§ 16.002.One-Year Limitations Period

Four claims share the shortest limitations period in Texas civil practice. Malicious prosecution, libel, slander, and breach of promise of marriage must be filed within one year of accrual.

Three of the four concern reputation and personal standing, and the short period reflects an old judgment that such disputes go stale quickly: memories of what was said fade, and a plaintiff who waited a year invites the question how much the words cost them. Whether that reasoning still holds is a fair question, but the deadline has not moved.

The one-year period is the trap on this page. Defamation is routinely pleaded alongside claims carrying two or four years, and a petition can be perfectly timely on every count except this one. A defamation claim is also commonly discovered late, because the statement was made to someone else — and Texas applies the discovery rule narrowly.

Note that the section reaches the claim, not the label. A plaintiff who repackages a defamation claim as one for business disparagement or negligence, on the same words and the same harm, will meet the argument that the one-year period governs the substance of what is pleaded.

Malicious prosecution accrues on a different event from the other three. The claim requires that the underlying proceeding terminated in the plaintiff’s favour, so the year runs from that termination rather than from the arrest or the filing of charges.

The one year is only the first of several hurdles in a Texas defamation case. The Defamation Mitigation Act requires a request for a correction, clarification, or retraction within 90 days of receiving knowledge of the publication if exemplary damages are to be available; venue is mandatory and narrow; and the anti-SLAPP chapter supplies an early motion to dismiss with fee-shifting attached.

Subsection (b) adds an unrelated one-year deadline: a suit to set aside a sale of property seized under Subchapter E of Chapter 33 of the Tax Code must be filed within a year of the date the property is sold.