§ 147.042.Repose

A repose period measured from the defendant’s own act, with an exception that swallows a good deal of it.

Subsection (a): a claimant must commence an action against a manufacturer or seller before the end of 15 years after the date of the sale by the defendant.

The component rule follows: where the computer product causing the failure is a component of another product and the two were sold at different times, the 15 years runs from the date the defendant sold the computer product.

That matters for embedded systems, where a chip made in one year ends up in a machine sold years later. The maker’s clock runs from its own sale, not the finished product’s.

Fifteen years matches the products liability repose period in the limitations chapter, which is where the figure comes from.

Subsection (b) is the exception, and it is a wide one: the section does not apply if the manufacturer or seller expressly represented that the product would not manifest the computer date failure.

Given how much marketing of that era carried exactly such a representation — the term of art was "Year 2000 Compliant" — a great many products fell outside the repose entirely.

The principle is sound: repose protects a defendant from indefinite exposure for an old product, and a defendant who made a promise about the failure at issue should not have it.

Subsections (c) and (d) are the usual disclaimers — the section neither reduces a shorter period that has already run nor extends any other.