§ 16.0031.Asbestos-Related or Silica-Related Injuries

Asbestos and silica disease can take decades to appear, which makes ordinary accrual rules unworkable. This section supplies a rule tied to events that can be dated precisely.

For both asbestos-related and silica-related injuries — as those terms are defined in the asbestos and silica chapter — the claim accrues for purposes of the two-year period on the earlier of two dates: the exposed person’s death, or the day the claimant serves a defendant with the medical report that chapter requires.

The design is deliberate. That chapter already forces a claimant to produce a physician’s report meeting detailed criteria before the case can proceed. By keying accrual to that report, the Legislature made the limitations clock start when the claim is documented rather than when someone first suspected they were ill — which removes an argument that would otherwise consume these cases.

The practical consequence is that serving the report is a decision with a deadline attached. It advances the case and starts the clock at the same time, and a claimant who serves it on one defendant has started the clock as against that defendant.

Read "the earlier of" carefully, because it can shorten as well as lengthen. Where the exposed person dies before any report is served, accrual is the death — and the survivors have two years from that date whatever stage the medical work had reached.

The section is an accrual rule, not a separate limitations period. It says when the two-year clock in the general provision starts; the length of the period comes from there.

Note the separate fifteen-year products liability repose provision, which is measured from the sale of the product rather than from any injury, and which carries its own carve-out for diseases with long latency.