§ 340.6.Attorney's Wrongful Act Or Omission In Performance of Professional Services

Section 340.6 governs claims against an attorney for a wrongful act or omission in performing professional services, other than actual fraud. As with medical malpractice under § 340.5, the two deadlines work together: the action must be commenced within one year after the plaintiff discovers, or through reasonable diligence should have discovered, the facts constituting the wrongful act or omission, or within four years of the act or omission itself, whichever occurs first.

A distinct rule applies when the plaintiff must establish their own factual innocence of an underlying criminal charge as an element of the malpractice claim: that action must instead be commenced within two years after the plaintiff achieves postconviction exoneration through a final judicial disposition of the criminal case.

Outside the factual-innocence category, the four-year outer limit is tolled while any of several conditions exist: the plaintiff hasn’t yet sustained actual injury; the attorney continues representing the plaintiff on the same subject matter in which the alleged wrongful act occurred; the attorney willfully conceals the facts constituting the wrongful act (though this only tolls the four-year cap, not the one-year discovery period); the plaintiff is under a legal or physical disability restricting their ability to sue; or a fee dispute between the lawyer and client is pending arbitration under the State Bar’s mandatory fee arbitration provisions.

Subdivision (b) adds a separate accrual rule for claims based on a written instrument whose effective date depends on some future act or event: the limitations period there starts running only once that act or event occurs.