Fairfield Connecticut Building Expert Directory

Deadline Nears for “Green Performance Bond” Implementation

December 03, 2024 — Christopher G. Hill - Construction Law Musings
For this weeks Guest Post Friday at Musings, we welcome Surety Bonds.com, a leading online surety provider. SuretyBonds.com specializes in educating current and prospective business owners about local surety requirements. To keep up with surety bond trends, follow and Surety Bonds Insider blog and @suretybond on Twitter. Professionals who work in the construction industry know the laws that regulate the market change constantly. Unfortunately, even government agencies are flawed, which means they sometimes establish nonsensical, arbitrary regulations that leave construction professionals even more confused as to how they’re expected to do their jobs. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of The Law Office of Christopher G. Hill
Mr. Hill may be contacted at chrisghill@constructionlawva.com

Wall Street Journal Analyzes the Housing Market Direction

June 26, 2014 — Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFF
Nick Timiraos of the Wall Street Journal listed “five takeaways” from this week’s housing reports. First, he stated that unless the May “seasonally adjusted annual rate isn’t revised down,” the sales of new homes were “at their highest levels in six years.” Second, Timiraos claimed that “[s]ales have been soft, in part, because builders have been slow to ramp up production. While inventories are still very low, they are up 16% from last year.” For his final “takeaway,” Timiraos stated that while “home prices are up nearly 25% from their early 2012 levels, they’re still down 18% from their 2006 peak. There’s considerable variation, of course, from one city to another. Prices in Denver and Dallas have reached new highs. Others, such as Miami and Phoenix, have posted double digit increases over the past year, but prices are still off of their peak by more than a third.” Read the court decision
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Storm Breaches California River's Levee, Thousands Evacuate

March 20, 2023 — Associated Press - Engineering News-Record
WATSONVILLE, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California agricultural community famous for its strawberry crop was forced to evacuate early Saturday after the Pajaro River’s levee was breached by flooding from a new atmospheric river that pummeled the state. Across the Central Coast's Monterey County , more than 8,500 people were under evacuation orders and warnings Saturday, including roughly 1,700 residents — many of them Latino farmworkers — from the unincorporated community of Pajaro. Reprinted courtesy of Engineering News-Record ENR may be contacted at enr@enr.com Read the full story... Read the court decision
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Deductibles Limited to Number of Suits Filed Against Insured, Not Number of Actual Plaintiffs

December 08, 2016 — Tred R. Eyerly – Insurance Law Hawaii
The court limited the number of deductibles to the counterclaims filed against the insured, not the more than 600 plaintiffs who were parties to the three underlying lawsuits. Probuilders Spec. Ins. Co. v. Yarbrough Plastering, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 134959 (E.D. Calif. Sept. 29, 2016). Yarbrough entered into contracts with Lenox Homes to provide stucco and drywall services in the homes Lenox would build. Each contract required Yarbrough to indemnify Lenox for any claims resulting from property damage arising out of the performance of the contract. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Tred R. Eyerly, Insurance Law Hawaii
Mr. Eyerly may be contacted at te@hawaiilawyer.com

Bidder Be Thoughtful: The Impacts of Disclaimers in Pre-Bid Reports

August 04, 2021 — Joshua A. Morehouse - ConsensusDocs
When bidding a project, subsurface or latent site conditions that are not immediately apparent can massively impact the costs of performance to general contractors. Were contractors required to bid on projects without any information on pre-existing conditions, they would need either to be assured that any additional costs would be reimbursed by the owner, or to include significant contingencies for subsurface conditions in their bids. For owners, these options result in either increased risk or increased cost—neither of which is particularly palatable. Owners therefore implement several contractual tools to minimize these risks and costs. One of these tools is providing bidders with a report on latent conditions, often called a “geotechnical data report” or “GDR”, but otherwise shifting as much of the subsurface-related risk as possible to the contractor. In theory, these reports permit contractors to appropriately adjust their contingencies for latent conditions, thus saving owners money. However, several independent and thorny issues arise where site reports provided by the owner are either inconsistent with or silent on the actual conditions of a project site. Hence owners often include disclaimers with these reports, such as noting that the report is for “informational purposes only” or that the report is “not part of the contract documents." Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Joshua A. Morehouse, Peckar & Abramson, P.C.
Mr. Morehouse may be contacted at jmorehouse@pecklaw.com

In Personal Injury Actions, Prejudgment Interest on Costs Not Recoverable

March 12, 2015 — Elizabeth P. Trent and Leah B. Mason – Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP
In Bean v. Pacific Coast Elevator Corporation, 2015 DJDAR 2864 (“Bean”), the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, held in the published portion of its opinion that courts may not award prejudgment interest on costs in personal injury actions. In Bean, an employee of defendant Pacific Coast Elevator Corporation (Pacific Coast) drove his vehicle into plaintiff Daniel William Bean’s truck while Bean was stopped at a red light. Bean suffered serious injuries and sued Pacific Coast. A jury found Pacific Coast negligent and awarded Bean $1,271,594.74 in damages. This amount exceeded Bean’s $999,999.00 statutory offer to compromise issued to Pacific Coast prior to trial, which Pacific Coast rejected. Reprinted courtesy of Elizabeth P. Trent, Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP and Leah B. Mason, Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP Ms. Trent may be contacted at etrent@hbblaw.com Ms. Mason may be contacted at lmason@hbblaw.com Read the court decision
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Under Colorado House Bill 17-1279, HOA Boards Now Must Get Members’ Informed Consent Before Bringing A Construction Defect Action

April 11, 2018 — Luke Mecklenburg – Snell & Wilmer Real Estate Litigation Blog
Last year, I wrote a post calling attention to stalled efforts in the Colorado legislature to pass meaningful construction defect reform. Shortly thereafter, the legislature got it done in the form of House Bill 17-1279. This bill creates an important pre-litigation notice-and-approval process whenever an HOA initiates a construction defect action in its own name or on behalf of two or more of its members. Before May 2017, the pre-litigation requirements that an HOA had to fulfill before bringing a construction defect claim under the Colorado Construction Defect Action Reform Act (“CDARA”) were generally minor. For example, while many declarations required majority approval from the community prior to initiation of claims, in practice, what the industry was seeing is that some HOAs were making it so that only a majority of the HOA Board had to approve bringing the claim, rather than the majority of interested unit owners. It was also common that, even where the majority of owners were involved, they were often voting in favor of filing a lawsuit or arbitration without fully understanding the risks and costs. This practice presented a risk to developers—it is easier to get approval from a small group than from a larger group, and it is easier to get approval when the voting owners do not fully appreciate the risks and costs inherent in filing a claim. Colorado House Bill 17-1279, which was signed into law by Governor Hickenlooper in May 2017 and is codified at C.R.S. § 38-33.3-303.5, lessens these risks by amending the Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act (“CCIOA”) to add certain pre-litigation requirements. Section 38-33.3-303.5 applies any time an HOA institutes a construction defect action its own name on behalf of itself or two or more unit owners on matters affecting the common interest community. C.R.S. §§ 38-33.3-302(1)(d), -303.5(1)(a). Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Luke Mecklenburg, Snell & Wilmer
Mr. Mecklenburg may be contacted at lmecklenburg@swlaw.com

OSHA’s COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard Is in Flux

December 06, 2021 — Megan E. Baroni & Jonathan H. Schaefer - Construction Executive
On Friday, Nov. 5, 2021, Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard was issued, with most requirements set to go into effect on Dec. 5. The ETS applies to employers with a total of 100 or more employees company-wide. Employers covered by the ETS would be required to develop, implement and enforce a mandatory vaccination policy, subject to limited exemptions, or allow unvaccinated employees to test regularly and be subject to a mask policy, among other associated recordkeeping, reporting and training requirements. Almost immediately, the ETS was hit with a number of legal challenges in various courts across the country. On November 6, just a day after the ETS was issued, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an order staying the implementation of the ETS until further notice. The Court’s order was not a final ruling on the validity of the ETS but has halted implementation of the ETS, at least for the time being. Other legal challenges are already in process, further complicating the issue of if and when the ETS will become effective. As of November 2021, the ETS is on hold, at least temporarily. That could change any day and the ETS could be back in effect, in whole or in part, or permanently halted. The legal challenges to the ETS are unlikely to end, or diminish, until the Supreme Court has weighed in, making for a few uncertain months ahead. Reprinted courtesy of Megan E. Baroni and Jonathan H. Schaefer, Construction Executive, a publication of Associated Builders and Contractors. All rights reserved. Ms. Baroni may be contacted at mbaroni@rc.com Mr. Schaefer may be contacted at jschaefer@rc.com Read the court decision
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FAIRFIELD CONNECTICUT BUILDING EXPERT DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES