The statute of limitations under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act is one year from the date of the violation. Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the deadline is generally four years, though some courts apply shorter state-law periods instead. Miss either deadline and the claim is gone, regardless of its merits. Because the EFTA and TCPA statute of limitations rules run on different clocks and follow different rules for when the clock starts, each one is worth understanding on its own terms.
The EFTA One-Year Deadline
Under 15 U.S.C. § 1693m(g), you have one year from the date a violation occurred to file a civil lawsuit under the EFTA.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1693m – Civil Liability That window covers every claim the statute reaches: unauthorized withdrawals, a bank’s failure to investigate a reported error, missing transaction receipts, and other breaches of the electronic fund transfer protections. You can file in any federal district court or in any state court with jurisdiction over the amount at stake.
A year sounds generous until you count what happens inside it. You have to notice the problem, work through your bank’s internal dispute process, find an attorney, and prepare a complaint. Time spent negotiating with a fraud department does not pause the clock. Ten months of back-and-forth leaves you two months to sue. Counsel who handle these cases routinely recommend filing well before the deadline so that processing delays or procedural errors don’t run out the year.
One boundary matters up front. The EFTA covers only consumer accounts established primarily for personal, family, or household purposes.2Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Regulation E 1005.2 – Definitions Business account holders looking at electronic fraud need to work from the Uniform Commercial Code or their account agreement, which carry different deadlines and weaker protections.
The TCPA Four-Year Deadline and Its Complications
The TCPA itself contains no statute of limitations. Congress left the question open when it passed the law in 1991, and courts have filled the gap in different ways. The most common answer is four years, drawn from the federal catch-all in 28 U.S.C. § 1658(a), which covers civil actions arising under a federal statute enacted after December 1, 1990.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1658 – Time Limitations on the Commencement of Civil Actions Arising Under Acts of Congress
Not every court agrees. The TCPA’s private right of action is unusual in that it routes claims through state courts, and some federal circuits have held that state statutes of limitations govern rather than the federal catch-all. Depending on the state, that could shorten the deadline to one or two years under a personal injury or similar tort classification. The split is active, and which rule applies turns on where the case is filed. If your claim is more than a year old, check with an attorney in your jurisdiction before assuming four years is available.
The longer window, where it applies, reflects the practical difficulty of identifying who is behind illegal robocalls. Spoofed numbers, offshore call centers, and layered lead-generation chains are all designed to obscure the responsible party, and investigation takes time.
When the Clock Starts
Statutes of limitations start running at “accrual.” Under both the EFTA and TCPA, the default is the occurrence rule: the clock begins the day the violation happened. For an unauthorized bank withdrawal, that is the date the money left the account. For an illegal robocall, it is the moment the phone rang.
The occurrence rule is predictable, which is why most federal courts prefer it, but it can be harsh when a violation is hidden. A minority of jurisdictions apply the discovery rule as an alternative, delaying the start of the clock until the consumer discovered the violation or should have discovered it through reasonable diligence.
Courts are skeptical of discovery-rule arguments under the EFTA in particular. The statute ties the deadline to “the date of the occurrence of the violation” with no built-in exception for delayed discovery.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1693m – Civil Liability If your bank statement arrived on time and you left it unopened for six months, the court will likely hold you to the occurrence date. The burden is on you to show why the problem could not have been found sooner, and courts look at whether you were reviewing statements and monitoring activity the way a reasonably attentive person would.
TCPA accrual is usually simpler because each call or text is a discrete event with its own date. The wrinkle appears when you receive a call from a number you don’t recognize and only later learn the caller was using an illegal autodialer. Even then, most courts start the clock at the call date, not the date you understood the call was unlawful.
When the Deadline Can Pause
Equitable tolling is a court-created safety valve that pauses a statute of limitations in narrow circumstances. Courts have allowed it for natural disasters, government conduct, or a disability preventing timely filing. For EFTA and TCPA claims, the version most likely to matter is fraudulent concealment.
Fraudulent concealment requires three showings: the defendant actively hid the facts underlying the claim, you failed to discover those facts within the ordinary filing period, and you exercised due diligence in trying to uncover the violation. “Actively” is the operative word. A bank that simply failed to flag an error on a statement probably has not fraudulently concealed anything. A bank that altered records to cover unauthorized transfers probably has. Proof of concealment can include acts that were part of the violation itself, not only separate cover-up conduct.
Class Action Tolling
Under the American Pipe doctrine, filing a class action pauses the statute of limitations for every member of the proposed class. If you fall within the class definition and the court later denies certification, your individual deadline picks up where it left off when the class action was filed. That prevents hundreds of people from filing protective individual lawsuits just in case the class fails.
American Pipe tolling has limits. The Supreme Court has held it does not apply to statutes of repose, which impose hard outer deadlines courts cannot extend. It also does not toll the deadline for filing a second class action after the first one fails; the doctrine protects individual follow-on claims only.
Arbitration Clauses Can Shorten the Deadline
Before relying on the one-year or four-year window, check the account agreement. Many banks and phone service providers include mandatory arbitration clauses that route disputes to a private arbitrator rather than a court, often with a class action waiver attached.
Some of those agreements also shorten the filing period. Courts generally allow parties to contract for a deadline shorter than the statute provides so long as the shortened period is “reasonable,” which is evaluated case by case. Courts have occasionally struck down periods so short they effectively eliminated the right to bring a claim, but a clause requiring arbitration within six months of a violation may hold up. The practical effect is that your real deadline can be well inside the statutory one.
Whether an arbitration clause can override EFTA or TCPA protections has produced mixed results. The Federal Arbitration Act creates a strong presumption in favor of enforcement, and the Supreme Court has upheld class action waivers in consumer contracts even where federal statutory rights are involved. If your agreement contains an arbitration clause, the timeline it specifies may govern your case more than the statute does.
The Reporting Deadlines That Run Before the Lawsuit Clock
Under the EFTA, the lawsuit deadline is not the earliest clock you have to watch. A separate set of deadlines under 15 U.S.C. § 1693g governs how quickly you must report unauthorized transfers to your bank, and those deadlines determine how much money you can recover in the first place.
If a debit card or access credentials are stolen and you report the loss within two business days, your maximum liability for unauthorized transfers is $50. Report after two business days but within 60 days of receiving the bank statement showing the unauthorized activity, and the ceiling rises to $500. Miss the 60-day window and there is no cap on losses that occur after those 60 days elapse.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1693g – Consumer Liability Unlimited liability is the real risk for anyone who does not review statements regularly.
Once you report an error, the bank has 10 business days to investigate and resolve it. It can extend the investigation up to 45 days, but only if it provisionally credits your account within the first 10 business days.5Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Regulation E 1005.11 – Procedures for Resolving Errors For new accounts within 30 days of the first deposit, point-of-sale transactions, and international transfers, those windows extend to 20 business days and 90 days. If the bank ultimately finds no error, it can reverse the provisional credit, but it must explain its reasoning in writing and provide the documents it relied on.
Preserve the Evidence Early
Whichever statute applies, records are the case. For EFTA claims, keep bank statements, error dispute correspondence, and every written response from the institution. For TCPA claims, save call logs, voicemails, screenshots of text messages, and anything showing you did not consent to the contact or that you revoked consent. The further you get from the violation date, the harder these records are to reconstruct, and the deadline will not wait while you rebuild them.