A decision from the Georgia Supreme Court strips a key defense from companies facing lawsuits and, the business community feels, misinterprets state law to the benefit of plaintiff lawyers.
The court on Wednesday allowed a woman to sue over alleged health problems caused by hair-relaxing products, even though she first started using them more than 10 years ago. The case concerned the state’s “statute of repose,” which is essentially the timeframe for filing suit.
The 10-year window passed the General Assembly more than 40 years ago to address the problems small businesses faced in court. It requires strict liability lawsuits against companies to be filed within 10 years from the “first sale for use or consumption of a product.”
But lawyers for plaintiff Kiara Burroughs said the clock restarted each time she used a hair relaxer. The court agreed, despite arguments that cited the dictionary meaning of the word “first.”
“(T)he ‘first sale’ language does not, as the manufacturers contend, identify the sale that starts the statute of repose from among a chain of sales at different points in time,” Justice Andrew Pinson wrote.
“And seeing no other language in this provision that could serve that role, we must rule out the manufacturers’ theory that ‘the personal property’ to which the statute of repose applies can be understood as a unified group of units sold at different times.”
Burroughs started using hair relaxers around 1995 and was diagnosed with uterine fibroids in 2018. Her lawsuits against Strength of Nature and L’Oreal were filed in 2022 and allege the products caused her condition.
Since her first use of the products came more than 20 years earlier, the defendants moved to dismiss the cases as untimely. The state Court of Appeals ruled for them, rejecting the idea that usage in the 10 years prior to filing suit kept the clock running.
It seems to be the first time an appellate court has ever decided the issue in Georgia or any of the other states with a similar statute of repose. An amicus brief filed by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Chamber said “(p)erhaps that is because the statute’s meaning is sufficiently clear that it has not garnered controversy in those jurisdictions.”
Last year, an Iowa federal judge ruled against a plaintiff trying to argue the same as Burroughs in a case involving Oregon law. Another in North Carolina tossed a case under Louisiana’s statute of repose.
Georgia’s courts, meanwhile, have been criticized for favoring plaintiffs, though the Supreme Court is made up almost entirely of justices appointed by Republican governors. Their ruling is a blow to defendants that earlier this year celebrated the passage of new laws intended to cure the state courts’ anti-business reputation.
“In other words, the role of the word ‘first’ in this provision is to indicate which sale of a particular unit triggers the statute of repose in a world where that unit may be sold multiple times,” Justice Pinson wrote.
“If that is what ‘first’ does in this provision – and it is – then there is no room for the manufacturers’ view that the word ‘first’ in this provision specifies which sale in a chain of sales to the same end user starts the statute of repose for the entire chain.
“That word cannot simultaneously carry a second, entirely different meaning and purpose, like a linguistic chameleon that changes its meaning and purpose on the fly depending on the facts of the case.”
