When a community gets turned over from developer control to unit owner control, the unit owners typically hire experts to determine whether or not the developer has breached their warranty by turning over the property with construction defects. This year, on April 13, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill No. 360 into law wherein the legislature just reduced your right to sue the developer for construction defects and Florida Building Code violations.
Lawsuits for construction defects must always be filed within 4 years. The question is within 4 years of what? The law provided that the 4 years began to run from the latest of the occurrence of certain events. This year, the legislature changed this to the earliest of certain events. The legislature provided yet a further limitation. The law was also that you could sue for up to 10 years, so long as it was within 4 years of the occurrence of the latest event. Now, not only does the 4 years begin to run earlier, but also the 10 years was reduced to 7 years.
While these changes should have already been enough of a gift for developers and contractors, the legislature decided to go even further. The law used to allow a lawsuit by the association for Florida Building Code violations. The law now requires a certain threshold to be obtained before such a lawsuit can be initiated. It requires that the violation is “material.” The statute defines “material” to mean a violation that has resulted, or may reasonably result, in physical harm to a person or significant damage to the performance of the building. Damage to the building is not enough, now it must be significant. If the building code violation caused by the developer is not significant, the association has no cause of action.
In addition to the foregoing, Florida changed the statute of limitations on negligence actions to two years instead of four. Moreover, the new law changes Florida’s apportionment standard from a pure comparative negligence approach to a modified comparative negligence approach. Under the new law, if a jury finds that a plaintiff is more than 50% at fault for their own harm, then the plaintiff is barred from recovering any damages from any defendant.
More and more is being done by our Florida Legislature to prevent access to a courtroom by plaintiffs. Some believe it’s a real scary time in our state while the defense bar believes this was necessary to stop frivolous lawsuits from being filed. What’s for sure and certain is that developers are being protected yet again. Thoughts?
