Georgia Statute of Limitations

Basically, if we’re talking a car accident vehicle, in most other personal injury cases that means that under the law we have two years that is from the date of the accident to file a lawsuit and not only file the lawsuit that served the defendant that is the negligent party who caused the accident or the injury with the national copy. If we only go ahead and file the lawsuit but that person does not get served with a copy of that lawsuit for 30 days or 60 days until after the two years has expired, you’ll lose all of your rights to recover.
Waiting to file a lawsuit or contacting an attorney in waiting for a year, a year and a half until you think that you may want to file a claim is never a good idea. It’s not a good idea for a few reasons number one, I have a rule in my office that I will not take a case if we’re within six months of the statute of limitations. I do that for several reasons, first of all, maybe the defendant has died, in fact, we have a case going on right now where the defendant has died and then it makes it much more complicated to go ahead and process and prosecute that client’s claim on their behalf.
The second thing is this, maybe the witnesses have died, the evidence gets stale and the other major problem that we face whenever somebody is weighted is that the defendant has actually moved. I’ve had cases sometimes where they’ve moved out of the country and we can’t sue them and then the client is left out in the cold and is unable to collect on the claim. There is one major exception to the statute of limitations or maybe a few others but let’s talk about the primary one first.
If a minor child is less than 18 years old at the time of the car accident and doesn’t file the lawsuit, that’s fine they have two years from the date that they turn 18 to actually go file the lawsuit. I will say this on a final note about statute of limitations in Georgia. Different types of cases have different types of limitation times in which you can file the lawsuit. For example, on a contract, the lawsuit time, the statute of limitation time is four years but on a medical malpractice case depending on the type of medical malpractice case, it could be much shorter.
If you have an injury case whether it’s a car accident, medical malpractice or any other type of injury case and you’re thinking of filing a claim, I urge you to contact a lawyer today and if you like I’ll be happy to talk to you about whether you have a claim and whether you should pursue the case on a timely basis. Again, my name is Roger Ghai and I’m at 770-792-1000.