On July 17, the Supreme Court of Ohio issued its decision in New Riegel Local School Dist. Bd. of Edn. v. Buehrer, resolving the long-standing question of whether Ohio’s statute of repose for claims related to improvement to real property applies to breach of contract claims.
The court’s answer? It does.
The New Riegel case arose after New Riegel Local built a building using funding provided by the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission. Water infiltration and structural issues plagued the building since its substantial completion in December 2002. The district filed a lawsuit for breach of contract against the architect and contractors on April 30, 2015.
The trial court dismissed New Riegel’s claims, stating that RC 2305.131 barred the district from suing because the project had reached substantial completion more than 10 years before it initiated its case. The district appealed.
The appellate court reversed the trial court’s decision. It stated it was required to follow the Supreme Court of Ohio’s 1986 Kocisko v. Charles Shutrump & Sons Co. decision, which found the statute applied to tort actions, but not to breach-of-contract claims. Buehrer and the other defendants appealed to the Supreme Court of Ohio, which agreed to hear the case.
The supreme court overturned the appeals court’s decision. In its majority opinion, the court concluded that, because the statute of repose had been amended substantially since the decision in Kocisko, the court could conduct a “fresh review” of the statute, ignoring that precedent. The amended law expressly refers to contract-law concepts. For that reason, the court’s majority concluded that the current version of the law applied to both tort lawsuits and breach of contract lawsuits. The supreme court’s decision reinstated the trial court’s dismissal of the breach of contract claims as barred by the statute of repose. The supreme court also declined to rule on the district’s other claims and remanded them to the court of appeals. More information about the decision and its prior history in the courts is available in this Court News Ohio article.
OSBA’s Legal Assistance Fund (LAF) provided support to New Riegel by joining in an amicus curiae brief along with the County Commissioners Association of Ohio, Ohio Municipal League, Ohio Township Association, and Erie County Board of Commissioners. OSBA will continue to advocate for the best interests of its members and Ohio’s educational community through the LAF.
*OSBA wishes to thank Capital University Law School student and OSBA intern Gamaliel Narvaez for his contributions to this article.