Georgia Statute of Repose: Construction, Product, and Medical Deadlines

Georgia’s statute of repose sets absolute deadlines for filing certain lawsuits, and the clock runs from a triggering event like a building’s completion or a product’s first sale, not from the date someone is injured. Three deadlines matter most: eight years for construction defect claims, ten years for product liability claims, and five years for medical malpractice claims. Once the repose period expires, a court will dismiss the case even if the injury only happened yesterday and even if you filed well within the statute of limitations.

Why Repose Is Not the Same as Limitations

A statute of limitations gives you a set number of years to sue after you discover your injury. A statute of repose counts from an earlier event that has nothing to do with your injury. That difference is the whole game.

Consider a contractor who finishes a building in 2018. In 2027, a structural defect causes a ceiling to collapse and injures someone. The injured person notices the problem immediately and would have two years under the statute of limitations to sue. It doesn’t matter. Georgia’s eight-year construction repose deadline expired in 2026, so the claim is barred before it ever existed. Georgia courts have described the repose statute as an unyielding barrier to a plaintiff’s right of action.

Construction Claims: Eight Years From Substantial Completion

Under O.C.G.A. 9-3-51, no lawsuit for defective design, planning, or construction of an improvement to real property can be brought more than eight years after the project reaches substantial completion.¹ The deadline applies to claims for property damage, personal injury, and wrongful death arising from construction deficiencies, and it protects builders, contractors, surveyors, architects, and engineers.

Substantial completion is the point at which the project is sufficiently finished for its intended use, even if minor punch-list items remain. Pinning down that date matters, because everything else follows from it. The clock does not restart when someone moves in or when a defect first shows up.

The Seventh- and Eighth-Year Safety Valve

Georgia built a narrow safety valve into the construction statute. If an injury happens during the seventh or eighth year after substantial completion, the injured person gets two years from the date of that injury to file suit, even though the main eight-year window has closed or is about to close. There is still an absolute outer boundary: no claim may be brought more than ten years after substantial completion, whatever the injury date.¹ Without this rule, someone hurt on the first day of year eight would have almost no time to investigate, hire a lawyer, and file.

Product Liability: Ten Years From First Sale

For product liability claims, O.C.G.A. 51-1-11 bars any action brought more than ten years after the date the product was first sold for use or consumption.² The ten-year clock starts at the first sale, not when the product reaches the consumer who ends up injured. If a lawnmower sits on a dealer’s lot for two years before a customer buys it, repose still runs from the initial sale to the dealer.

The deadline applies to both strict liability and negligence-based manufacturing claims. The statute carves out important exceptions:

Disease or birth defects caused by a manufacturer’s negligence are not barred at ten years. These injuries often take decades to appear.
Willful, reckless, or wanton disregard for life or property strips away the repose defense.
A manufacturer’s duty to warn about dangers that become known after sale continues past the ten-year mark.²

One trap: the continuing duty to warn applies to negligence-based failure-to-warn claims, not strict liability claims. Past the ten-year line, a failure-to-warn theory dressed as strict liability will still be dismissed. The distinction is technical, and it’s where cases quietly get lost.

Medical Malpractice: Five Years From the Negligent Act

Under O.C.G.A. 9-3-71, no medical malpractice action can be brought more than five years after the date of the negligent act or omission.³ A separate two-year statute of limitations runs from the date of injury. In practice, you need to file within two years of discovering the injury and within five years of the malpractice itself, whichever comes first.

The five-year window creates real pressure when harm develops slowly. A surgical error that produces no symptoms for four years leaves the patient roughly a year to investigate and file before the door shuts.

Foreign Objects Left in the Body

Georgia carves out one clear exception. When a surgeon leaves a foreign object inside a patient’s body, the five-year repose period does not apply. Instead, the patient has one year from the date they discover the foreign object to file suit.⁴

The exception is narrower than most people expect. Georgia’s statute specifically excludes chemical compounds, fixation devices, and prosthetic aids from the definition of “foreign object.”⁴ A hip replacement that fails years later does not qualify. Neither does a medication reaction. The exception covers only objects that were never supposed to remain in the body at all.

Minors and Legally Incompetent Patients

O.C.G.A. 9-3-73 provides that certain disability-based protections apply to both the statute of limitations and the statute of repose in medical malpractice cases. The statute states that the disability tolling provisions apply “either to the applicable statutes of limitation or repose.”³ That is a real carve-out, because outside medical malpractice, Georgia’s disability tolling does not pause a statute of repose.

What Does Not Extend a Repose Deadline

This is where the statute of repose shows its teeth. Many plaintiffs assume the same defenses that extend a limitations period will also extend a repose period. In Georgia, that assumption is usually wrong.

Fraud

O.C.G.A. 9-3-96 says that when a defendant commits fraud that prevents a plaintiff from bringing a lawsuit, the limitation period runs only from the date the fraud is discovered.⁵ Georgia appellate courts have held that this fraud provision does not toll the statute of repose. What it may do is support an estoppel argument: if a defendant’s fraudulent concealment caused the delay, a court can bar the defendant from raising the repose defense. Tolling pauses the clock automatically; estoppel requires the plaintiff to prove the fraud in court first. Harder road, not a dead end.

Minors Outside Medical Malpractice

O.C.G.A. 9-3-90 gives minors and people with certain disabilities extra time after their disability is removed.⁶ For limitations periods, this protection is straightforward: a child injured at age ten doesn’t have to file until the limitation period runs after they turn eighteen. Georgia courts have ruled that this tolling does not pause the statute of repose outside the medical malpractice context. A minor’s construction or product liability claim can expire under repose before the child is old enough to sue. Parents or guardians must act within the repose window on the child’s behalf.

Federal Aviation Claims Follow a Different Clock

Georgia’s repose laws do not operate alone. Federal statutes can override them. The General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994 imposes an 18-year statute of repose on product liability claims against manufacturers of general aviation aircraft with 20 or fewer seats not used in scheduled commercial service. The 18-year clock runs from the date the aircraft or component is delivered to its first purchaser, and it preempts Georgia’s ten-year product liability repose for covered aircraft. GARA has its own exceptions for fraud or misrepresentation to the FAA, for injuries to people on the ground, for passengers on emergency medical flights, and for claims based on a written manufacturer warranty.⁷

What to Do About Your Deadline Now

For contractors, manufacturers, and healthcare providers, Georgia’s repose deadlines define the outer edge of legal exposure. The records that establish trigger dates are the evidence a defendant needs to raise the defense successfully. Keep substantial completion certificates for construction projects, first-sale documentation for products, and clean procedure dates for medical care. Vague or missing records turn what should be a quick dismissal into expensive litigation over when the clock started.

For plaintiffs, the takeaway is urgency. If you suspect a construction defect, a product failure, or medical malpractice, the repose clock may already be running down, and unlike the statute of limitations, no amount of reasonable diligence will reset it once it expires. Get a legal evaluation early, before you’re certain you have a claim. That is the only reliable way to avoid losing your rights to a deadline you never saw coming.