Personal Injury Claims in Spokane: The Deadline, Your Own Insurance, and How Fault Gets Split

How long do I have to file a personal injury claim in Washington?

Three years, in the ordinary case. RCW 4.16.080(2) sets a three-year limit on an action for "any other injury to the person or rights of another," and that is the provision that governs a car crash, a fall, a dog bite, and most other injury claims. The period runs from the injury.

Four things commonly change that number. If the person hurt was under eighteen when the claim accrued, RCW 4.16.190 excludes the time of that disability from the limitation period. If the defendant is a city, county, school district, or state agency, a tort claim has to be presented first and a sixty-day waiting period runs before suit, under RCW 4.96.020 and RCW 4.92.110. If the claim is against a health care provider, RCW 4.16.350 controls instead. That section runs three years from the act or omission, or one year from discovery if that is later, and in no event more than eight years. It also provides that a custodial parent's or guardian's knowledge is imputed to a claimant under eighteen, which means the tolling in RCW 4.16.190 does not apply to a child's medical negligence claim. And a wrongful death claim belongs to the personal representative of the estate, not to the family members directly, which takes a probate step before anything can be filed.

Three years sounds like plenty and behaves like less. Evidence has a shorter life than the deadline: vehicles are repaired or crushed, intersection video is overwritten in days, the store resurfaces the floor, and a witness who was happy to talk at the scene has moved twice.

Your own insurance pays first, and that is not a favor

The at-fault driver's insurer will not pay your medical bills as you go. It pays once, at the end, in exchange for a release. That leaves a gap of months or years, and the coverage designed to fill it is on your own policy.

Personal injury protection, almost always called PIP, pays your medical expenses regardless of who caused the crash, up to the limits you bought and for treatment that is reasonable and related to the crash. RCW 48.22.085 requires every new or renewed automobile liability policy in Washington to offer PIP as an optional coverage. A named insured may reject it, but only in writing, and the statute makes that rejection binding as to all levels of coverage and on everyone who would otherwise have been insured. If you cannot remember rejecting it, pull the declarations page rather than guessing.

Using your own PIP is not making a claim against yourself and it is not an admission. It keeps you in treatment, which is both the medical point and, bluntly, the evidentiary one: a gap in treatment is the first thing an adjuster will point at when arguing that you recovered early.

Underinsured motorist coverage is the claim people forget

The driver who hit you may carry the state minimum, or nothing at all, or may have a policy that three people are already claiming against. Underinsured motorist coverage, which in Washington also covers the uninsured driver and the hit-and-run, is the coverage that answers that. It is on your own policy and it is the reason two identical crashes end differently.

RCW 48.22.030(2) does more than require an offer. No new or renewed automobile liability policy may be issued on a vehicle registered or principally garaged in Washington unless this coverage is in it, subject to the exceptions written into the same subsection, which include a motorcycle or motor-driven cycle and a vehicle owned or regularly available to you or a family member that is not insured under the policy's liability coverage. RCW 48.22.030(3) sets the amount for bodily injury: the same as your own third party liability limits, unless you rejected it. Rejection takes a writing from a named insured or spouse under RCW 48.22.030(4). RCW 48.22.030(1) defines an underinsured motor vehicle to include one with no applicable liability coverage at all and one whose total applicable limits come to less than the damages you are legally entitled to recover, and subsection (2) extends the same protection to hit-and-run and phantom vehicles.

Two practical points. The amount of underinsured motorist coverage you carry is the real ceiling on a serious claim against a minimally insured driver, and raising it is usually inexpensive. And settling with the at-fault driver's insurer without first dealing with your own underinsured motorist carrier can destroy the claim against your own policy, which is one of the reasons the early release is worth reading slowly.

How Washington splits fault, and why splitting it does not end your claim

Washington is a pure comparative fault state. RCW 4.22.005 provides that contributory fault chargeable to the claimant "diminishes proportionately the amount awarded as compensatory damages," and then says the thing that matters most: it "does not bar recovery." Being partly at fault reduces the number. It does not end the case, and there is no threshold at which it does.

Fault is defined broadly. RCW 4.22.015 includes negligent and reckless acts and omissions, strict liability, product liability, breach of warranty, unreasonable assumption of risk, and the "unreasonable failure to avoid an injury or to mitigate damages." That last phrase is why not following medical advice can show up as a percentage against you.

When several parties are at fault, RCW 4.22.070(1) has the trier of fact assign a percentage to every entity that caused the damages, including the claimant, and liability is several only rather than joint. There are two exceptions, and the second is the one nobody expects: under RCW 4.22.070(1)(b), if the trier of fact finds the claimant was not at fault, the defendants against whom judgment is entered are jointly and severally liable for the sum of their proportionate shares. In a multi-defendant case where one defendant cannot pay, a finding of zero fault on your part is worth a great deal more than it sounds.

How much is my car accident case worth?

There is no formula and no multiplier, and anybody quoting one is selling something. Washington damages in an injury case divide into economic losses, which are the medical bills and the lost earnings and the things with receipts, and noneconomic losses, which are pain, loss of function, and the parts of a life that changed. Both are proved, not calculated.

The economic side is won with documents: complete records, a treating provider willing to state what is permanent, wage records rather than estimates, and a plan for future care that somebody qualified has actually priced. The noneconomic side is won with specifics. Not that you are in pain, but that you cannot lift your youngest, that you stopped the thing you did every Saturday, that you sleep on the couch now.

The timing point follows from that. A claim valued before treatment is complete is valued without knowing what the injury is, which is why the fast early offer is nearly always the cheap one. It arrives at the moment the insurer knows the least and you need the money the most, and that is not a coincidence.

When someone dies: wrongful death and survival claims

Two different claims, and both run through the estate rather than the family. RCW 4.20.010 gives the personal representative the right to sue for the economic and noneconomic damages the statutory beneficiaries suffered as a result of the death. RCW 4.20.020 lists those beneficiaries: the spouse or state registered domestic partner and the children, including stepchildren, and if there are none of those, the parents or siblings.

Alongside that, the survival statutes carry forward what the person who died could have brought. RCW 4.20.046 lets the personal representative recover the estate's economic losses and, for the beneficiaries named in RCW 4.20.020, noneconomic damages for the pain, anxiety, emotional distress, or humiliation that the decedent personally suffered. Both of those pieces turn on there being a beneficiary the statute names. RCW 4.20.060 keeps a personal injury action alive where the injury occasioned the death, and it too is conditioned on a surviving spouse, state registered domestic partner, or child, or failing those a parent or sibling.

The 2019 amendments to these sections widened who can recover, and the legislature made them expressly remedial and retroactive to all claims not already time barred. The practical first step is still administrative rather than legal: somebody has to be appointed personal representative before any of these claims can be filed at all.

Where this goes wrong

The recorded statement to the other side's adjuster, given early, while you are still describing the injury as sore.

A signed release in exchange for a small check, which ends every claim including the ones nobody has valued yet.

A gap in treatment. Whatever the reason, it reads in the file as recovery.

Nobody ever looks at the claimant's own declarations page, so PIP goes unused and underinsured motorist coverage goes unclaimed.

Social media. A photograph of you at a wedding, holding a drink and smiling, becomes an exhibit about your limitations.

Waiting. Not past the deadline, just long enough that the vehicle is gone, the video is overwritten, and the scene has been repaired.

What a lawyer does here

Reading every policy in the case, yours included, because the coverage usually decides the ceiling. Preserving evidence that has a shorter life than the claim. Keeping you off the phone with the adjuster. Making sure the treating records say what is actually wrong with you. Running every deadline separately when a government entity or a health care provider is involved. And giving you a straight answer about comparative fault early, because a realistic number now is worth more than an optimistic one later.

I handle personal injury and wrongful death claims from my office in downtown Spokane, in Spokane County and across eastern Washington, and in the Columbia Gorge counties where I still appear regularly. I am admitted in Washington, WSBA #55307, and Oregon, OSB #242384.

If you were hurt and are not sure what to do next, I offer a free consultation by appointment at my Spokane office, 601 W. 1st Ave., Suite 1400. Bring the police report or incident number, your own insurance declarations page, and anything the other insurer has already sent you.

Disclaimer

This article is general information about Washington law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Law changes, and how it applies depends on facts specific to your situation. If you have a question about your own circumstances, speak with a lawyer.