Fairfield Connecticut Building Expert Directory

Manhattan Home Prices Jump to a Record as Buyers Compete

April 02, 2014 — Oshrat Carmiel – Bloomberg
Manhattan apartment sales surged in the busiest start to a year since 2007, setting price records as buyers vied for a limited supply of homes for sale and deals were completed at new high-end developments. Sales of co-ops and condominiums in the first quarter jumped 35 percent from a year earlier to 3,307, according to a report today from appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The median price climbed 19 percent to $972,428, while the the average price per square foot rose 24 percent to $1,363, the highest in 25 years of record-keeping. Price gains are accelerating in a market where the inventory of homes for sale plummeted to record lows three times in the past year as buyer demand increased. Of the deals completed in the first quarter, 38 percent were at or above the asking price, up from 17 percent a year earlier, according to Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based Miller Samuel. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Oshrat Carmiel, Bloomberg
Ms. Carmiel may be contacted at ocarmiel1@bloomberg.net

Federal Contractors – Double Check the Terms of Your Contract Before Performing Ordered Changes

July 08, 2019 — Jonathan Schirmer - Ahlers Cressman & Sleight PLLC
As federal contractors may be aware, the general rule when performing a contract for the federal government is that only the contracting officer (“CO”) can bind the government. Often, the CO delegates responsibility to a contracting officer’s representative (“COR”). While in some cases a COR may be able to bind the federal government, the contract may limit that ability exclusively to the CO. Important for our clients, it is the responsibility of the contractor to determine whether the COR can legally bind the federal government when ordering changes to the scope of work. [1] This is true even when a COR possesses apparent authority to order changes to the work, and when the project is almost exclusively overseen by COR’s. [2] A recent case highlights the dangers of a contractor relying on the orders of a COR when performing work outside the scope of a contract. In Baistar Mechanical Inc., a contractor was awarded a maintenance and snow removal contract with the federal government. The contract expressly stated that only the CO had contracting authority regarding additional or changed work. [3] However, Baistar, the contractor, argued it was directed by the contracting officer’s representatives to perform work outside of the contract. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Jonathan Schirmer, Ahlers Cressman & Sleight PLLC
Mr. Schirmer may be contacted at jonathan.schirmer@acslawyers.com

Fine Art Losses – “Canvas” the Subrogation Landscape

February 26, 2024 — William L. Doerler - The Subrogation Strategist
If a fire or flood destroys a high-net-worth client’s fine art collection, an insurer who pays out a claim related to the loss has an incentive to pursue subrogation. This article explores some of the issues an insurer should “canvas” before pursuing subrogation for these types of claims. Damage to fine art can occur in a number of ways. For instance, fine art may be damaged in a natural disaster – such as a flood or a wildfire. Artwork may also be accidentally damaged because of a transportation-related incident physically damaging the art. In addition, artwork may suffer fire or smoke damage from a fire within a building. Another possibility is that the artwork suffers damage because of renovations either to the insured’s home or a neighboring property. For example, a renovation contractor may damage artwork due to vibrations or leaking water. A construction worker, moreover, may turn with a tool in his hand, or trip and fall, damaging the artwork. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of William L. Doerler, White and Williams LLP
Mr. Doerler may be contacted at doerlerw@whiteandwilliams.com

Seattle Expands Bridge Bioswale Projects

May 11, 2020 — Jim Parsons - Engineering News-Record
The success of engineered systems to capture stormwater runoff from Seattle’s Aurora Avenue Bridge has spurred construction of additional measures that proponents say will increase total filtering capacity by another two million gallons per year. Jim Parsons, Engineering News-Record ENR may be contacted at ENR.com@bnpmedia.com Read the full story... Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of

Pennsylvania Superior Court Fires up a Case-By-Case Analysis for Landlord-Tenant, Implied Co-Insured Questions

February 03, 2020 — Gus Sara - The Subrogation Strategist
In Joella v. Cole, 2019 PA Super. 313, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania recently considered whether a tenant, alleged by the landlord’s property insurance carrier to have carelessly caused a fire, was an implied co-insured on the landlord’s policy. The court found that the tenant was an implied co-insured because the lease stated that the landlord would procure insurance for the building, which created a reasonable expectation that the tenant would be a co-insured under the policy. Since the tenant was an implied co-insured on the policy, the insurance carrier could not maintain a subrogation action against the tenant. This case confirms that Pennsylvania follows a case-by-case approach when determining whether a tenant was an implied co-insured on a landlord’s insurance policy. The Joella case stems from a fire at an apartment building in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. The landlord’s property insurance carrier paid the landlord $180,000 to repair the damages resulting from the fire. In March 2018, the insurer brought a subrogation action against Annie Cole, a tenant in the building, alleging that Ms. Cole’s negligent use of an extension cord caused the fire. Ms. Cole raised the affirmative defense that she was an implied co-insured on the landlord’s insurance policy. The subrogating insurer filed a partial motion for summary judgment seeking to dismiss Ms. Cole’s defense. In response, Ms. Cole filed a cross motion for partial judgment, arguing that because the lease specified that the landlord would maintain fire insurance for the building, there was a reasonable expectation that she would be a co-insured on that policy. The trial court found in favor of Ms. Cole, holding that the landlord’s insurer could not maintain a subrogation action against her because she was an implied co-insured of the landlord’s insurance policy under the terms of the lease. The landlord’s insurer filed an appeal with the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Gus Sara, White and Williams
Mr. Sara may be contacted at sarag@whiteandwilliams.com

How Drones are Speeding Up Construction

July 26, 2017 — Aarni Heiskanen - AEC Business
Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are being used in many industries, e.g. agriculture, construction, mining, oil & gas, mapping, and surveying. In construction, drones have proven to be quite disruptive, offering huge productivity increases. Gartner’s famous Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2016, positioned drones as just entering the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Gartner claims that, “Smart machine technologies will be the most disruptive class of technologies over the next 10 years due to radical computational power, near-endless amounts of data, and unprecedented advances in deep neural networks.” Commercial UAVs are one of the smart machine technologies in question, together with smart robots, autonomous vehicles, cognitive expert advisors, and others. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Aarni Heiskanen, AEC Business
Mr. Heiskanen may be contacted at info@aepartners.fi

Engineers Found ‘Hundreds’ of Cracks in California Bridge

January 24, 2014 — James Nash – Bloomberg News
Engineers spotted “hundreds” of cracks in welds on parts produced for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 2008 and were encouraged to stay quiet rather than delay the $6.4 billion project, according to a California Senate committee report. James Merrill, then a senior engineer with a quality assurance company known as Mactec, told Senate investigators that his complaints about work done at Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry Co. Ltd. (900947), known as ZPMC, were rebuffed by managers of the California Department of Transportation as “too rigorous,” according to the report released yesterday. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of James Nash, Bloomberg News
Mr. Nash may be contacted at jnash24@bloomberg.net

Good and Bad News on Construction Employment

February 10, 2012 — CDJ STAFF

The construction industry hit a two-year high in January, with 21,000 jobs added that month. The mild winter is assumed to have helped. According to the General Contractors of America, the construction industry currently employs about 5.57 million people. This is a 21 percent gain over January 2010. Ken Simonson, the chief economist of GCA, noted that “the unemployment rate in construction is still double that of the overall economy.” He said it was not currently clear if “the recent job growth reflects a sustained pickup or merely acceleration of homebuilding and highway projects that normally halt when the ground freezes in December and January.”

Stephen Sandherr, the chief executive officer of the GCA, said that the federal government had to make infrastructure funding a top priority. “Without adequate long-term funding for infrastructure, competitive tax rates and fewer costly regulatory hurdles, the construction industry may lose some of the jobs it gained in the last year.”

Read the full story…

Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of

FAIRFIELD CONNECTICUT BUILDING EXPERT DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES