## Facts

- Earl Barnes worked as a sandblaster from 1972–1974 and was exposed to silica dust from sand produced by Pulmosan Safety Equipment Corporation and other manufacturers.
- Barnes later developed serious lung disease; his left lung was surgically removed on July 16, 1984.
- Barnes was initially told the lung removal was due to cancer and later told it was due to a fungal infection.
- Barnes testified he did not connect his condition to silica exposure or silicosis until 1992; tissue analysis confirming silicosis occurred in 1995.
- Barnes sued the manufacturers in negligence/products liability, alleging their sand caused or contributed to his silicosis.
- The manufacturers asserted Florida’s former products-liability statute of repose, § 95.031(2), Fla. Stat. (1975), which barred actions filed more than 12 years after product delivery to the original purchaser.
- The trial court granted summary judgment for the manufacturers on repose grounds.
- The First District reversed based on a latent-injury exception recognized in Diamond v. E.R. Squibb & Sons, Inc., and certified a question to the Florida Supreme Court about whether that exception remained viable after later medical-malpractice repose decisions.

## Issues

1. Whether the latent-injury exception to Florida’s former products-liability statute of repose remains valid despite later decisions upholding the constitutionality of medical-malpractice statutes of repose.
2. Whether, under that exception, a products-liability claim is barred when the injury and its causal link to the product were not reasonably discoverable within the 12-year repose period.

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court approved the First District’s decision and held the Diamond latent-injury exception remains viable in the products-liability context.
- The Court concluded the former products-liability statute of repose could not extinguish a claim where the injury was latent and not reasonably discoverable within the repose period.
- The Court held the exception applied to Barnes’s claim and the repose-based summary judgment could not stand.
- The case was allowed to proceed notwithstanding the 12-year repose period.

## Legal Principles

- A products-liability statute of repose sets an outer time limit that runs from product delivery, not from accrual or discovery of injury.
- Under the Florida Constitution’s access-to-courts guarantee, applying the former products-liability statute of repose to bar a claim can be unconstitutional when the plaintiff’s injury is latent and not reasonably discoverable during the repose period.
- Later decisions sustaining medical-malpractice repose provisions do not implicitly overrule the latent-injury exception recognized for the former products-liability repose statute.
- Repeal of the products-liability statute of repose does not eliminate its application to claims based on pre-repeal conduct, but any such application remains subject to the latent-injury constitutional limitation.

## Conclusion

The Florida Supreme Court held that the Diamond latent-injury exception continues to limit the former products-liability statute of repose, so a truly latent, undiscoverable injury claim—such as Barnes’s silicosis allegations—cannot be barred before the claimant could reasonably discover the injury and its causal connection to the product.


Pulmosan Safety Equip. Corp. v. Barnes, 752 So. 2d 556 (Fla. 2000)