Missouri's personal injury statute of limitations

Five years. That is how long Missouri keeps the courthouse open to a crash claim. Chapter 516 sets Missouri’s filing deadlines; injury suits sit at 516.120. That’s one of the longer personal injury windows anywhere in the country, and it comes with a few doors that can shift the count.

A door that opens for some claimants

Missouri law pauses the clock in certain circumstances before it ever starts running. The details depend on who’s involved and what happened, so treat the five-year mark as your baseline unless something unusual applies to your situation.

A door for a defendant who’s hard to reach

A defendant who leaves the state, or can’t be located, can also change how the deadline plays out in practice. This gets fact-specific fast, and it’s worth raising early rather than assuming the standard count still fits.

A different door entirely: when a crash proves fatal

A crash that takes a life sends a family down a separate legal path with its own, shorter deadline attached to it. That path isn’t this page’s subject, but don’t assume the five-year figure above applies if your situation involves a death.

The door evidence doesn’t wait for

Five years feels generous. The people and objects that prove your case don’t share that patience. A witness moves away, a vehicle gets sold, a business erases its camera footage on its own schedule, none of it waiting on a courthouse deadline. The what-to-do guide enumerates the early moves that lock down proof while it still exists.

None of this changes what a claim might be worth or how a fault dispute plays out once you’re in it. Both of those live in the case value guide. If a wreck already happened and you’re not sure where things stand, the car wreck lawyer page picks up what typically comes next.