Answer: Yes. This is known as the “statute of limitations,” and it applies to virtually all claims. The reason is because there needs to be a cut-off date for claims. Otherwise, the courts could be flooded with litigants seeking recovery for stale cases which could be difficult to defend due to the lack of witnesses, loss/destruction of evidence, and poor memory. The concepts applies not only to the landlord and tenant claims against each other, but personal injury cases, business disputes, property damages, etc.
The statute, ORS 12.125 is deceptively simple: “An action arising under a rental agreement or ORS chapter 90 shall be commenced within one year.” It is a two-way street; landlords have one year to recover past due rent, and tenants have one year to bring claims against their landlords.
However, there are several exceptions:
- For example, some claims are “continuing,” so just because there was a tenant habitability violation at the commencement of the tenancy, in say, May 15, 2023, does not mean the tenant has no claim today for the same violation. If it continued to today only means that the tenant’s damage claim can go back 12 months; there can be no recovery before then. But if the claim is a single isolated event, say the landlord unlawfully entered the tenant’s premises on May 15, 2023, the claim would have lapsed on May 15, 2024. (Assuming the tenant knew, or reasonably should have known, of the intrusion.)
- The party bringing the claim must have known that the claim arose (using the “reasonable person standard”) before the applicable statute will commence running. If for example, the tenant was injured from contaminated well water in 2023, but didn’t learn of it until today (after the well had been repaired), the one-year statute might not commence running until the tenant knew or should have known of the contamination. (Note, this example does not address the general 2-year statute of limitations for personal injury. So even if the 1-year statute under the rental agreement or Chapter 90 did expire, the 2-year statute would still apply and preserve the injury claim.)
- Lastly, Oregon has certain “tolling” statutes which suspend the running of the applicable period of limitations if the aggrieved party is under some legal disability, such as incompetence, or the potential defendant conceals themselves.
Conclusion. Fortunately, the above exceptions normally don’t come into play when we’re talking about Oregon’s landlord-tenant laws. This is because most cases involving residential tenants relate to recovery of unpaid rent, which usually means the landlord would have already evicted the tenant long before allowing nonpayment to continue for 12 months. If not, landlords should – through legal counsel – secure a written agreement that the tenant consents to suspending (i.e. “tolling”) the one-year period.[1] Conversely, landlords have the satisfaction of knowing that despite a tenant’s frequent threats to file a lawsuit for some perceived violation, once the actionable event continues past one year, it has likely lapsed.
The take-away is the statutes of limitation issues under the Oregon landlord-tenant law can become confusing based upon when they commence and end. Always check with your legal counsel when an issue arises
[1] Caveat: Landlords must be careful about entering into written agreements with tenants addressing legal issues such as the waiver of a claim, without making sure the tenant will have the document reviewed by their own legal counsel before signing.
