Filing an Injury Claim in Arkansas: The 2025 Law That Changed the Math

If you were hurt in Arkansas and you are reading advice written before 2025, part of it is already out of date. The legislature quietly rewrote how medical bills count in an injury case — and that change now shapes nearly every claim filed in the state.

The 2025 change: what was billed vs. what was paid

In February 2025, Arkansas enacted Act 28 (House Bill 1204), which took effect later that year. For decades, Arkansas followed a version of the traditional collateral source rule: what your health insurer paid, or wrote off, was generally not the defendant’s business, and injured people could present the full billed amount of their medical care. Act 28 changed that. As of 2026, recovery for past medical care is generally limited to what was actually paid by or on behalf of the injured person, plus what remains owed — not the sticker price on the hospital’s original invoice.

Because hospitals routinely bill far more than insurers actually pay, this matters. It changes the number a claim starts from, and it makes your paperwork — explanation-of-benefits statements, payment records, outstanding balances — more important than it used to be. It does not touch the other categories of damages, such as lost income, future care, or pain and suffering, and how those are valued is its own subject; our overview of what goes into an injury claim’s value walks through the pieces. The practical takeaway is simpler: anyone quoting you a rule of thumb based on pre-2025 Arkansas cases is working from an outdated playbook, and a licensed Arkansas attorney should sanity-check any number attached to your medical care.

Three years to file — usually

Arkansas is more generous than most of its neighbors on time. The general deadline for a personal injury lawsuit is three years from the date of injury under Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-105, a full year longer than Texas or Missouri’s two-year rules for most claims — and three times Tennessee’s famously short window.

But the three-year figure hides some traps:

• Medical malpractice runs on a two-year clock under Ark. Code Ann. § 16-114-203 — and, unusually, that clock generally starts on the date of the wrongful act itself, not when you discovered the harm. Arkansas recognizes only narrow exceptions, such as foreign objects left in the body and claims involving young children. A malpractice claim you sit on for “a while” can quietly expire while a car-crash claim from the same month is still alive.
• Some intentional-harm claims are shorter still — certain intentional torts carry a one-year deadline in Arkansas.
• Wrongful death follows its own timeline, measured differently than an ordinary injury claim.

The safe assumption is that your real deadline may be shorter than three years, and only a lawyer looking at your specific facts can tell you which clock applies. For the at-a-glance version of Arkansas’s deadlines and fault rules, see our Arkansas quick-reference page.

The 50% bar: exactly half is not close enough

Arkansas follows modified comparative fault under Ark. Code Ann. § 16-64-122, and it uses the stricter of the two common versions. You can generally recover as long as your share of fault is less than the other side’s, with your award reduced by your percentage of blame. But if your fault is found equal to or greater than the defendant’s, you recover nothing. In a two-party case, landing at exactly 50% is fatal to the claim — unlike in neighboring Tennessee-style “51% bar” states, where a 50/50 split still allows a reduced recovery.

That single percentage point is why fault fights in Arkansas are so aggressive. An adjuster who can nudge your assessed share from 40% to 50% does not just trim the payout — they eliminate it. Remember that an insurance company’s early opinion about your fault is a negotiating position, not a ruling. The percentage is built from evidence: the crash report, photos, witness statements, and vehicle damage. It is contestable, and it is usually contested.

Fault state, with an add-on twist

Arkansas is not a no-fault state. It runs a traditional at-fault (tort) system: the person who caused the harm — typically through their liability insurance — is generally responsible for the damages, and there is no “serious injury” threshold you must clear before bringing a claim.

There is a wrinkle worth checking, though. Arkansas is what insurance people call an “add-on” state: under Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-202, auto insurers must offer first-party medical, income-disability, and accidental-death benefits with every policy, which drivers can reject in writing. Many Arkansans carry this coverage without realizing it. After a crash, it can pay early medical bills regardless of fault — so pull your own policy before assuming nothing is available while the liability claim plays out.

Claims against the government: Arkansas is unusually hard

Here Arkansas stands nearly alone. The state constitution declares that Arkansas shall never be made a defendant in her own courts (Ark. Const. art. 5, § 20), and the Arkansas Supreme Court has enforced that language strictly. You generally cannot sue the State of Arkansas or its agencies in ordinary court at all. Instead, injury claims against the state go to the Arkansas State Claims Commission, an administrative body with its own filing procedures — and it generally will not consider claims filed outside the limitation period that would apply in court.

Cities and counties are a different story with a similar ending: under Ark. Code Ann. § 21-9-301, local governments are immune from most negligence lawsuits except to the extent they carry liability insurance. Whether you can recover from a city truck that hit you may turn on what coverage that city bought. If any government entity is in the picture — a state agency, a school district, a municipal vehicle — treat the claim as urgent and get Arkansas-specific legal advice early, because the ordinary rules simply do not apply.

No damage caps — and that is constitutional

One thing Arkansas law cannot easily do is cap what an injured person recovers. The state constitution prohibits the legislature from limiting the amount recovered for injuries to persons or property (Ark. Const. art. 5, § 32). When lawmakers capped punitive damages in the 2003 tort-reform era, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck the cap down in Bayer CropScience LP v. Schafer (2011). As of 2026, Arkansas has no cap on compensatory damages in injury or medical malpractice cases — a meaningful difference from states like Texas. Act 28 changed how past medical bills are measured, but it did not impose a ceiling on what a claim can be worth.

Where to start

Arkansas gives you more time than most states but punishes hesitation in specific spots: the 50% fault bar, the two-year malpractice clock, and anything involving a government defendant. Everything above is general information, not legal advice — statutes change and facts matter, so confirm your situation with a licensed Arkansas attorney.

If you were hurt in Arkansas and want to know whether you may have a claim, answer a few questions about what happened and we will connect you with a participating law firm that handles Arkansas cases. It is free, confidential, and there is no obligation.