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Substance, Not Form, Dictates Statute of Limitations in Real Property Cases

In JRC Holdings, Inc. v. Samsel Servs. Co., 166 Ohio App. 3d 328, the court of appeals clarified that it is the substance of the complaint, not the form, that dictates the appropriate statute of limitations. In this case, the property owner, JRC, sued Samsel, an environmental remediation firm, for contaminating its property while conducting environmental testing and drilling monitoring wells. JRC brought suit more than four years after the contamination was discovered. The court held that the claim for contamination of the property was barred by the four year statute of limitations on claims for damage to real property in R.C. 2305.09(D). Even though JRC stated its claims in part as breach of contract, which has a 15 year statute of limitations, the court found that the essence of the claim was damage to real property and therefore the four year limit was applicable. JRC's claim for failure of one of the monitoring wells, which was made within the four year period, was not barred.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on August 2, 2006 6:17 PM.

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