If you’ve been injured physically, emotionally or financially, you may be entitled to recover damages and other civil remedies from the at-fault party or parties. However, in order to recover, your civil action must be commenced within the time frame allowed by law.

The legal time limit placed on your pursuit of recovery is referred to as the statute of limitations (or SOL). If you – the injured party – fail to file a civil action within the SOL allowed, you can be permanently barred from any legal remedies in the matter, including recovery of monetary or other damages.

Length of the Statute of Limitations Period

The length of the statute of limitations period may vary from state to state, so it’s imperative that you’re aware of the legal time limit for the type of claim you’re asserting in your state. If your injury and/or loss occurred in Florida, the statute of limitations period can range from two (2) to five (5) years, depending on the nature of your case and other factors.

When does the Statute of Limitations begin to run?

Generally, the statute of limitations begins to run from the moment an injury is sustained; however, as with most legal theories, there are some exceptions to the rule.

Factors to Consider when Calculating the SOL period

When reviewing the statute of limitations period that’s applicable to your case, there are several factors to consider. For starters, it is possible to have more than one cause of action (each with its own SOL period) as a result of one incident. Although you may be unable to recover under one cause of action, you may be well within the SOL period for another action.

Also, in some instances a business will shorten the statute of limitations period by adding a clause to a written contract with another party. This is just one example of a “legal exception” to the standard statute of limitations period that has been upheld by the Florida courts on more than one occasion.

In our next blog post, we’ll present and discuss a partial list of specific matters that may result in injuries to you or your business, as well as the Florida statute of limitations period associated with each. So, if you haven’t already done so, please subscribe to our blog’s feed so you’ll be notified as soon as we publish future blog posts.

Tags: civil action, legal remedy, SOL, statute of limitation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 4:24 pm and is filed under business, contract law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.