What Is the Personal Injury Statute of Limitations in North Carolina?

The General Rule: Three Years From the Date Your Injury Is Apparent

You can find North Carolina's general rule for personal injury cases at N.C. Stat. § 1-52(5) (2024). It allows you three years to file a lawsuit for "injury to the person." This three-year rule usually applies to a variety of personal injury lawsuits, like those involving:

• auto accidents
• slip-and-fall and similar claims over dangerous or poorly maintained real estate (a "premises liability" case)
• dangerous or defective products (a "product liability" suit), and
• dog bites.

When Does the Clock Start Running?

Unless another law says otherwise, the three-year clock starts ticking on the earlier of the date your injury:

• becomes apparent, or
• should have been apparent, had you been reasonably careful to look for signs and symptoms. (N.C. Stat. § 1-52(16) (2024).)

What Does This Mean?

It means that—unless another law says differently—North Carolina follows the "discovery rule" to determine when the statute of limitations starts running. Sometimes this will work to your advantage, giving you more time to file your case. Here's why.

In most cases, the clock will start on the date you were injured. Consider this example. You break your leg in a car wreck or a slip-and-fall accident. The pain and other symptoms mean your injury will be apparent right away. Because your injury is immediately apparent, the statute of limitations begins running that day.

Now, let's assume that on June 1, 2020, you started using a pesticide to kill bugs in your garden. On July 15, 2023, you began to experience shortness of breath and heart palpitations. Later that month, your doctor told you that these symptoms were caused by your exposure to the pesticide.

Because North Carolina has adopted the discovery rule, the three-year statute of limitations will run from either July 15, 2023, the date your first signs and symptoms of an injury became apparent, or the date later that month when your doctor tied your symptoms to the product.

Absent the discovery rule, your time to sue would run from June 1, 2020, the date you starting using the pesticide—and, presumably, the date it first caused you an injury. The three-year filing deadline would expire on June 1, 2023, before you even discovered your injury. That would, quite clearly, be an unfair result.

Statutes of Repose Limit Your Time to Discover an Injury

North Carolina has a second deadline, called a "statute of repose," that limits the time you have to discover your injury. A statute of repose runs even if you never discover you've been hurt. In most cases, the very latest that the statute of limitations will begin to run is 10 years after the last date that the defendant (the party you're suing) did something to harm you. (N.C. Stat. § 1-52(16) (2024).)

North Carolina also has other statutes of repose that apply in specific kinds of cases. For example, the law puts an outside limit of 12 years (from the date of initial purchase by a user or consumer) on product liability claims. (N.C. Stat. § 1-46.1(1) (2024).)

A North Carolina personal injury lawyer can tell you more.