Limitation periods: how long a claim lasts

15.1The federal TCPA: four years

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act has no limitation period of its own, so the general federal period for statutes enacted after 1990 applies: four years from when the claim accrues, which is the date of each call or text.¹ A call made three years and eleven months ago can still be sued on this month. The practical consequence for a business is that the exposure from a calling programme reaches back four years, and records should be kept for that long after the last call. Chapter 6 covers the claim.

15.2Other federal statutes set their own

Federal statutes that create claims usually state a period. Two that recur in this guide: the Copyright Act requires a civil action to be brought within three years after the claim accrued,² and the Fair Labor Standards Act allows two years, extended to three for a willful violation.³ Each is stated in the statute; the Part II chapters on copyright and image licensing demand letters and wage and employment demand letters give the citations. Where a federal statute is silent, the four-year general period applies to claims under statutes enacted after 1990, and older statutes borrow from state law.

15.3Contract, tort and state claims: it varies

Claims under state law, which include breach of contract, negligence, defamation, state consumer-protection and wage claims, state telemarketing statutes such as Florida's, and most unpaid-invoice claims, have periods set by each state's legislature. They differ by state and by type of claim: written contracts and oral contracts often have different periods; defamation is often short; some consumer statutes are long. They are also amended. This site does not quote them, because a number that is right in one state is wrong in the next and may be wrong next year.

15.4Accrual, tolling and discovery

Three things complicate the arithmetic. Accrual: the period runs from when the claim arose, which for a continuing course of conduct can mean a separate period for each act. Tolling: some events pause the period, such as a written agreement between the parties to do so while they negotiate, or in some states the defendant's absence from the state. Discovery: some claims run from when the claimant discovered or should have discovered the injury rather than when it happened. Whether any of these applies is a question for a lawyer on the facts.

15.5What to do with the information

1. Identify every claim the letter makes and the law each rests on.
2. For each, find the period and the accrual date. The Part II chapters give the federal ones; the state court site gives the state ones.
3. Work out which alleged acts are inside the period and which are outside. Acts outside it are not actionable, and a reply can say so.
4. Set record-retention for the longest period that applies to your business, plus a margin.
5. Do not treat a letter's deadline as the limitation period, and do not treat the end of the limitation period as a reason to ignore a letter that arrived well inside it.