Products Liability Law Daily Wrap Up, STATUTES OF LIMITATIONS AND REPOSE—HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS—Ga. Sup. Ct.: L’Oréal, Strength of Nature denied dismissal of consumer’s claims in hair relaxer injury case, (Oct 17, 2025)

By Pankhuri Bhatnagar, B.A. LL.B.

The consumer’s claims were not barred by Georgia’s ten-year statute of repose because the repose period runs separately for each unit sold and not from the “first sale” in a series of product purchases.

In a suit brought against two hair relaxer manufacturers by a woman who allegedly developed uterine fibroids due to the products’ endocrine-disruptive chemicals, the Supreme Court of Georgia reversed a lower court’s decision in favor of the manufacturers. The state high court rejected the manufacturers’ theory of treating all relaxer units sold to the consumer over time as a unified group and starting the repose period from the earliest-in-time sale of a unit within that group. Instead, the period begins to run on each sale of a unit as new to an intended end user, making the consumer’s 2022 suit timely since she purchased the products from 1995 until 2014 and her injury could have been caused by the “condition of the units” sold to her in the ten years before she filed the lawsuit (Burroughs v. Strength of Nature Global, LLC, No. S24G1387 (Ga. Sup. Ct. Oct. 15, 2025)).

Background. A woman began using various chemical hair relaxer products around 1995. Between 1995 and 2014, she used multiple formulations made by Strength of Nature Global, LLC and L’Oréal USA, Inc., applying them every six to eight weeks except for a one year break. In 2018, she was diagnosed with uterine fibroids. Her mother also had a history of fibroids and had also used hair relaxers. After a 2022 study publicized links between chemical hair straighteners and uterine cancer, the consumer brought suit against the manufacturers in October 2022. She alleged that their products contained phthalates and other endocrine disruptive substances that rendered the relaxers unmerchantable and unsafe, proximately causing her injury under Georgia’s strict liability law, OCGA §51111(b)(1). The companies moved to dismiss, contending that because her first purchases occurred in 1995 (Strength of Nature) and 2003 (L’Oréal), her claims were barred by Georgia’s ten year statute of repose. The trial court denied the motions but certified them for interlocutory review. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the ten-year repose period began with each manufacturer’s “first sale” to the woman, which occurred 27 and 19 years before she sued Strength of Nature and L’Oréal, respectively, thereby barring all strict liability claims. The consumer sought further review, and the state high court granted certiorari.

Legal standard. OCGA § 51-1-11(b)(1) makes manufacturers of “any personal property” sold “as new” liable in tort to people who are injured “because the property when sold by the manufacturer was not merchantable and reasonably suited to the use intended, and its condition when sold is the proximate cause of the injury sustained.” Subsection (b)(2) provides that “[n]o action shall be commenced pursuant to this subsection with respect to an injury after ten years from the date of the first sale for use or consumption of the personal property causing or otherwise bringing about the injury.” Thus, the repose period begins on “the date of the first sale” of the property and ends “ten years from” that date, beyond which there is no cause of action.

Analysis. The Georgia Supreme Court clarified that the statute of repose for a given product begins to run on the date it is sold as new to the intended end user. It was undisputed that the woman was an intended end user of the hair-relaxer products sold to her. The only question was how to apply the statute when multiple units of a manufacturer’s product are sold to the same person over time and more than one such unit is potentially involved in causing them injury. The Court of Appeals and the two companies asserted that the best way to apply the statute was to treat all units sold to a person over time as a unified group and then start the statute of repose running on the date of the earliest-in-time sale of a unit within that group. Thus, they interpreted “the personal property” in question as a group of units and relied on the “first sale for use or consumption” language. But in Campbell v. Altec Indus., Inc., 288 Ga. 535, 537–38 (2011), this court held that the word “first” specifies that it must be the sale of the product “as new” to an end user, rather than a resale. This was contrary to the manufacturers’ view that the word “first” specifies which sale in a chain of sales to the same end user starts the repose period. The court remarked that the same word “cannot simultaneously carry a second, entirely different meaning and purpose, like a linguistic chameleon that changes its meaning and purpose on the fly depending on the facts of the case.” This principle was stated in U.S. v. Nippon Paper Indus. Co., Ltd., 109 F3d 1, 4 (1st Cir. 1997) and U.S. v. Santos, 553 US 507, 522 (2008) as well.

Therefore, the “first sale” language does not identify the sale that starts the statute from a chain of sales, and the manufacturers’ theory that “personal property” can be understood as a unified group of units sold at different times was also ruled out. Instead, “personal property” necessarily refers to any single unit alleged to have been sold as new to an intended end user, and the repose period begins to run on each sale of such a unit. As held in Campbell, “it is the last sale of the property as new that is most closely associated with [the intended consumer’s] use, and it is that sale which triggers the commencement of the statute of repose.” The statute does not automatically bar a strict liability claim because one or more of the units in question were sold more than ten years before the user brought an action. While no cause of action exists for those units, action may exist for units sold less than ten years before the action was brought. Thus, the woman’s claims were not time-barred and she could introduce evidence proving that the condition of the units sold to her as new within the ten years before her lawsuit was the proximate cause of her illness, even without relying on the causative contribution, if any, of units for which an action was barred by the statute of repose. As noted in Norman v. Xytex Corp., 310 Ga. 127, 130–31 (2020), a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim must be denied unless the complaint allegations “disclose with certainty that the claimant would not be entitled to relief under any state of provable facts.” The companies here did not show that it was not possible for the consumer to present evidence warranting relief on her claims. Accordingly, the companies’ motion was due to be denied.

The case is No. S24G1387.

Judge: Pinson, A.

Attorneys: Nkosi John Bey (Bey & Associates LLC) for Kiara Burroughs. John Patrick Elwood (Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP) for Strength of Nature Global, LLC. David Matthew Clarke (Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani LLP) for L'Oréal USA, Inc.

Companies: Strength of Nature Global, LLC; L'Oréal USA, Inc.

Cases: CourtDecisions SofLReposeNews HouseholdProductsNews ChemicalNews GeorgiaNews