Courts not seeing flurry of lawsuits after statute-of-repose change.

Byline: Erika Strebel, erika.strebel@wislawjournal.com

After the Wisconsin Senate last spring passed legislation that would give contractors further protection from certain lawsuits, the state's plaintiffs' attorney bar advised membersin March to file lawsuits before the new law took effect that summer.

However, in the months after Gov. Scott Walker signed the bill, defense lawyers and plaintiffs lawyers have neither observed a rush to the courthouse nor seen a recent example of defense lawyers wielding the newly enacted law.

Buried in Wisconsin Act 235, which contained a slew of changes to the state's civil litigation rules, was a change to the state's construction statute of repose.

Before Act 235, that particular statute had prevented injured plaintiffs from suing builders, contractors and others over negligent design for an injury that occurred more than 10 years after a project was substantially completed. The statute, which was first enacted in 1973, is one that few people outside construction and legal circles are aware of.

Act 235, which Walker signed into law in April, shrunk the statute's 10-year window to seven years. It took effect on July 1.

Some personal-injury lawyers who were opposed to the change said the shorter repose period would encourage contractors to cut corners andprevent injured parties frombeing able to obtaincompensation for their injuries.

Various defense attorneys, in contrast, said the three-year difference wasn't significant. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Builders Association, which represents homebuilders throughout the state and was a bigsupporter of the change, testified that reducing the window for filing lawsuits would give builders, who are often defendants in legal cases, certainty and control over their exposure to liability and would reduce the cost of investigating allegations.

Officials at the Wisconsin Association of Justice have yet to hear from their members about encounters with the new seven-year limit.

As for defense counsel, the Milwaukee attorney Travis Rhoades said the new statute hasn't come up in the work that he and his colleagues at Crivello Carlson are doing.

The former statute remains a powerful means of quashing lawsuits...