South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers Blog
Florida Statute § 95.031(2)(b) sets an outer limit on product liability lawsuits that is separate from the ordinary filing deadline. For most products, no claim may be brought if the harm was caused by use of the product more than 12 years after it was first delivered to an end user. For a worker hurt on older equipment, the manufacturer may be the only party outside the workers’ compensation system who can be sued, and this rule can bar that claim.
Under the Florida product liability statute of repose, the 12-year clock runs from delivery to the first end user, not from the day a later owner bought the machine used. An end user here means a first purchaser or lessee that was not in the business of selling or leasing the product or building it into another product. The statute presumes that every product outside its listed exceptions has a useful life of 10 years or less, so ordinary workplace machinery falls under the 12-year limit unless the manufacturer warranted a longer life.
Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada has represented thousands of injured workers across Miami-Dade and South Florida since 1976, and our defective product attorneys check a machine’s delivery history before anything else.
How the Florida Product Liability Statute of Repose Is Measured
A statute of repose is a deadline that runs from a fixed event, such as a product’s first delivery, rather than from the date of the injury. The ordinary limitations period for a product claim runs from when the facts behind it were discovered or should have been. A repose period can expire before anyone is hurt.
The fixed event under § 95.031 is that first delivery to an end user. A press first sold to a factory in 2012 and resold to a Hialeah shop in 2020 is measured from 2012. The data plate, serial number, and the original sales records are usually how that first delivery date gets proved.
Exceptions That Keep an Older Product Claim Alive
The statute carries several exceptions, and each one turns on a specific fact about the product or the injury:
- Warranted life: where the manufacturer expressly warranted or labeled a useful life longer than 10 years, a claim is barred only after that useful life or 12 years from first delivery, whichever is later.
- Late-appearing injuries: the repose period does not apply where the exposure or use happened within the period but the injury did not show itself until after it ran.
- Concealment: the period is tolled while the manufacturer, through its officers, directors, partners, or managing agents, actually knew of the defect and took affirmative steps to hide it, which must be pleaded with specificity.
- Listed products: commercial passenger or freight aircraft, vessels over 100 gross tons, and commercial railroad equipment have a 20-year period, and improvements to real property, including elevators and escalators, are outside this repose rule.
Keeping trade secrets confidential does not count as concealment under the statute, so a concealment argument needs proof that the manufacturer acted to hide the defect itself.
The Repose Date in a Workplace Injury Claim
Florida Statute § 440.11 makes workers’ compensation the injured worker’s exclusive remedy against the employer, outside a narrow intentional-conduct exception. A claim against the company that designed or built the machine is a third-party personal injury claim, and it can recover pain and suffering that workers’ compensation does not pay. If the machine was in use more than 12 years after its first delivery and no exception applies, that second claim is barred. If your employer bought the machine secondhand, its purchase records may not show the original delivery date, and the manufacturer’s records may. Our firm’s results in machinery cases include a $6 million recovery for a forklift injury and $3.85 million for a punch-press injury.
Checking the Delivery Date on an Older Machine
A machine that looks old may still be inside the repose period, or may fall within one of the exceptions, and the answer is usually in records the employer or the manufacturer holds. At Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, we pursue third-party product claims for injured workers alongside their workers’ compensation benefits. We offer a free consultation on any injury or workers’ compensation claim. Call (305) 448-8585 or contact us online to get started.