I have been gone two weeks. Sorry about that, but I was almost called to trial and had to scramble to get all of the out of town witnesses in line and the experts lined up to testify. It always takes longer than imagined and things go wrong that you never suspected could. That said, I am back.
So, let's talk about lapses in time. The law here in Florida (and everywhere else, as far as I can tell) requires you to timely bring your action or lose it forever. Different theories are subject to different time frames, but they are all pretty clearly spelled out in statutory law. They are called statutes of limitation and we touched on this subject once before - briefly.
What am I talking about? Well, if you slip and fall in the grocery store and want to sue Publix for negligence, you better do it within four years of your accident or you will be barred. If there is a breach of your contract, you have 4 or 5 years, depending on whether it's an oral or written agreement. If your doctor amputates the wrong foot, you have a very, very short window of time to bring suit.
Why does the law require this? Because we want things resolved while the greatest body of evidence is still around to be examined and used to support the claims and defenses. We don't want witnesses disappearing or document to go missing or have them destroyed as part of the ordinary document retention policies. It's designed to maximize the use of evidence.
So, what's so big about limitations periods that I needed to bring them up again? Well, there appear to be an ever increasing number of investors who want out of their real estate deals because the market has gone south. Whether they have a claim has a lot to do with when their deal closed, when the terms of that deal may have adversely changed and when the market went south. So, if you might be one of these people, you should check carefully to see when you first closed on your faltering investment.
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