When the Limitation Period Starts to Run

No single deadline governs claims against professionals in the United States. Length varies from one year to six or more depending on the state and the profession, and length is the least interesting variable. What decides these disputes is the trigger: the event the statute treats as starting the period, and the circumstances that suspend it once started. Two states with identical periods can produce opposite results on the same facts because they define accrual differently.

The occurrence rule and its retreat

The traditional rule ran the period from the negligent act itself. It had the merit of certainty and the defect of barring claims before anyone could reasonably have known of them. A defectively drafted instrument, an unperfected security interest or a missed election may sit undetected for years, surfacing only when someone tries to rely on the document. Under a strict occurrence rule those claims expire unexamined.

Most states responded by adopting a discovery rule for professional claims, either by decision or by statute. A minority retain occurrence accrual for some professions, and a few apply different triggers to different disciplines within the same jurisdiction. Because the pattern is not uniform even within a single state, the governing rule has to be identified for the specific profession and the specific claim rather than assumed from general practice.

The discovery rule

Under the usual formulation the period begins when the claimant discovers, or through the use of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the facts constituting the wrongful act or omission. California states it in exactly those terms. Three features of that phrasing carry most of the litigation.

First, the test concerns facts, not legal conclusions. A claimant who knows what was done and what it cost is generally on notice even without appreciating that the conduct was negligent. Second, constructive knowledge counts. Once enough is known to excite suspicion, a duty of inquiry arises and the period runs from the point at which reasonable inquiry would have produced the answer. Third, the trigger is the wrongful act, not the identity of the wrongdoer, in most formulations.

Several statutes add a distinct requirement that the claimant have sustained actual injury before the period runs. This can postpone accrual substantially, because an error that has not yet cost anything produces no claim. It also complicates matters where the injury is contingent on a pending proceeding whose outcome might cure it.

What counts as actual injury is itself disputed. Some courts treat the incurring of legal fees to address the professional's error as sufficient injury on its own, which starts the period early. Others require a fixed and non-speculative loss, which may not exist until a judgment enters or a transaction closes on the worse terms. The difference is not academic. On a set of facts where fees were incurred well before any judgment, the two approaches can place accrual years apart, and the state's choice between them is usually the single most important fact in the limitation analysis.

Continuous representation and other tolling

Where the professional keeps working on the very matter in which the error occurred, most states suspend the running until that work ends. The rationale is practical: a client should not be required to sue the professional still handling the matter, and the professional retains an opportunity to correct the problem. California codifies this among its tolling grounds, suspending the period while the attorney continues to represent the client regarding the specific subject matter in which the wrongful act occurred.

Two boundaries recur. The tolling attaches to the subject matter, not to the relationship generally, so continuing to handle unrelated work for the same client does not extend it. And the tolling ends when the representation on that matter ends, which requires identifying a date. Withdrawal governed by the professional conduct rules produces a clean marker; a relationship that simply goes quiet does not, and courts have taken varied approaches to dormancy.

Evidence on this point is documentary and mundane. Closing letters, final invoices, file transfer records, substitutions of counsel and the last substantive communication all serve to fix the date. Their absence is a defense problem as much as a claimant's opportunity, because a professional who cannot show when the engagement ended cannot show when the tolling stopped. Sending and retaining a closing letter is therefore a limitation measure as much as a client relations one.

Other grounds appear in the same statutes. Willful concealment of the facts by the professional tolls the period, in California reaching even the four-year outer limit. Legal or physical disability restricting the ability to sue tolls it. A pending fee dispute in a mandatory arbitration program tolls it. Each is narrow, each must be pleaded, and each is tested against a documentary record.

What follows from the trigger

Accrual analysis is not an isolated exercise. It sets the date from which the outer limit described in the outer bar that runs regardless of discovery is measured, and it interacts with the filing requirements in the affidavit or certificate of merit, since a claim filed at the edge of the period may not leave time to obtain the supporting statement. Where the claim depends on the outcome of an underlying matter, accrual also interacts with the causation proof described in proving a better outcome was available, because injury and causation are often established by the same event.

For a defendant, the analysis is the first thing done on receipt of a claim, since a limitation defense disposes of the matter without any inquiry into the quality of the work. For a claimant, it dictates the pace of everything else. The prudent assumption is the earliest defensible accrual date, not the latest.