Court Opinion

ID: 9753280
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:06:12.866341+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:33.116196
License: Public Domain

CAPPY, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the Majority’s conclusion that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying Sta-Rite’s Motion to Amend its Answer and New Matter to plead the statute of repose found at 42 Pa.C.S. § 5536. More specifically, I agree that Sta-Rite is not entitled to assert the statute of repose because the starting blocks it manufactured are not improvements to real property.
I write separately for two distinct reasons. First, given its disposition of the improvement issue, I do not believe that the Majority should have discussed the remaining two requirements for protection under the statute of repose. As the Majority correctly states,
*291A party moving for protection under the statute of repose must show: (1) what is supplied is an improvement to real property; (2) more than twelve years have elapsed between the completion of the improvements to the real estate and the injury; and (3) the activity of the moving party must be within the class which is protected by the statute.
(Majority Opinion at p. 281 (citations omitted).) The moving party must satisfy all three prongs of this test. Therefore, the Majority’s conclusion that the starting blocks are not improvements to real property—ie., that Sta-Rite does not satisfy the first prong of the test—should have ended the inquiry.1 The remainder of the Majority’s discussion thus is not necessary to the result and must be viewed as dicta. Had the three prongs been addressed in the stated order—rather than out of order, as the Majority has chosen to address them—the superfluity of the discussion of prongs two and three would have been obvious.
Second, I respectfully disagree with the substance of the Majority’s analysis with respect to the third prong: whether the activity of Sta-Rite is within the class protected by the statute. The Majority’s insistence on addressing this prong, despite its finding that the product supplied is not an improvement, has caused it to distort the analysis of the “activity” prong by taking that prong out of context. As a result, the Majority’s attempt to clarify the Court’s recent pronouncements in McConnaughey v. Building Components, Inc., 536 Pa. 95, 637 A.2d 1331 (1994), only serves to obfuscate the issue.
In McConnaughey, the Court explained that
the statute only protects the acts of those persons involved in the design, planning, supervision, construction or observation of the construction of an improvement to real property itself. When a manufacturer does nothing more than *292supply the component products for an improvement to real property, the manufacturer is not protected by the statute. The fact that a manufacturer designs and plans the component products which later are incorporated into an improvement to real property is irrelevant under the statute. The Pennsylvania statute of repose was not intended to apply to manufacturers and suppliers of products, but only to the kinds of economic actors who perform acts of “individual expertise” akin to those commonly thought to be performed by builders.
Id. at 101, 637 A.2d at 1334 (Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court) (emphasis in original).2 Quoting an earlier case of this Court, the Court stated that the focus of the statute is on “the contribution or acts done in relation to the improvement to the real property.” McConnaughey, supra, id. at 101 n. 3, 637 A.2d at 1334 n. 3 (quoting McCormick v. Columbus Conveyor Co., 522 Pa. 520, 524, 564 A.2d 907, 910 (1989) (quoting Leach v. Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, 234 Pa.Super. 486, 340 A.2d 491 (1975)) (emphasis supplied in McConnaughey)).
Thus, the final prong focuses not just on the “activity,” performed in the abstract, but on the activity performed in relation to the real property. To provide an admittedly extreme illustration of my point: while a dressmaker, for example, might be said to perform an act of “individual expertise” in designing and constructing a garment, it would be ridiculous to engage in a discussion of whether his or her activities fall within the class protected by the statute of repose. The dressmaker’s acts simply are not performed “in relation to an improvement to real property.” By addressing, whether Sta-Rite provided “individual expertise” in supplying *293an item that it determines is not an improvement to real property, the Majority sets up a contrived discussion that it then must qualify by limiting its application to the “unique facts of this case.” (Majority Opinion at p. 284 n. 5.) The Majority first pretends for the sake of discussion that the starting blocks are an “improvement,” referring to them as “the alleged improvement.” (Id. at p. 284.) However, the most that the Majority can conclude following this discussion is that “Sta-Rite actually expended individual expertise in supplying its product.” (Id. at p. 284 n. 5; emphasis added.) No relationship between the activity performed and an improvement to real property is established.
Furthermore, the Majority’s discussion applies only one-half of the definition of the protected activity that was set forth in McConnaughey. While the Majority focuses on whether Sta-Rite expended “individual expertise,” what McConnaughey actually requires is that the acts performed be “acts of ‘individual expertise’ akin to those commonly thought to be performed by builders.” McConnaughey, 536 Pa. at 101, 637 A.2d at 1334 (emphasis added). McConnaughey further states that “the operative question ... is whether [the moving party] ‘furnished construction’ or merely ‘furnished supplies’ to be used in construction.” Id. at 101, 637 A.2d at 1334.
These statements are founded upon the very basis for the statute of repose. As this Court has explained, the statute draws a rational distinction between suppliers and builders:
Suppliers, who typically produce items by the thousands, can easily maintain high quality-control standards in the controlled environment of the factory. A builder, on the other hand, can pre-test his designs and construction only in limited ways—actual use in the years following construction is their only real test. Further, every building is unique and far more complex than any of its component parts. Even in the most uniform-looking suburban subdivision, each house stands on a separate plot of land; each lot may have slightly different soil conditions; one may be near an underground stream; and so forth. The Legislature can rationally conclude that the conditions under which builders *294work are sufficiently difficult that hmitations should be placed on their liabilities, but not on the liabilities of suppliers.
Freezer Storage, Inc. v. Armstrong Cork Co., 476 Pa. 270, 274, 382 A.2d 715, 719 (1978) (upholding constitutionality of statute of repose).
Under the facts presented here, Sta-Rite merely supplied a product, albeit one within its “individual expertise.” It did not provide the type of activity “commonly thought to be performed by builders.” If we were to permit every manufacturer who, in performing its work, was required to meet specifications or to employ its “expertise,” we would be expanding the protection of the statute of repose far beyond its acknowledged limits. I simply do not believe that this was the Court’s intention in McConnaughey.3
The Majority appears to believe that its discussion does limit the reach of the statute, for in footnote 5 it states: “We do not suggest that every manufacturer may bring itself within the class protected by the statute by shipping its goods ‘per specifications’ or ‘per your drawing,’ ” and refers to the “unique facts of this case” as justification for extending the statute here. However, the Majority has identified nothing at all “unique” about the manufacturer’s activity in this case. What was unique in this case was the pool; all the manufacturer did was ship a standard item “per [Paddock Pool Builders’] drawing.” (See Majority Opinion at p. 284.)
*295The Majority’s discussion of the activity prong is unnecessary and, I believe, erroneous. I would reach the same result as the Majority by focusing solely on Sta-Rite’s inability to fulfill the first prong of the test (“what is supplied is an improvement to real property”).

. Recognizing that a negative answer to this threshold question disposed of the matter, the trial court addressed only the first prong of the test. On appeal, the Superior Court also addressed only the first prong. Thus, it is questionable whether the remaining prongs of the test are issues that are even properly before this Court on appeal.

. The Majority implies that, in McConnaughey, this Court held that the Appellee was "the manufacturer of a component part of an improvement” and therefore not entitled to the protection of the statute, of repose. (Majority Opinion at p. 283.) However, the Court in McCon-naughey did not decide the ultimate question of whether Appellee Building Components, Inc. was protected by the statute of repose. Rather, the Court held that a genuine issue of material fact existed as to the extent of the Appellee’s involvement in the installation of the roof trusses, and therefore that the case was not ripe for summary judgment.

. The case sub judice contrasts markedly with McCormick v. Columbus Conveyor Company, 522 Pa. 520, 564 A.2d 907 (1989), wherein the Court held that the statute protected the manufacturer of a coal delivery system. In McCormick, this Court (after finding that the coal delivery system was an improvement to real property) specifically found that the manufacturer
did more than supply a standard piece of equipment, indistinguishable from any other that it mass-produced, that by chance became affixed to the University’s property. Using specifications and a general layout provided by Rust Engineering, Columbus devised a coal delivery system to be integrated into the construction of the new power plant that was uniquely suited to that site.
Id. at 524, 564 A.2d at 910 (emphasis added).