California Property Damage Statute of Limitations: Three Years Under CCP § 338

What the statute says

Section 338 sets a three-year period across a list of causes of action. Subdivision (b) covers trespass upon or injury to real property. Subdivision (c) covers taking, detaining, or injuring any goods or chattels, including an action for the specific recovery of personal property — the provision that governs conversion. Subdivision (g) separately covers slander of title to real property.

The three-year period sits between the two-year personal injury period in section 335.1 and the four-year written-contract period in section 337, which means a single incident damaging both a person and their property routinely produces two different deadlines.

When the clock starts

Accrual is generally the date of the injury to the property or the date of the taking. Where the interference is a continuing rather than permanent trespass or nuisance, California treats each continuation as a new injury, so recovery may be available for the period preceding filing even where the original intrusion is long past — the characterisation of the trespass as permanent or continuing therefore does most of the work.

Subdivision (c) contains a distinct provision for actions to recover stolen fine art, applying an extended six-year discovery-based rule rather than the ordinary three-year period.

Key exceptions and tolling

• Continuing trespass or nuisance.Where the intrusion is continuing rather than permanent, each continuation is treated as a new injury and a new period runs, though recovery is generally limited to the statutory period preceding filing.
• Stolen fine art.Section 338(c) provides an extended six-year discovery rule for actions to recover stolen fine art, displacing the ordinary three-year period.
• Latent construction defects.Damage from a defective improvement to real property is additionally subject to the repose periods in sections 337.1 (patent, four years) and 337.15 (latent, ten years).
• Bodily injury from the same event.Personal injury arising from the same incident carries the shorter two-year period in section 335.1, so the property and injury claims can expire on different dates.
• Public entity defendants.Personal property damage claims against a public entity require claim presentation within six months under Government Code section 911.2; real property damage claims fall in the one-year category.

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