It's three years. Lawyer is taking a "be nice approach" in getting a settlement. When Chase blows it off, the real lawsuit will begin and the lawyer can tell a jury that his client tried to be reasonable and Chase just ignored a little guy. What better way than that to get a jury to make a big award?
Okay, I read the letter. It’s a demand letter for the fraud of conversion. Their alleged cause of action is the delay involved between the time he presented the check for payment and the time it was actually released by the police. Their injury is that he lost his car because he had no money to pay the impound fees, and he lost his job because he didn’t have a car to drive. Neither would have happened if they’d cashed his check.
Note that nowhere in the letter is there a claim of personal injury, which leads me to speculate that the arrest wasn’t for forgery. What frequently happens in similar situations is that the police are called, they run a records check on the individual involved who turns out to have a warrant of some sort, (unpaid tickets, whatever) and he’s taken into custody for that. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but I’m offering it as one reason why he’d seek compensation for the money and property lost, but not for the personal injury suffered as the result of their negligence/incompetence.
There’s more to be known here.