§ 147.043.Disability

One sentence importing the disability rule: the general limitations disability provision applies to the periods of limitation and repose established by this subchapter.

That provision suspends time for a person who is under 18 or of unsound mind when the cause of action accrues, forbids stacking one disability on another, and does not help a disability arising after the period starts.

Applying it to the repose period is the notable part. Repose and limitations are different things: a limitations period runs from injury and is ordinarily open to tolling, while a repose period runs from the defendant’s own act and is generally not.

The surveyor repose provision elsewhere in the code says so expressly, declaring itself independent of any other limitations period.

Here the Legislature went the other way and made the 15-year repose subject to disability tolling — so a minor’s claim is not extinguished by the passage of time before they could bring it.

The practical reach was always going to be small. Date failure claims are economic, brought by businesses and consumers, and few would belong to a minor or a person of unsound mind at accrual.

But the choice is a considered one, and it fits the chapter’s general approach: the protections it gives defendants are extensive, and the Legislature declined to extend them to the one category of claimant who could not have acted.