Texas generally gives you two years from the date the claim accrues to file a personal injury lawsuit. A claim against a city, county or state agency carries a separate written notice deadline, generally six months and sometimes sooner. Claims involving a child follow their own rules. Once the deadline passes, the claim is barred.
The honest answer to this question is that you have less time than you think, and that the date is not the same for everyone. It is set by statute, it is short, and it is one of the few deadlines in the law that does not care why you were late.
Which means the useful thing is not a number you read on a website. It is finding out what your own date is, in writing, early enough that it is still a date and not a problem.
How long you have to file an injury claim in Texas
The statute
Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 16.003 generally requires a personal injury lawsuit to be filed within two years after the claim accrues. A minor's legal disability can suspend that period under section 16.001, which does not preserve evidence and does not necessarily protect a parent's related claim. Claims against a governmental unit run separately: the Texas Tort Claims Act generally requires notice within six months of the incident under section 101.101, and an entity may require earlier notice by its own charter or ordinance.
Two years is the general rule, and it is a hard cutoff rather than a guideline. Your own date can still be different, because which statute applies turns on the kind of claim, who the defendant is and how old the injured person was. Have a lawyer confirm it rather than counting two years off a calendar and planning around that.
There is one confusion worth clearing up first. Filing a claim and filing a lawsuit are different acts. Calling an insurance company and opening a claim number does nothing to the legal deadline. Negotiating with an adjuster does not stop it either. The deadline is about a petition being filed in court, and a claim that is still in friendly negotiation on the day it runs out is a claim that ran out.
Why there is more than one deadline
People talk about the deadline as if there is a single one. There is not. Several separate rules can apply to the same crash, and the one that governs your case depends on facts you may not have thought about.
- The kind of claim. An injury claim, a wrongful death claim and a claim about property are not on identical clocks.
- Who the defendant is. A private driver, a trucking company, a business that owns the property and a governmental unit are treated differently.
- How old the injured person was. Claims involving a child follow their own rules.
- When the injury was discovered, which in some narrow categories is not the same day it happened.
- Whether a contract, a policy or a statute adds its own notice requirement on top of the court deadline.
Any one of those can move your real deadline forward. None of them move it back to give you extra room.
Claims against a city, county or state agency come due earlier
This is the trap that catches the most people, and it is worth reading twice. If the vehicle that hit you belonged to a governmental unit, or the injury happened on property a governmental unit controls, the claim is not on the ordinary track.
Claims against governmental units generally require formal written notice, delivered to the right office in the right form, well before the general filing deadline arrives. Some governmental units set that notice requirement by their own charter or ordinance, which means the requirement for one entity is not the requirement for another. Miss it and the claim can be gone before you have finished physical therapy.
So if a city vehicle, a county vehicle, a school district vehicle, a transit vehicle or a state agency vehicle was involved, or if the injury happened at a public facility, treat it as urgent from the first week. That is the category where waiting to see how the recovery goes is most expensive.
What happens if you miss the deadline to file
The claim is barred. The defense raises limitations, and the case is dismissed without anyone weighing how badly you were hurt or how clearly the other driver was at fault. Severity does not buy an extension. Neither does a sympathetic story, a cooperative adjuster or a good reason.
There are narrow legal doctrines that affect when a clock starts or pauses, and they are narrow. They are worth asking a lawyer about if your date has already passed, because the analysis is specific and occasionally the answer is not what you expect. They are not worth relying on in advance.
The deadlines that arrive before the legal one
Long before the statute runs, the case itself gets harder to prove. Evidence has its own shorter clock and nobody sends you a notice about it.
- Vehicles get repaired, sold or salvaged, and the damage that showed how the crash happened goes with them.
- Business and traffic video is overwritten on a routine cycle, often within weeks, unless somebody asks for it in writing first.
- Witnesses move, change numbers and forget the details that mattered.
- Skid marks, debris and roadway conditions are gone after the next rain.
- Gaps in medical treatment become the insurer's main argument that you were not really hurt.
There is also the recorded statement. An adjuster often asks for one early, while you are still medicated, still unsure what is injured, and inclined to be agreeable. That statement does not expire. It gets read back later.
How fault affects what a Texas injury claim can recover
Texas uses comparative fault. Your share of responsibility reduces what you can recover, and once that share passes half, it bars recovery entirely. That rule is why the fight over percentages is not a technicality.
It also explains insurer behavior that otherwise looks strange. The early questions about your speed, your seat belt, your phone and where you were looking are not small talk. They are the beginning of an argument about your percentage. Nobody can tell you in advance how a jury would assign it, but everything gathered in the first weeks feeds that question.
Where an injury case is filed in El Paso
Texas justice courts hear eligible civil cases up to the 20,000 dollar justice court limit, along with evictions. In justice court, a defendant generally has to answer within 14 days after service. Larger civil matters go to the county and district courts, which in El Paso include the 34th, 120th, 168th, 171st, 210th, 243rd, 346th and 384th district courts. County Court at Law No. 7 handles civil and criminal matters. Court assignments change, so the current court directory governs.
Hudspeth County is a separate county with its own courts and its own filing offices. A case that belongs there is filed there, not in El Paso.
And a crash on the New Mexico side is a New Mexico case. Doña Ana County is in New Mexico's Third Judicial District, so an incident in Anthony, Sunland Park, Santa Teresa or Las Cruces runs on New Mexico law with New Mexico deadlines, which are not the Texas ones. People in this region drive across that line several times a week without thinking about it. The law thinks about it.
Finding your deadline before it passes
Ask early and ask in writing. A short conversation can establish the date, whether a governmental notice requirement applies, and what needs to be preserved this month rather than next year. That conversation costs nothing close to what a missed date costs.
Wyatt, Underwood and Grasheim is a trial firm in El Paso at 705 Texas Ave #100, and the telephone number is (915) 485-9100. Spanish is spoken at the firm. The firm is licensed in Texas and in New Mexico, which matters in a region where the state line runs through everyday driving.
This article is general information about how filing deadlines work in Texas injury matters. It is not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney client relationship. Your deadline depends on facts this page does not know. Have it checked by a lawyer rather than calculating it yourself.
Questions people ask about this
General information about Texas procedure, not legal advice about your matter. Checked against the statutes on September 14, 2026.