Slaughter, J.
The Indiana Products Liability Act contains what we have held is a tenyear statute of repose. The statute requires a plaintiff to bring suit “within ten (10) years after the delivery of the product to the initial user or consumer.” The only exception is for an action accruing at least eight years but fewer than ten years after the product’s initial delivery. When that happens, a plaintiff can still sue within two years after accrual, even if more than ten years have elapsed since delivery. Because the statute has no other exceptions, we conclude its ten-year limitations period cannot be extended for any other reason—including a manufacturer’s post-sale repair, refurbishment, or reconstruction of a product.
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A. The Act’s statute of repose contains no exception for a product’s repair, refurbishment, or reconstruction.
A plaintiff whose cause of action is subject to the Indiana Products Liability Act must bring suit within two years after the action accrues but not more than ten years after the product was first delivered to the buyer. Ind. Code § 34-20-3-1(b)… The statute is unambiguous. And because this is not an asbestos lawsuit, the statute contains only one exception of note—for an action accruing “at least eight (8) but less than ten (10) years” after initial delivery. Id. Yet even this limited exception does not apply here. Estabrook sustained his injury eleven years after his employer received the product, so his cause of action did not accrue “less than ten (10) years” after delivery.
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…Thus, Estabrook’s argument that the legislature has expressed its opinion through silence is better seen as the legislature’s failure to express an opinion at all.
B. The legislature wrote “or” but meant “and”.
Until now, we have confined our discussion to the plain meaning of Subsection 34-20-3-1(b)(2) and its limited exception for claims accruing more than eight years and fewer than ten years after the product’s initial delivery. But the careful reader will note another key feature of the statute warranting our attention and to which we now turn.
The conjunction separating the accrual and repose provisions in Subsections 1(b)(1) and 1(b)(2), respectively, is “or”—not “and”. Thus, read literally, the statute says that a product-liability action, to be timely, “must be commenced: (1) within two (2) years after the cause of action accrues; or (2) within ten (10) years after the delivery of the product to the initial user or customer.” I.C. § 34-20-3-1(b) (emphasis added). The plain meaning of the disjunctive “or” is that Estabrook’s product-liability action is timely if either of the statute’s two requirements is satisfied: either he sues within two years after his action accrues, or he sues within ten years after the product’s delivery to his employer.
It is undisputed that Estabrook sued within two years after his claim accrued. His claim accrued when he was injured in November 2014. And he filed the underlying federal lawsuit in March 2016, well within the twoyear accrual period. Given the statute’s disjunctive “or”, that alone should suffice to make his suit timely, though he sued more than ten years after the product’s delivery in 2003. On this reading, the disjunct does not limit the time for filing suit but extends it.
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Conclusion
For these reasons, we answer the certified question in the negative and hold that Indiana Code section 34-20-3-1(b) is a statute of repose that cannot be extended by a manufacturer’s post-delivery repair, refurbishment, or reconstruction of the disputed product.
Rush, C.J., and David, Massa, and Goff, JJ., concur.