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
- 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.
- 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.