The first sign of trouble appeared on a Tuesday morning in early March, nearly two years after the renovation had been completed. Maria Chen, the intake coordinator for the community services agency, arrived at the building before seven o'clock to prepare for a morning program serving at-risk youth. The hallway leading to the main program room felt different somehow, though she could not immediately identify what had changed. As she flipped on the lights and walked toward the storage closet to retrieve supplies, her foot caught on something unexpected. The carpet, which had been flat and unremarkable for as long as she could remember, had developed a slight ridge running perpendicular to her path. She knelt down and pressed her palm against the carpet, feeling dampness beneath the synthetic fibers. Maria made a mental note to mention it to the facilities manager, then continued preparing for the day's programming.
That moment, unremarkable as it seemed at the time, would become the subject of intense legal scrutiny years later. In the litigation that eventually followed, lawyers would pore over incident reports, internal emails, and staff recollections to establish precisely when the agency first knew or ought to have known that something had gone seriously wrong with the renovation. The question of discoverability, of when the limitation period actually began to run, would prove central to whether the agency could pursue its claim at all. What seemed like a simple wet spot on a carpet would reveal itself to be the earliest symptom of catastrophic foundation failure, and the legal system would need to determine whether Maria's observations that Tuesday morning constituted the kind of knowledge that starts a limitation clock running.