Illinois’s Asbestos Filing Deadlines Today

Under Illinois law, an asbestos personal-injury claim must be filed within two years (735 ILCS 5/13-202). A wrongful-death claim runs on its own clock — two years from the date of death (740 ILCS 180/2(d)). These are independent deadlines. What starts each clock is a separate question, and it is the one that usually decides whether a claim is still open — see below.

About the two deadlines: Illinois keeps the personal-injury clock (735 ILCS 5/13-202) and the wrongful-death clock (740 ILCS 180/2(d)) on separate tracks. The personal-injury period applies to the diagnosed person’s own claim while they are living. The wrongful-death period belongs to the estate and surviving family members, and runs on the schedule stated above — two years from the date of death. Preserving one does not extend the other.

When the Clock Starts

Illinois applies a discovery rule to latent asbestos disease: the two years run from when the person knows or reasonably should know of the injury and that it was wrongfully caused. Illinois’s ten-year construction statute of repose does not apply to an asbestos claim — 735 ILCS 5/13-214(f) says so expressly.

This is the part that decides whether a claim is still open, and it is a question for a lawyer rather than something to calculate from this page. Asbestos disease is diagnosed decades after the work that caused it, so the date the exposure happened and the date the clock started are rarely the same date.

Why Early Action Still Matters

A filing deadline is the outside limit, not the working timeline. Reconstructing an asbestos work history takes time: locating employment and union records, identifying the products and premises involved by name and era, and finding co-workers who can describe the same jobs. Co-workers from the 1960s and 1970s become harder to reach every year.

Reconstructing a Illinois Work History

Most Illinois asbestos claims turn on the plant, the department and the years — not on a diagnosis alone. Earnings records recover the sequence of employers; those are matched against documented facility records to identify which materials were allegedly present and when.

What To Do Now

If you have been diagnosed with mesothelioma or another asbestos-related disease after asbestos exposure at a Illinois jobsite, you may have legal rights. If a parent or spouse died of mesothelioma after asbestos exposure at a Illinois jobsite, the estate may have legal rights.

O’Brien Law Firm, LLC handles Illinois claims. It is a Missouri firm and does not maintain a Illinois office. What matters most in that first conversation is the plant, the department and the years — (314) 237-3332.

Sources

  • 735 ILCS 5/13-202 (two years, personal injury)
  • 740 ILCS 180/2(d) (two years, Wrongful Death Act)
  • 735 ILCS 5/13-214(f) (construction repose does not apply to an action based on personal injury from asbestos)

This page describes published statutes and is not legal advice. Deadlines turn on facts specific to each claim. This website is published by Rights Watch Media Group LLC, a media company; it is not a law firm, and visiting this page does not create an attorney-client relationship.