Missouri’s asbestos filing deadlines today
A personal-injury claim for an asbestos-related disease has five years, under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.120, which opens “Within five years:” and reaches these claims through subdivision (4) — “any other injury to the person or rights of another, not arising on contract.”
A wrongful-death claim is a separate action on its own clock: three years after the cause of action accrues, under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 537.100. The two are independent, and preserving one does not extend the other.
About the two deadlines. Missouri keeps the personal-injury clock (Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.120) and the wrongful-death clock (Mo. Rev. Stat. § 537.100) on separate tracks. The five years personal-injury period applies to the diagnosed person's own claim while they are alive; the three years wrongful-death period runs after the cause of action accrues and applies to surviving family members. Preserving one does not extend the other.
Missouri fixes the starting point by a separate statute. Under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.100 a claim accrues not when the wrong is done but "when the damage resulting therefrom is sustained and is capable of ascertainment." That is usually read from the diagnosis, but it is an objective test decided on the facts and it can fall earlier.
When the clock starts
This is the part most summaries get wrong, and it matters more than the five years does.
Missouri does not fix accrual in § 516.120. It fixes it in § 516.100, which says a cause of action “shall not be deemed to accrue when the wrong is done or the technical breach of contract or duty occurs, but when the damage resulting therefrom is sustained and is capable of ascertainment.”
“Capable of ascertainment” is an objective test a court applies to the facts. It is usually read from the diagnosis, and for most claimants the diagnosis date is the practical answer. But it is not the statutory words, and if the damage was capable of being ascertained earlier, the deadline is earlier too. Anyone told flatly that they have “five years from diagnosis, no exceptions” has been given the common case as though it were the rule.
Three features of the wrongful-death section that are easy to miss
- Service, not just filing. The petition must be served “within one hundred eighty days of the filing of the petition,” or the court shall dismiss — without prejudice, unless a prior nonsuit occurred.
- An absent defendant does not run the clock. Where a defendant is outside Missouri so that personal service cannot be made, that time “shall not be deemed or taken as any part of the time limited for the commencement of such action.”
- A one-year savings period. After a nonsuit, a judgment arrested, or a reversal on appeal, a plaintiff “may commence a new action from time to time within one year.”
Who may bring the claim is fixed by § 537.080, in classes and in order — spouse, children or surviving lineal descendants of deceased children, or the parents; then a brother or sister or their descendants; then a plaintiff ad litem appointed by the court. The same section sets a rule that shapes a family’s decisions: “Only one action may be brought under this section against any one defendant for the death of any one person.”
Why the practical deadline is shorter than the statutory one
Even five years is longer than the evidence lasts. A Missouri claim is built from the plant, the department and the years, and that material degrades on its own schedule: employer records are discarded, plants are demolished, successor entities reorganise, and the co-workers who can place someone in a space are in their seventies and eighties. The constraint on most Missouri cases is not § 516.120 — it is whether the work history can still be reconstructed.
Recent legislative history
Two attempts to shorten the personal-injury period failed in the Missouri Senate: HB 68 (2025) would have cut it from five years to two, and HB 1664 (2026) from five years to three. Neither became law, and the five-year period in § 516.120 remains in force. They are noted here only because the proposals still circulate as though they had passed.
Sources
Statutes read 2026-10-06 from the Missouri Revisor of Statutes (revisor.mo.gov), the state’s official publication: § 516.120 (five-year period, subdiv. (4)) · § 516.100 (accrual) · § 537.080 (who may sue; one-action rule) · § 537.100 (three years after accrual; 180-day service; absence tolling; one-year savings).
We have run no citator check and cite no decisions construing “capable of ascertainment” in an asbestos case; the citations are given so that a lawyer can.
If you have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, asbestos-related lung cancer or asbestosis after asbestos exposure at a Missouri jobsite, in the military, or in a Missouri building, the dates matter and they are worth checking early. How Missouri asbestos claims work →
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