If you were hurt in a car accident in Arizona, the deadline that decides whether you can ever sue is two years from the date of the crash for nearly every driver-on-driver claim. That number comes from a single, unusually broad statute, A.R.S. § 12-542, which lumps injury to a person and injury to property into the same two-year clock.1 But two years is the easy part. Arizona carves out several sharply shorter deadlines depending on who you're suing and what kind of claim you're making, and missing one of them can end a case that would otherwise be worth pursuing.
The two-year rule, and what it actually covers
Section 12-542 does double duty: it sets the limitations period both for "injuries done to the person of another" and for "trespass for injury done to the estate or property of another."1 That means the two-year clock covers your bodily injury claim and your vehicle damage claim under the exact same statute, running from the same date. If you're pursuing a diminished value claim on top of a repair claim, the same two-year window applies, and our Arizona diminished value guide covers what that claim can recover.
Two years sounds generous until you remember what it doesn't include. Negotiating with an adjuster doesn't pause the clock. Waiting for medical treatment to finish doesn't pause it either. Arizona courts hold plaintiffs to the filed-lawsuit deadline regardless of where settlement talks stand, so a claim still "in negotiation" on day 729 is a claim about to die.
When the clock starts, and what happens if the crash turns fatal
For an ordinary crash injury, the two-year period starts on the date of the wreck. Arizona doesn't require you to wait for a diagnosis or a prognosis; the clock runs from the incident itself in nearly every car accident case, since the cause of the injury is obvious the moment metal meets metal.
Section 12-542 addresses one important exception: if the crash victim dies from the injury, the wrongful death claim is "considered as accruing at the death of the party injured," not at the crash date.1 Practically, that means a family whose loved one survives eighteen months on a ventilator before passing still has a full two years from the date of death, even though the crash itself happened well over two years earlier.
A much shorter fuse when a government entity is involved
This is the exception that catches the most Arizona claimants off guard. If the vehicle, road, or driver responsible for your crash belongs to a city, county, state agency, or public school, an ADOT truck or a county sheriff's cruiser, you're not dealing with a two-year deadline at all.
Arizona law requires anyone with a claim against a public entity or public employee to serve a written notice of claim within 180 days after the claim accrues.2 Miss that window and the claim is "barred and no action may be maintained thereon," in the statute's own words.2 Even if you serve the notice on time, the lawsuit itself must still be filed within one year of accrual under a separate statute governing actions against public entities.3 Government vehicles and government-maintained roads show up in Arizona crash claims often enough that it's worth checking who owned the other vehicle before assuming you have two years to decide anything.
Kids and incapacitated victims get the clock paused
If the injured person was under 18 or of unsound mind when the crash happened, A.R.S. § 12-502 stops the limitations period from running at all during that disability.4 The statute gives that person "the same time after removal of the disability which is allowed to others," meaning a child hurt in a crash generally has until their 20th birthday, two years after turning 18, to file, even though an adult in the identical crash would have had to sue years earlier.4 That tolling doesn't reach the 180-day notice-of-claim deadline against public entities, which is why a crash involving both a minor and a government vehicle needs attention fast regardless of the child's age.
If the at-fault driver leaves Arizona
Arizona also pauses the clock while a defendant is absent from the state. Under A.R.S. § 12-501, "the time of such person's absence shall not be counted or taken as a part of the time limited," so a driver who causes a crash and then moves out of state doesn't get to run out the two years just by leaving.5
Your own insurer runs on a different, longer clock
One of the more common mistakes in Arizona claims is treating the uninsured or underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) claim against your own policy as if it shared the same two-year deadline as the injury claim against the other driver. It doesn't. Arizona courts treat a UM/UIM claim as a contract claim against your insurer rather than a tort claim against a driver, which puts it under the six-year limitations period for written contracts in A.R.S. § 12-548 instead of the two-year period in § 12-542.6
Don't read "six years" as license to wait, though. A.R.S. § 12-555 requires you to give your insurer written notice of intent to pursue a UM claim within three years of the accident, and once you've given notice, you generally have three more years to request arbitration or file suit under the policy.7 Insurers don't have to sell UM/UIM coverage as a mandatory add-on, but Arizona law does require them to offer it to you in writing at limits matching your liability coverage, and to get a written rejection from you if you decline it.8 If you're not sure your policy includes it, that's worth confirming with your agent well before any of these deadlines start to matter.
Drunk-driving crashes carry their own one-year trap
If a bar, restaurant, or store overserved an obviously intoxicated patron, or served a minor, who then caused your crash, Arizona lets you sue that business directly under its dram shop statute.9 That claim doesn't run on the two-year injury clock, though. Arizona's catch-all one-year statute for "liability created by statute" applies to dram shop claims, giving you just one year from the crash to sue the bar or store, even though your claim against the drunk driver personally still gets two.10 The Arizona Supreme Court closed off the older common-law workaround in 2023, ruling in Torres v. JAI Dining Services (Phoenix), Inc.11 that the statutory dram-shop claim under § 4-311 is now the only route against a licensee, since § 4-312(B) eliminated the pre-statute common-law version.12 That one-year deadline is often the shortest one in the entire case, and it's easy to miss because everyone's attention is on the driver, not the bar that served him.
Why the deadline matters well before it arrives
None of these deadlines wait for you to be ready. Evidence disappears long before two years, let alone one: skid marks fade and surveillance footage gets overwritten within weeks. If a crash report exists, pulling it early matters more than the filing deadline itself; see our Arizona crash report guide for how that works.13 Because so many of these exceptions turn on facts you may not know yet, like whether the other vehicle was government-owned or whether a bar was involved, talking to an attorney early, rather than at month 23, is usually what keeps a case alive at all. Our legal directory can help you find one in Arizona.
This is general information about Arizona law, not legal advice for your specific situation.
Sources
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A.R.S. § 12-542, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00542.htm
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A.R.S. § 12-821.01, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00821-01.htm
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A.R.S. § 12-821, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00821.htm
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A.R.S. § 12-502, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00502.htm
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A.R.S. § 12-501, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00501.htm
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A.R.S. § 12-548, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00548.htm
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A.R.S. § 12-555, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00555.htm
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A.R.S. § 20-259.01, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/20/00259-01.htm
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A.R.S. § 4-311, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/4/00311.htm
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A.R.S. § 12-541, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00541.htm
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Torres v. JAI Dining Services (Phoenix), Inc., No. CV-22-0142-PR (Ariz. Oct. 16, 2023), Justia, https://law.justia.com/cases/arizona/supreme-court/2023/cv-22-0142-pr.html
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A.R.S. § 4-312, Arizona Legislature, https://www.azleg.gov/ars/4/00312.htm
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Arizona DPS Public Services Portal, Arizona Department of Public Safety, https://www.azdps.gov/services/public-services-portal/records-request