Mundy
PITTSBURGH – Clearfield County ran out of time to sue over a roof on the county jail said to be “floating on top of the building” instead of being attached to it, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled.
Construction on the jail finished in 1981 but renovations performed 40 years later discovered the roof was not connected to masonry walls, leading Clearfield County to sue the architectural and engineering firm Kimball and contractors Leonard Fiore and Showalter Masonry.
At issue was a 12-year statute of repose on construction issues, Section 5536, which gives plaintiffs that many years to discover and sue over defects. The defendants successfully argued Clearfield County was too late in the trial court and the Supreme Court, which issued its opinion Thursday.
Clearfield County had tried to argue “no time runs against the King” in arguing the common law doctrine of nullum tempus. But allowing that argument would bring back uncertainty to the construction industry that was the reason Section 5536 was added in the first place, courts held.
“The enactment of Section 5536 was a legislative decision that the public interest is best served by eliminating the liability of construction industry professionals after 12 years, regardless of the reason an injured party was unable to bring suit within 12 years from the completion of construction,” Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy wrote.
“Allowing County to invoke nullum tempus to avoid the repose period would undermine that legislative judgment because it would reintroduce the threat of indeterminate liability for construction industry professionals.”
There are limited exceptions to the statute of repose that allow its timeframe to be paused, and the Supreme Court refused to add this one. Nullum tempus says statutes of limitations do not apply to government entities unless the applicable law specifically says so.
Manheim Central School District had sued an architecture firm over the old Doe Run Elementary School building after finding structural defects in 2014, but a Lancaster County judge denied the nullum tempus argument there. A federal court in 2023 did the same when Belle Vernon Area School District sued over a bus canopy system that failed at Marion Elementary School.
In Clearfield County’s case, the Commonwealth Court found the county wasn’t acting as a government entity when it constructed the jail because there is no law that imposes an obligation on counties to build jails.
The Supreme Court disagreed on that point but still ultimately ruled against Clearfield County.
