Kansas’s Asbestos Filing Deadlines Today

Under Kansas law, an asbestos personal-injury claim must be filed within two years (K.S.A. 60-513(a)(4)). A wrongful-death claim runs on its own clock — two years from the date of death (K.S.A. 60-513(a)(5)). 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: Kansas keeps the personal-injury clock (K.S.A. 60-513(a)(4)) and the wrongful-death clock (K.S.A. 60-513(a)(5)) 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

Under K.S.A. 60-513(b) the period does not begin until the fact of injury becomes reasonably ascertainable to the injured party. For a latent disease caused by asbestos, K.S.A. 60-3303(d) provides that the ten-year outer limit in 60-513 does not apply, and that the claim accrues when the disease and its cause are known or should reasonably have been known.

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 Kansas Work History

Most Kansas 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 Kansas jobsite, you may have legal rights. If a parent or spouse died of mesothelioma after asbestos exposure at a Kansas jobsite, the estate may have legal rights.

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

Sources

  • Kansas Statutes Annotated § 60-513 (two-year periods at (a)(4) and (a)(5); reasonable-ascertainability and ten-year limit at (b))
  • Kansas Statutes Annotated § 60-3303(d) (asbestos and latent-disease carve-out from the ten-year limit)
  • Kansas Statutes Annotated § 60-1901 et seq. (wrongful-death act)

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.