In September 2013, I blogged about the decision of the North Carolina Court of Appeals (“COA”) in Christie v. Hartley Construction, Inc., which held that owners of an improvement to real property could not recover money damages under a supplier’s express 20-year warranty because the lawsuit was filed outside of North Carolina’s applicable six-year “statute of repose.” That statute, codified at N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-50(a)(5), bars damages actions arising from improvements to real property asserted more than six years after substantial completion. The COA’s Christie decision effectively meant that the statute of repose trumped an express warranty of a longer duration.
As I mentioned in my prior blog post, however, one of three COA judges on the Christie panel dissented from the majority’s opinion, giving plaintiffs the right to appeal to the state’s Supreme Court. They did. And that Court reached the opposite conclusion of the COA majority, ruling that the protection provided by the six-year statute of repose could be waived without violating North Carolina public policy.
Let’s break down the North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision in Christie:
N.C. Construction Law, Policy & News 