Opinion ID: 1203005
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Expiration Date

Text: Montgomery also claims that the district court misapplied the TSOR because there were no expiration dates on the product dispensed to her. Defendants acknowledge that Montgomery did not get the pills in their original packaging because they were repackaged by the distributor who bought them from Wyeth and sold them to Montgomery. The anticipated life of the product is the expiration date placed on the product by the manufacturer when required by law but shall not commence until the date the product was first purchased for use or consumption. Tenn.Code Ann. § 29-28-102. [6] As the district court observed, Wyeth stopped manufacturing Pondimin on September 2, 1997. Wyeth offered uncontested evidence that packaging for Pondimin contained the expiration dates as required by law, and those expiration dates were three years from the date of manufacture. Thus, the expirations were at the latest September 2000. Montgomery filed this case in October 2005. Because the undisputed evidence establishes that all Pondimin tablets had an expiration date of five or more years before Montgomery brought this suit, there is no genuine issue of material fact as to the expiration date for purposes of applying the TSOR. Contrary to Montgomery's assertion, the TSOR does not require that the purchaser have knowledge of the expiration date, but conditions the anticipated life of the product on the expiration date imposed by the manufacturer. This reading of the statute is consistent with the legislative intent. As this Court has noted, the statute of repose operates when parties may be ignorant about the particular time limitations involved. Thus, a delay, even without knowledge of the hazard involved in the delay, may preclude the bringing of an otherwise meritorious claim. Mathis, 719 F.2d at 140 (holding that the application of ten-year limitation in TSOR does not violate a party's due process rights). However harsh the result, this is a decision of the Tennessee legislature. Statutes of limitation find their justification in necessity and convenience rather than logic.... They represent a public policy about the privilege to litigate. Id. (quoting Chase Sec. Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 314, 65 S.Ct. 1137, 89 L.Ed. 1628 (1945)). Our decision in Spence v. Miles Lab., 37 F.3d 1185 (6th Cir.1994), is virtually identical. There we held the product liability claim was barred by the statute of repose because the expiration date on a package of blood (which was infected with AIDS and was transferred to the plaintiff) was June 5, 1987, and the plaintiff had filed his product liability claim more than one year after that date, despite the fact that he filed his action less than one year after discovering he had AIDS. Id. at 1188, 1190. As the district court held, Spence controls the result in this case.