COLUMBIA -- A Lancaster legislator has introduced a bill to reduce the period of time consumers have to sue builders and manufacturers for negligent construction work or substandard building materials.

As it stands, South Carolina's statute of repose gives property owners 13 years to discover problems and file lawsuits.

"We have the second longest statute (of repose) in the country," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Greg Gregory, R-Lancaster. "The national average is eight years."

Gregory, owner of a building supply store, wants to reduce the statute to six years, a change also proposed in sweeping tort reform bills under consideration in both the Senate and the House.

The statute of repose is different from the statute of limitations, said attorney Mark Chappell, a partner in Chappell, Smith and Arden and a past president of the S.C. Trial Lawyers Association.

"The statute of repose is the ultimate time limit, period," said Chappell, who maintains offices throughout the state, including one in his hometown of Rock Hill. "If I build you a home, and a defect shows up, you have three years from the time of discovery to file a claim under the statute of limitations. But if that defect shows up 12-and-a-half years after you buy the house, you only have six months in which to file a lawsuit due to the statute of repose."

John Cone, executive director of the S.C. Homebuilders Association, said consumers are amply protected from shoddy construction work by the state's strict licensing requirements for contractors and uniform building codes. And, he said, most construction problems become apparent within five years.

The lengthy statute drives up insurance costs for contractors, and those costs are passed along to consumers, Cone added. He compared the state legislature's decision on the statute length in the 1980s to "throwing a dart at a dart board."

"Only five states have statutes of repose longer than 10 years," Cone said. "Twenty-six states have statutes of 10 years, and 20 states have eight years. ... North Carolina has theirs at six years, and that has not been a problem."

Chappell disagrees. His firm represents 71 of the 107 victims hurt in the collapse of the Charlotte Motor Speedway bridge on May 17, 2000.

"That bridge had been built and installed in September 1995," Chappell said. "The collapse happened four years and nine months following. If it had happened just 17 months later, the victims would have had no right of action."

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Gregory's bill was discussed last week, Sen. John Hawkins, R-Spartanburg, pointed out that stucco problems sometimes don't show up until 10 years after construction.

"Along the coast especially, they have a problem with stucco," he said.

Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island, agreed that the issue was very important to coastal communities, but he said that sometimes property owners who neglect routine maintenance try to turn resulting problems into "defect" issues.

Some committee members suggested they would support shortening the statute to 10 years, but not six.

In the end, the committee returned Gregory's bill to a subcommittee for more discussion and, perhaps, compromise.