The Design Professional’s Guide to Right-to-Repair Laws

Though right-to-repair statutes have long been a part of the construction-law landscape for contractors and subcontractors and are well understood, in the approximately 30 states that have enacted statutes based on the concept—such as California, Colorado, South Carolina, and others—the best practices for the design professional receiving such a right-to-repair notice have been less studied and addressed.

This article seeks to fill that void. We do so by focusing on the Florida right-to-repair statute, Section 558, which requires that a claimant must serve notice of a claim on a target contractor or design professional before filing a lawsuit. Our Florida-centric focus is not a comment that the state’s statute is better or more evolved than other states’ right-to-repair laws, but it is certainly a representative law.

In Florida, the notice of claim is mandatory in construction-defect claims, even when design professionals are a target. When evaluating how to handle a construction- or design-defect claim in Florida as the designer of record for a project, the starting point is the Florida Statutes Section 558 notice of claim that the design professional will receive at its inception. Though some Florida construction attorneys have never read Section 558, it is probably the most important statute they will deal with besides Statutes Section 725.06, Florida’s indemnity statute.