Hi, I'm Griff Tonkin and I'm a personal injury attorney. I'm one of the founding partners here at the Arthofer and Tonkin Law Offices. All we do are personal injury cases, which means we exclusively represent people who've been hurt by the negligence of someone else.
Today, I want to talk to you about statutes of limitations. These are laws which limit the amount of time that you have to bring a claim. In California, most personal injury cases are governed by a two-year statute of limitations.
There are exceptions which can significantly shorten that time frame. So if you've been injured in a personal injury matter, it's important that you contact an appropriately qualified attorney right away to determine what your statute of limitations actually is. But in most cases, it's a two-year time frame, meaning from the date of your injury, you have two years to either resolve your claim by way of settlement or file a lawsuit.
Failure to do one of those two things will likely result in you losing your right to make a claim forever. Well, recently, we've had several clients contact us shortly before their two-year time frame was up. Now, that passage of time can occur for any number of reasons, one of the most common of which is people are still getting medical care.
By the time that you go through the most conservative treatment options like physical therapy, massage therapy, chiropractic care, first, before you get to more invasive options like surgery, you have to get insurance approvals, try the conservative modalities, move on to diagnostic studies like x-rays, CT scans, and MRIs. And then ultimately, for example, if you need a simple shoulder surgery, you have to wait for approval for that, get through the shoulder surgery, do your aftercare, your physical therapy. Suddenly, you're knocking on the door of a two-year statute of limitations.
Well, you may be wondering, if I'm close to my two-year statute of limitations, is it too late to hire a personal injury attorney? And the answer to that question is no. In fact, it's critically important because you are close to your statute of limitations that you reach out to a qualified personal injury attorney immediately and let them know what your situation is. Over the last few months, we've had clients come in that were literally just days away from their statute of limitations.
And we were able to do one of two things, either promptly resolve their case or, more commonly, file a lawsuit to preserve their right to make a claim and stop that two-year clock from running. In those instances, we then use the litigation process to bring about resolution for our client at the most favorable possible outcome. If you're close to your statute of limitations, call us here at the Arthofer and Tonkin Law Offices today.
We'll consult with you on a personal injury matter at no cost.
