SOUTHERN STATES CHEMICAL, INC. v. TAMPA TANK AND WELDING, INC

Southern States Chemical hired Tampa Tank & Welding to renovate a huge storage tank in Savannah so it could hold sulfuric acid, and Tampa Tank in turn hired Corrosion Control, Inc. to design a system to keep the tank floor from corroding. Years after the 2002 renovation, the tank leaked acid, and Southern States sued in 2012 for breach of contract and other claims. Courts repeatedly found the lawsuit was too late under Georgia's eight-year statute of repose for construction defects, which cuts off lawsuits no matter what, unlike an ordinary deadline that can sometimes be paused. While the case was on appeal, the legislature amended that statute in 2020 to say it no longer applies to breach of contract claims, and made the change retroactive all the way back to 1968. Southern States argued this amendment should save its claim. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed, holding that Tampa Tank had already gained a constitutionally protected right to be free from the claim once the eight years passed, so applying the new law retroactively would violate due process. The Court also rejected Southern States's other arguments and upheld dismissal of the whole case.

A statute of repose creates a substantive, vested right for the party protected by it to be free from liability once the repose period expires, so the 2020 amendment removing contract claims from Georgia's construction statute of repose cannot be applied retroactively to revive a previously time-barred breach of warranty claim without violating due process.

The ruling protects builders, engineers, and contractors across Georgia from having old, time-barred claims revived by later legislative changes, giving them lasting certainty once the statute of repose period passes. It also limits how far the legislature can reach back to change the rules for lawsuits already resolved under prior law.

Affirmed

1. The court explained that retroactive laws are generally disfavored because due process (a constitutional guarantee of fair notice and stability) protects people from having settled legal rights upset by later legislation, so courts require a clear sign the legislature meant a law to apply retroactively before even considering constitutionality.
2. The court found that sign here: the 2020 amendment to Georgia's construction statute of repose (O.C.G.A. § 9-3-51) expressly said it applied to claims accruing back to 1968, so the amendment was clearly meant to reach backward in time.
3. The court then asked whether Tampa Tank, the contractor being sued, had a vested right in the old version of the statute, meaning an interest so settled that the legislature could not fairly take it away; it distinguished vested private rights (belonging to a specific person) from public rights shared by everyone, and found the right to be free from a repose-barred claim was private.
4. The court further held that a statute of repose is 'substantive' rather than merely 'procedural,' because unlike an ordinary filing deadline (a statute of limitations) that only blocks the remedy, a statute of repose completely extinguishes the underlying claim itself once the deadline passes, joining the majority of other states and federal courts that treat repose statutes this way.
5. Because the right was both private and substantive, the court concluded Tampa Tank had a vested right to be free from Southern States's contract claim once eight years passed after the 2002 tank renovation, so the retroactive 2020 amendment could not undo that protection under the Due Process Clause.
6. On the remaining issues, the court read the pre-2020 statute's plain language as covering 'any action to recover damages' for a construction deficiency without excepting contract claims, and it held that the trial court was bound by earlier Court of Appeals rulings under the 'law of the case' doctrine, which forecloses revisiting settled rulings in the same case even if a party thinks they were wrong.

• statute of repose
• retroactive legislation
• due process
• construction defects
• breach of warranty