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Kohn v. Darlington Community Schools7/1/2005
. In light of the above analysis, we do not find it significant that the bid contract Standard submitted to Darlington labeled the product as "portable bleachers." As such, we are satisfied that the bleachers consitutue "a permanent addition to" the property.
The second and third prongs of the test for an improvement to real property under Kallas is that the permanent addition to the property must "'enhance its capital value and . . . involve the expenditure of labor or money and designed to make the property more useful or valuable as distinguished from ordinary repairs.'" Kallas, 66 Wis. 2d at 386 (quoted source omitted). As these two prongs are interrelated, we shall consider them together.
Darlington contracted with Standard to provide the materials for the bleachers and supervise their installation at a cost of $16,167. Thus, the installation of the bleachers clearly involved the expenditure of labor and a significant amount of money. Further, we conclude that the bleachers increase the capital value of the track and football stadium at Darlington High School and make the property more useful or valuable. It seems patently obvious that a football stadium and track with a set of bleachers is more useful and valuable than an empty field and track. Clearly, the school would not be able to attract as many spectators and charge the same admission fee to see a game or meet if there were no bleachers in the stadium, as far less people would be able to have a clear line of vision to the field. Finally, it cannot seriously be argued that the installation of the bleachers constituted "ordinary repairs." Therefore, we conclude that the bleachers in this case meet all of the requirements of the test for an improvement to real property set forth in Kallas.
The Kohns also argue that the bleachers are not an improvement to real property, based on our opinion in Swanson,because the bleachers were not specifically designed or manufactured for use at Darlington High School. The Kohns mischaracterize our opinion in Swanson. In Swanson, we did not even address the issue of what constitutes an improvement to real property, much less hold that the materials that comprise an addition to property must be specifically designed or manufactured for the project in question in order for the addition to qualify as an improvement to real property.
Swanson involved a suit against remote manufacturers of lighting fixtures that allegedly caused a fire. Swanson, 105 Wis. 2d at 323-24. The issue presented was whether the defendants fell within the category of defendants protected by a predecessor statute to § 893.89, Wis. Stat. § 893.155 (1977). Id. at 324. Unlike § 893.89, the statute at issue in Swanson applied to " ny person performing or furnishing the design, land surveying, planning, supervision of construction, materials or construction of such improvement to real property." Wis. Stat. § 893.155 (1977). Thus, the issue in Swanson was not whether the lighting fixture at issue constituted an improvement to real property but whether the statute "applie to manufacturers of a product and its component parts incorporated into an improvement to real property." Swanson, 105 Wis. 2d at 322.
We concluded that the defendants did not fall within the purview of the statute because they did not directly deal with Swanson and did not manufacture lighting fixtures for the improvement to Swanson's property. Id. at 324, 327-28. We therefore held that the statute was inapplicable to the remote manufacturers " ven though the light fixture [in question] was an ultimate improvement to real property." Id. at 329. In other words, we specifically concluded that the light fixture was an impr
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