Personal Injury Lawsuit Statute of Limitations in Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh Injury Attorney Explains

Video Transcript:

Rob Rosenthal: 

How long do you have to file your personal injury case in Pennsylvania? We asked Pennsylvania lawyer Frank Walker for this Ask The Lawyers Quick Question.

Frank Walker:

Let's say you have a car accident and you are injured by someone else. You know you're injured on that day, your statute of limitations runs two years from that day, so two calendar years from that, you have to file a lawsuit. But let's say you are injured by a medical malpractice action, but you don't know you're injured until like six months after the injury. You go in for surgery, and then the doctor leaves a scalpel inside of you. You have some pain, you go back to the doctor, you have no idea what's going on.

Then eight months later, or maybe a year later, they realize, you find out through another doctor that the previous doctor left a scalpel inside of you, sewn up in your skin, in your ribcage. Now someone has to go out, pull that out, and you're now dealing with the injury two years from that date moving forward, because that is when you knew the injury happened, because you weren't aware of it when it initially happened, because it was covered up. It's two years from the date of the incident when you knew or should have known that the injury happened.

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