A & B Painting & Drywall, Inc. v. Superior Court

In A & B Painting & Drywall, Inc. v. Superior Court (1994) 25 Cal. App. 4th 349, the Court held that repairs undertaken by someone other than the original entity that did the original work did not toll the section 337.15 limitations period. There, approximately seven months before the running of the 10-year statute, the developer retained a contractor to repair the interior drywall framing of the Hillsdale Mall. (A & B Painting, at pp. 353, 355.) The court declined to extend Cascade to toll the limitations period on the developer's action against the contractor, reasoning that repairs by the contractor, a third party that was not originally responsible for the defect, did not involve reliance on the entity which warranted the original work and thus did not furnish a basis for tolling. (A & B Painting, at pp. 354-355.) The court also rejected a claim that work done in 1982, the year following the filing of the notice of completion, tolled the 10-year statute because the developer failed to show that the repair work included any of the developer's present complaints. 9 ( Id. at p. 356.)