timeline in a standard injury case. It applies in medical malpractice and other latent-injury situations in which an injury is not immediately known to the victim. An example might be a surgical instrument left in the body that begins causing symptoms long after the surgery. For auto, premises, dog bite, and pedestrian cases, where the injury is clear the day it happens, the three-year clock runs from the date of the accident, so do not count on the discovery rule to buy you more time after a car crash.

Fraudulent concealment is a different situation. Under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-203, if a defendant hides the claim from you through fraud, the clock is paused (legally, this is called being tolled) until you discover (or should have discovered) the fraud. Maryland courts explained how this works in Mathews v. Cassidy Turley Maryland, Inc. To use this doctrine to extend your filing time, you have to plead specific facts showing how the fraud kept you in the dark, so it is rarely available in a routine case.11

What This Means for Your Case

The single biggest reason to act early is Maryland’s contributory negligence rule. Maryland is one of a small group of jurisdictions that still applies pure contributory negligence, alongside the District of Columbia and Virginia. A person found even 1% at fault is generally barred from any recovery.

That rule turns a delay in preparing your case into a real threat. Waiting until near the three-year deadline hands the defense more time to argue you share a sliver of fault, and a sliver is all it might take.

Witness memories fade. Dash-cam footage in your vehicle or from the other driver’s vehicle gets overwritten, and road surface and lighting conditions change. In a comparative-fault state, those factors may shave a percentage off your recovery; in Maryland, it can kill the claim. But the value of locked-in evidence increases when an insurer is trying to blame you instead of their insured.

The filing deadline is also not the only clock that matters. Insurance carriers generally start discounting a claim’s value when initial medical treatment is delayed beyond three to five days, and a gap of more than 10 to 14 days can put the claim’s viability at risk. That’s true regardless of where you stand in the three-year filing window. You may have three years to file the lawsuit, but you have days to start documenting your injury, and a lawyer can start protecting evidence right away and explain the Maryland claims process while the case is still strong.

This is marketing material and is not legal advice. Every case is unique and laws change frequently. Please contact our office to speak with an attorney about your specific situation before making any legal decisions.

What You Should Do

A few concrete steps protect your right to file before the deadline closes in.

  1. Write down the date of the accident and treat it as day one of a three-year countdown. Set a reminder well before the deadline, not on it.
  2. Get medical care within a few days, not weeks. Early treatment protects your health and your claim at the same time.
  3. Find out fast whether a government vehicle, agency, or property was involved. If it was, the one-year notice deadline (or the federal six-month wait) comes first and cannot wait for the full three years.
  4. Save evidence now. Photos, witness names, and any footage disappear long before three years pass.
  5. Talk to a lawyer early so someone is tracking every deadline and exception that fits the facts of your case. Then consider what you’ve learned as you decide when to hire a lawyer.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long do I have to file a personal injury lawsuit in Maryland?

Three years for most cases. See the § 5-101 breakdown above for the full rule, the time the clock usually begins to run in an accident case, and the exceptions for wrongful death, medical malpractice, minors, and government claims. One of the most significant facts to identify in your own facts is whether the at-fault party was a government driver or agency, because the one-year notice rule then applies, and it runs ahead of the three-year filing deadline. Missing that notice-filing deadline can bar an otherwise viable case.

What happens if I miss the three-year deadline?

The court will almost certainly dismiss your case once the defendant points out the missed deadline, even if your underlying claim was strong. Maryland courts strictly enforce the deadline, and missing it by a single day usually ends recovery for good.1 A few narrow exceptions exist, but you carry the burden of proving that one of them applies, so you cannot count on them.

My child was injured. How long do we have to file?

See the minor-tolling rule and the rule announced in Mason v. Board of Education of Baltimore County discussed above. A person reaches their upcoming age on the day before their birthday. In practice, even though the child has years on the legal clock, the evidence does not. Witnesses move on, treatment records get harder to pull together over time, and delaying the start of a case can make it much harder to build, even long before the legal deadline runs out.

A government vehicle hit me. Do I still have three years?

Yes, for the lawsuit itself, but the shorter notice deadlines we explained above run first, and they do not care that you still have three years on the filing clock. The trap we see most often in our practice is misidentifying the particular entity that will be the defendant. A county school board, a city, the State of Maryland, and a federal agency each have their own notice channel and deadline, so quickly identifying which government actually owns the vehicle or property is the first step in protecting the claim.

Does the discovery rule give me extra time in a car accident case?

In practice, no. See the discovery-rule section above for the medical malpractice and latent-injury discovery rules. We explain where the rule actually applies.10 The version of this question that comes up most in a routine crash is whether a delayed-onset symptom (like a back issue that surfaces a week later, or a traumatic brain injury (TBI) noticed weeks down the line) extends the clock. The answer is no, because the three-year clock still runs from the date of the crash even when symptoms develop over time.

Is the wrongful death deadline the same as the injury deadline?

No. See the wrongful death section above for the § 3-904(g) three-year clock from the date of death and how it runs separately from the deceased’s own injury deadline.3 The narrow point worth flagging in your case is timing. If the death happened months or years after the person’s underlying injury, the two clocks can be at very different stages, and a family should know where each one stands before deciding when to file.

Next Steps

Deadlines in Maryland injury law are unforgiving, and the government-claim traps move fast. If you were hurt in an accident, the safest move is to find out exactly which deadline applies to your facts before time runs short.

WGK Personal Injury Lawyers has represented Maryland injury victims for nearly 50 years, and our attorneys bring nearly 100 years of combined attorney experience in practice. Talk to a Maryland personal injury lawyer at (410) 837-2144 for a free consultation. We work on a contingency fee, so there is no cost to start and no fee unless we win.

Sources

  1. Maryland General Assembly, 2025. Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101, general three-year civil statute of limitations and accrual language. https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/laws/StatuteText?article=gcj&section=5-101
  2. Zero Deaths Maryland (Maryland DOT), 2023. Statewide crash data: 621 traffic fatalities, 577 fatal crashes, 41,538 injuries, 110,401 reported crashes. https://zerodeathsmd.gov/resources/crashdata/
  3. Maryland General Assembly, 2025. Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 3-904(g), wrongful death three-year deadline and occupational-disease subsection. https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcj&section=3-904
  4. Maryland General Assembly, 2025. Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-109, medical malpractice two-prong limitations test. https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcj&section=5-109
  5. Maryland General Assembly, 2025. Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-201, tolling for minors and disability. https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcj&section=5-201
  6. Maryland Court of Appeals, 2003. Mason v. Board of Education of Baltimore County, 375 Md. 504, common-law “coming of age” rule. https://www.mdcourts.gov/data/opinions/coa/2003/44a02.pdf
  7. Maryland General Assembly, 2025. Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-304, Local Government Tort Claims Act one-year notice (one year for injuries on or after October 2015; 180 days for older injuries). https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcj&section=5-304
  8. Maryland General Assembly, 2025. Md. Code, State Government § 12-106, Maryland Tort Claims Act, one-year notice to the State Treasurer. https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gsg&section=12-106
  9. Maryland State Treasurer, 2025. Claims and Litigation page and official Notice of Claim form for Maryland Tort Claims Act submissions. https://treasurer.state.md.us/insurance/claimsandlitigation/
  10. Maryland Court of Appeals, 1981. Poffenberger v. Risser, 290 Md. 631, establishing the Maryland discovery rule. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2386039/poffenberger-v-risser/
  11. Maryland Court of Appeals, 2013. Mathews v. Cassidy Turley Maryland, Inc., explaining application of the fraudulent concealment tolling statute, Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-203. https://www.mdcourts.gov/data/opinions/coa/2013/51a12.pdf