Statute of limitations

Key Takeaways

• A statute of limitations is a filing deadline for a lawsuit, counted from the time the claim arises rather than from the time the injured party decides to sue.
• In Washington an action on a written contract must be commenced within six years (RCW 4.16.040), and an action on a contract that is not in writing within three years (RCW 4.16.080).
• Missing the deadline does not make the underlying claim untrue. It makes the claim unenforceable in court, which is why an expired claim produces an unenforceable contract.
• The statute of limitations sets how long a party has to sue, while the statute of frauds sets which agreements must be in writing to be enforceable at all.

What It Means

A statute of limitations is a legislature's deadline for bringing a lawsuit. The clock starts when the claim arises, usually at the moment of the Breach or the injury, and it runs whether or not the injured party is paying attention. File inside the window and the court hears the dispute on its merits. File a day late and the other side raises the deadline as a defense, and the case ends there without anyone deciding who was right.

The reason is practical rather than technical. Evidence goes stale, memories fade, witnesses move away, and businesses destroy records on a schedule. A deadline forces disputes to be resolved while they can still be proved, and it lets people eventually treat old matters as closed.

How long the window runs depends on the kind of claim. In real estate the split that matters most is written against unwritten. A signed agreement gets a longer period than a handshake deal. That gap is one more reason the industry reduces everything to writing, since the writing buys years of extra time in which to enforce it.

How It Works in Washington

Washington puts the periods in chapter 4.16 RCW. RCW 4.16.040 requires that an action upon a contract in writing, or on a liability express or implied arising out of a written agreement, be commenced within six years. RCW 4.16.080 allows three years for an action upon a contract or liability, express or implied, that is not in writing and does not arise out of any written instrument. Because a purchase and sale agreement, a listing agreement, and a promissory note are all written, a suit to enforce one, whether for damages or for Specific Performance, normally falls in the six-year period.

Construction claims run on a separate clock. RCW 4.16.310 provides that claims arising out of the construction, alteration, or repair of an improvement upon real property accrue, and the limitation period begins to run, only within six years after substantial completion of construction or within six years after the services end. The statute defines substantial completion as the state of completion reached when the improvement may be used or occupied for its intended use. A defect that first shows itself in year nine sits outside that window no matter how real the defect is.

Keep the deadline separate from the writing requirement. RCW 19.36.010 makes the agreements it lists void unless the agreement, or a note or memorandum of it, is in writing and signed by the party to be charged. That statute is the Statute Of Frauds, and it asks whether an agreement is enforceable at all. The statute of limitations asks only how long a party has to sue on it.

Example

Dana Kowalski sells a house in Olympia to Ben Ortiz, and they close on May 12, 2020 under a signed purchase and sale agreement in which Dana promised to pay for a sewer line repair after closing. Dana never pays, so Ben covers the $9,400 repair himself in August 2020. Because the promise sits inside a written agreement, RCW 4.16.040 gives Ben six years from the breach, which runs his deadline to August 2026. He files suit in March 2026 and the case proceeds on its merits. Now change one fact. Suppose the sewer promise had never been written into the agreement and existed only as a verbal side deal at the walkthrough. RCW 4.16.080 gives three years for an unwritten promise, the deadline passed in August 2023, and the identical lawsuit filed in March 2026 is dismissed as time barred. Same money, same broken promise, different clock.

Common Mistakes and Exam Traps

• Statute of limitations is a deadline to sue. Statute of frauds is a requirement that certain agreements be in writing. Test writers pair the two because the names sound alike.
• In Washington the written-contract period is six years and the unwritten period is three. Reversing the two numbers is the most common miss on this topic.
• An expired limitation period does not make the contract void. It leaves the contract unenforceable, which is a separate answer choice from void, voidable, and valid.
• The clock generally starts when the claim arises, not when the injured party gets around to acting on it. A few claims, such as fraud, run from discovery instead, so read the call of the question carefully.