Injury Claim Deadlines in Ontario: The Complete Guide

If you were injured in Ontario, you generally have two years to start a lawsuit. But some of the most common injury claims have much shorter notice deadlines that can arrive within days of your accident. If you fell on a city sidewalk, you may have only 10 days to give written notice. If you slipped on snow or ice on private property, you have 60 days. After a car accident, you have 7 days to notify your own insurance company. Missing a deadline is not always fatal to your claim, but every day matters. This guide explains each deadline in plain language.

Quick reference: Ontario injury claim deadlines

Each of these deadlines is explained below, including what happens if you have already missed one. In many cases, a missed deadline can still be excused.

How long do I have to sue for a personal injury in Ontario?

The general rule is two years. Under section 4 of Ontario's Limitations Act, 2002, you must start your lawsuit within two years of the day you discovered your claim.

The word "discovered" matters. The two-year clock usually starts on the day you were injured, and the law presumes that it does. But under section 5 of the Act, the clock starts on the day you first knew, or reasonably should have known, four things: that you were injured, that someone's act or failure to act caused the injury, who that someone was, and that a lawsuit would be an appropriate way to address it. If you did not know one of those things right away, your two years may start later than the accident date. This is called discoverability.

There is also an outer limit. Section 15 of the Act sets an ultimate deadline of 15 years from the day the act or omission happened, no matter when you discovered the claim. Very few injury cases run up against this limit, but it exists.

Two years sounds like a long time. It is not. Building an injury case takes months of gathering medical records, evidence, and expert opinions. And as you will see next, several common types of claims have notice deadlines measured in days, not years.

Why do some injury claims have deadlines of only 10 or 60 days?

Ontario law gives certain defendants, mainly municipalities and property occupiers dealing with winter conditions, the right to receive early written notice of a claim. The idea is that they need a fair chance to investigate while the evidence is fresh: to photograph the sidewalk, check the salting logs, or interview the maintenance crew.

These notice deadlines are separate from the two-year deadline to sue. Think of them as two different clocks running at the same time. Giving notice does not start your lawsuit, and starting your lawsuit does not replace the notice. You may need to do both, and the notice clock is always the more urgent one.

Injured on a city sidewalk or road: the 10-day notice rule

If you were injured because of the condition of a road, bridge, or sidewalk that a municipality is responsible for maintaining, section 44 of Ontario's Municipal Act, 2001 requires you to give written notice of your claim within 10 days of the injury.

The notice must be in writing, must include the date, time, and location of the incident, and must be served on or sent by registered mail to the clerk of the municipality. If two or more municipalities are jointly responsible for the road or bridge, the clerk of each municipality must receive notice. This is one of the shortest deadlines in Ontario injury law, and many people have never heard of it until it has already passed.

One more thing to know about winter sidewalk falls: under the Municipal Act, a municipality is only liable for personal injury caused by snow or ice on a sidewalk in cases of gross negligence. That is a higher bar than ordinary negligence. It does not mean these cases cannot succeed, but it does mean the details of how the municipality managed its winter maintenance matter a great deal, which is another reason early notice and early investigation are so important.

What if I missed the 10-day deadline?

Your claim may still survive. The Municipal Act itself says that a missed or insufficient notice is not a bar to your action if a judge finds there is a reasonable excuse for it and the municipality is not prejudiced in defending the claim. Serious injuries, hospitalization, and not knowing about the rule have all been considered as part of the reasonable excuse analysis. The Act also says the notice requirement does not apply at all where the injured person has died as a result of the injury. If your 10 days have passed, do not assume your claim is over. Get legal advice immediately, because the longer the delay, the harder the argument becomes.

Slip and fall on snow or ice: the 60-day notice rule

If you slipped and fell on snow or ice on private property, such as a parking lot, plaza, store entrance, or private walkway, section 6.1 of Ontario's Occupiers' Liability Act requires written notice of your claim within 60 days of the fall.

The notice must include the date, time, and location of the fall, and must be personally served on or sent by registered mail to either the occupier of the property or the contractor hired to remove snow or ice from the property. Helpfully, the law says that notice given to any one of them counts against all of them, even a company you did not know about at the time. The occupier and contractor are then required to share the notice with each other.

This 60-day rule was added to the Occupiers' Liability Act in 2021 and applies only to injuries caused by snow or ice. If you fell on private property for some other reason, such as a broken step, poor lighting, or a wet floor inside a store, there is no 60-day notice requirement. Your deadline is the general two-year limitation period.

What if I missed the 60-day deadline?

As with municipal claims, a missed or insufficient notice is not automatically fatal. The Act says the failure does not bar your action if a judge finds a reasonable excuse and the defendant is not prejudiced in its defence. The requirement also does not apply where the person injured has died as a result of the injury. Again, the safest course is to speak to a lawyer right away rather than assume the claim is lost.

Car accident deadlines in Ontario: three separate clocks

After a car accident, three different deadlines start running at once. People are often surprised to learn that the first one arrives within a week.

1. Seven days to notify your own insurance company

Ontario has a no-fault benefits system, which means your own insurer pays certain benefits regardless of who caused the crash. These are called statutory accident benefits, and they can cover income replacement, medical and rehabilitation costs, attendant care, and more.

Under Ontario's Insurance Act and the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule, you must notify your insurer of the accident and of your intention to apply for benefits within seven days of the accident, or as soon as practicable after that. If you are unable to do so because of your injuries, the law allows you to comply as soon as possible afterward.

2. Thirty days to submit your accident benefits application

Once you notify your insurer, it must promptly send you the application forms along with a written explanation of the available benefits. You then have 30 days from receiving the forms to submit your completed and signed application.

If you miss these timelines, the Schedule says a late notice or application does not disentitle you to benefits if you have a reasonable explanation. But a late start can delay your benefit payments significantly, so it is always better to act within the deadlines.

3. Deadlines for suing the at-fault driver

Separate from accident benefits, you may have a lawsuit against the at-fault driver for your injuries. Two timelines apply. First, the Insurance Act requires you to serve written notice of your intention to sue on the at-fault driver within 120 days of the accident. A court can extend this period, and starting your lawsuit without the notice is not automatically barred, but the court will consider the failure when awarding costs. There is also a financial reason not to delay: prejudgment interest on your damages does not start accumulating until this notice is served. Second, the general two-year limitation period applies to starting the lawsuit itself.

The Insurance Act also requires that you have applied for statutory accident benefits before starting a lawsuit against the at-fault driver. This is one more reason the seven-day notice to your own insurer is the first and most urgent step after any collision.

Injured by a defective product: how long do I have?

Claims against manufacturers, distributors, or sellers of dangerous or defective products follow the general rule: two years from the day you discovered the claim, with the ultimate 15-year limit.

Discoverability does real work in product cases. Injuries caused by a defective product, a dangerous drug, or a faulty medical device are sometimes not connected to the product until long after they begin. If you only recently learned that a product may have caused your injury, your two years may only recently have started. When the clock began is a legal question that depends on the facts, and it is worth getting an opinion on rather than guessing.

Long-term disability denials: the appeal trap that costs people their claims

If your long-term disability claim has been denied, you generally have two years to start a lawsuit against the insurer, and that clock generally starts running from the insurer's clear denial of your claim.

Here is the trap. When insurers deny LTD claims, they usually invite you to appeal internally. You can send more medical records, your doctor can write letters, and the insurer can take months to respond, then invite another appeal. It feels like progress. But these internal appeals are the insurer's own voluntary process, and they do not generally pause the two-year limitation clock. People spend a year or more appealing in good faith, get a final denial, and discover that much of their time to sue has already burned away. Some run out entirely.

If your LTD claim has been denied, treat the denial letter as the starting gun. You can still pursue an internal appeal if there is a good reason to, but you should get legal advice about your limitation period first, not after the appeals are exhausted.

I think I missed my deadline. Is my claim dead?

Not necessarily. Ontario law contains several safety valves, and whether one applies to you is exactly the kind of question a lawyer should answer before you give up.

The notice deadlines for municipal claims and for snow and ice claims can both be excused where there is a reasonable excuse and the defendant is not prejudiced. The accident benefits timelines allow for a reasonable explanation. The two-year limitation period may have started later than you think because of discoverability. And the clock does not run at all during certain periods, described next.

The honest caveat: none of these safety valves is guaranteed, all of them get harder to rely on as time passes, and a judge decides whether they apply. The only deadline strategy that always works is acting early.

Do the deadlines apply to children and people who cannot manage a claim?

The basic two-year limitation period does not run while the injured person is a minor and is not represented by a litigation guardian. In practical terms, a child injured in Ontario generally has until two years after their 18th birthday to start a lawsuit. The same pause applies to a person who is incapable of starting a proceeding because of their physical, mental, or psychological condition, for as long as they are incapable and unrepresented.

Two cautions for parents and family members. First, these pauses apply to the limitation period for suing, but evidence still goes stale, witnesses move, and camera footage gets erased. Waiting years to investigate a child's claim can badly damage it even if the deadline has not passed. Second, the short notice periods and insurance timelines described in this guide have their own rules, and the safest assumption is that they still need to be dealt with promptly on the injured person's behalf.

A note about workplace injuries

If you were injured at work and your employer is covered by Ontario's workplace insurance system, your claim generally goes through the WSIB rather than the courts, and the WSIB has its own separate reporting and filing deadlines. Workplace injury claims through the WSIB follow a different system than the claims described in this guide.

The bottom line

Every deadline in this guide is shorter in practice than it looks on paper. Evidence disappears, memories fade, and the arguments that excuse a late notice get weaker with every passing week. If you have been injured in Ontario, the single most protective thing you can do for your claim is find out where you stand now.

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