Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Law Reference
This page collects the District of Columbia statutes and decisions that most often decide the timing and value of a personal injury case, in plain language, with citations you can check. D.C. follows one of the harshest fault rules in the country, which makes understanding these rules before talking to any insurance company unusually important. Gregory Stuck is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
Deadlines That End Cases
D.C. Code § 12-301(8); § 16-2702
Three years for injury, two years for wrongful death
Most personal injury actions must be brought within three years of accrual. Wrongful death is shorter: the personal representative must file within two years of the death, a period the Council doubled from one year in 2012. The estate’s separate survival claim for the decedent’s own pre-death losses runs on the three-year clock from the injury. Two clocks, two lengths, and confusing them is fatal to the shorter claim.
D.C. Code § 12-309
Six months to give notice before suing the District
No action for damages may be maintained against the District of Columbia unless, within six months of the injury, written notice of the approximate time, place, cause, and circumstances was given to the Mayor; the Office of Risk Management must actually receive it. A written Metropolitan Police Department report made in the regular course of duty can satisfy the requirement, but relying on that is a gamble. Anyone hurt by a D.C. government vehicle, a broken sidewalk, or other public property is on a six-month clock they usually do not know exists.
The Contributory Negligence Bar
Wingfield v. Peoples Drug Store, Inc., 379 A.2d 685 (D.C. 1977)
Any contributory negligence bars recovery completely
The District is one of the last American jurisdictions applying pure contributory negligence. As the Court of Appeals put it, D.C. “does not recognize different degrees of contributory negligence”; the rule is simply that contributory negligence bars recovery. Not reduces: bars. A jury that assigns an injured person even a sliver of the fault returns a defense verdict. This is why insurance adjusters in D.C. work so hard to extract any admission that you could have done something differently, and why nothing should be said to a carrier before talking to counsel. The traditional escape valve is the last clear chance doctrine: even a negligent plaintiff recovers if the defendant had the final, fresh opportunity to avoid the harm and failed to take it.
D.C. Code § 50-2204.52
The 2016 rescue for pedestrians and vulnerable road users
The Motor Vehicle Collision Recovery Act of 2016, expanded in 2020, pulled pedestrians and “vulnerable users” of highways and sidewalks, a category covering bicycles, scooters, and other mobility devices, out of the contributory negligence trap in collisions with motor vehicles. For these plaintiffs, negligence bars recovery only if it was a proximate cause of the injury and greater than the combined negligence of all defendants. The statute expressly preserves both joint and several liability and last clear chance. Whether a client falls inside or outside this statute is often the single most valuable question in a D.C. traffic case.
Damages
District of Columbia damages law
No caps, joint and several liability, and the wrongful death structure
The District imposes no statutory cap on compensatory damages in personal injury or wrongful death cases; the jury’s award stands unless a court finds it beyond all reason. Liability among multiple tortfeasors remains joint and several under D.C. common law, so any one defendant who caused an indivisible injury can be pursued for the whole judgment. In death cases, the wrongful death claim compensates the family’s losses while the survival claim recovers what the decedent endured, and both are brought by the personal representative.
On the Research Roadmap
Queued for future entries: Poyner v. Loftus and the case law finding plaintiffs contributorily negligent as a matter of law; the medical malpractice pre-suit notice requirement (D.C. Code § 16-2802); notice rules for claims against WMATA; and the assumption of risk doctrine.
Last reviewed: August 21, 2026
This page is legal information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes and case law change; the last-reviewed date above reflects the most recent verification. If you were injured in Washington, D.C., call (407) 630-8692 for a free consultation with an attorney admitted in the District of Columbia.