Arizona law gives most injury victims two years from the date of the injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. Under A.R.S. § 12-542, no person may bring an action for injury to another "after two years from the date the cause of action accrues." Missing that window doesn't just close the courthouse door — it can also change how much a claim is worth long before anyone gets near a courtroom.
The two-year rule, and its narrow exceptions
A.R.S. § 12-542 sets the baseline: two years from the date the cause of action accrues for most personal injury claims. Wrongful death claims get their own two-year clock under the same statute, but it runs from the date of death rather than the date of the underlying injury or accident — an important distinction when someone survives an injury for months before passing away.
The statute carves out one specific exception, tied to A.R.S. § 12-551, Arizona's product liability statute of repose. That separate statute generally bars product liability claims more than twelve years after the product was first sold, regardless of when the injury occurred, with exceptions for claims based on negligence or breach of an express warranty. So a defective-product injury case can run on a different, and sometimes longer, timeline than a typical car crash or slip-and-fall claim.
There's also a tolling provision worth knowing: A.R.S. § 12-502 pauses the statute of limitations for anyone who is a minor or under a legal disability when the injury occurs. Under that law, the period of disability isn't counted against the filing deadline, and the injured person gets the same amount of time to file after the disability ends as anyone else would have had from the start. In practice, that's a reason a child injured in a crash usually isn't racing the same two-year clock as an adult passenger in the same vehicle.
Why the deadline affects value, not just eligibility
A missed deadline doesn't just bar a lawsuit — it usually ends any real settlement leverage too, since an insurer has little reason to pay a claim that can no longer be enforced in court. But the effect on value can start well before the two-year mark. Evidence degrades over time: surveillance footage gets overwritten on routine cycles, witness memories fade, and treatment records are easier to obtain — and more persuasive — the closer they're gathered to the date of injury. None of that is a legal deadline in itself, but it's a practical reason claims documented early tend to be valued more confidently than claims pieced together close to a filing deadline.
There's also a negotiating dynamic tied directly to the statute. As the two-year date approaches without a lawsuit filed, an insurer evaluating a claim has less incentive to negotiate seriously, because the claimant's ability to escalate to litigation is running out. The credible ability to file suit is part of what gives a claim leverage in settlement talks in the first place — so the deadline isn't just a filing formality, it's part of the leverage equation.
What this means in practice
None of this means a claim filed near month twenty-three is automatically worth less than one filed in month three. Plenty of claims are appropriately kept open through extended treatment before a fair value can even be assessed — see our explainer on why no calculator can value an Arizona injury case for why treatment status matters more than a fixed formula. But the two-year deadline is a hard boundary everything else has to fit inside, and knowing where it falls — including the narrower rule for product-related injuries and the tolling rule for minors — is a first step in understanding what a claim can realistically be worth.
It's also worth remembering that Arizona is a pure comparative fault state, meaning a claim's value can be reduced, but not eliminated, by the injured person's own share of fault, separately from any deadline question. For how that rule interacts with claim value, see our explainer on Arizona's pure comparative fault rule.
This article explains Arizona law in general terms and is not legal advice. Deadlines and exceptions can be fact-specific; anyone concerned about an approaching filing deadline should confirm the applicable date with a licensed Arizona attorney.