One of the most important pieces of information to anyone making a claim in court is the “statute of limitations” that applies to their particular claim. The statute of limitations period is the time during which a claim can be made in court and is imposed by law to avoid litigation of claims long after the acts in question occurred, when memories have faded and records have been destroyed or discarded. The importance of the statute of limitations cannot be understated because, as a general matter, if a party is too late in bringing its claim in court, it loses the right to make that claim forever.
ANGELILLO
虽然概念听起来很简单，但它不是。有许多不同的限制期限，具体取决于所涉及的索赔的类型，有时，有时候违背其的人或实体。例如，大多数合同索赔具有六年的限制法规，而根据疏忽的索赔通常有三年的局限性。在建筑行业中，它变得更加复杂，因为如果任一种类型的索赔是针对某些公共机构的，可能适用不同的限制法规。进一步复杂化问题，不同的限制法规开始“运行”，这意味着时钟在不同时间开始突破索赔。限制规约开始运行的日期也由案件的事实和所涉及的索赔类型决定。
最近的案件由纽约州的最高法院纽约院举行决定，纽约城市过境管理局突出了建筑案件中涉及的一些限制复杂性的法规。在BloomingDales案例中，Nycta聘请了建筑承包商Janus，Inc。，在曼哈顿59日和第60街之间进行挖掘工作，作为纽约特项目的一部分。在该项目的工作过程中，1999年9月，Janus揭示了它的想法是一个不起作用的 - 或“死亡” - 水主要。因为它妨碍了Janus的工作，Janus削减了“死”主，并在其位置安装了混凝土封装的管道。
在雨天Janus把“死”的主要后,提单oomingdales’ nearby store flooded. More than two years after Janus did its work, in February 2002, Bloomingdales hired its own contractor to investigate the cause of the flood and to fix the problem. Bloomingdales’ contractor discovered that the “dead” water main that Janus cut was not a water main at all and was actually an active drainpipe for Bloomingdales’ store. It concluded that the cut drainpipe was the cause of the flood. Bloomingdales paid its contractor approximately $165,000 to replace the cut drainpipe and then, in January 2003, sued Janus and NYCTA for the cost of that work.
In response to the lawsuit, NYCTA argued that the case was late and had to be dismissed. The court agreed. The court found that the statute of limitations period began to run when Janus cut the drainpipe in 1999. It continued that, because a special one year and 90 day statute of limitations applied to the public agency, NYCTA, and its contractors, Bloomingdales had to bring its case within a year and 90 days of September 1999 to be within the statute of limitations. Therefore, Bloomingdales’ case, which it started in January 2003, was late.
布卢明达人呼吁这一决定并赢得了。上诉法院发现，如果案件只是关于Janus的切割管道，那么截至盛开在盛开的纽约州的纽约特岛之前发生了一年以上的管道，案件将不得不驳回。然而，法院同意盛开的道尔斯将导管安装到管道上是盛开的物业的“持续的侵犯”。这意味着一个新的限制期限，每天都开始运行导管仍然存在。由于它在一年内到达了盛大的日期的90天，因此上诉法院发现，盛开的商场已经开始按时开始案件。
在盛开的代表案中，支持盛开的事实，允许允许其案件进行。但是，该案例突出了分析局限性规约所涉及的一些复杂性，并表明快速确定任何索赔的法律理论和对其被声明的缔约方的法律理论至关重要。未能这样做可能会导致被驳回的案件，并在索赔下寻求的权利永远失败。
