Published in News4Jax –
An article published on 6/27 by News4Jax quoted Ball Janik Partner Brian Crevasse, who discussed the shrinking time frame to report construction defects in Florida from 10 years to seven years, commencing July 1. This change takes place in the wake of Senate Bill 360 being signed into law last summer. Crevasse said among his concerns is that clients are often already past the seven-year threshold for reporting construction defects.
“Oftentimes, these defects are actually concealed,” he said. “And you wouldn’t be able to necessarily see that you have water intrusion, just by taking a walk around the building and looking at it, you would have to actually remove some of the exterior facade to look for the types of issues that we typically see.”
Crevasse advises getting legal counsel involved immediately to beat the July 1 deadline. After that, the new law starts the countdown clock from when the building gets a temporary or permanent certificate of occupancy, when it is completed, or when it is abandoned—whichever happens first.
“For [anybody] that may have homes that are four or five, six years old…you’re just going to want to be extremely diligent about pursuing any potential issues that you might see with your home going forward so that you don’t run out of time at that seven years,” Crevasse said.
Read the story in full; click here.