Fairfield Connecticut Building Expert Directory

Real Case, Real Lessons: Understanding Builders’ Risk Insurance Limits

August 12, 2024 — David McLain - Higgins, Hopkins, McLain & Roswell, LLC
In the recent case of 5333 Mattress King LLC v. Hanover Insurance Company, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado provided significant insights into the limits of builders’ risk insurance policies. Mattress King LLC, a warehouse owner, faced a substantial loss when a subcontractor drove a crane over and damaged the warehouse’s concrete floor slab during construction. Despite having a builders’ risk insurance policy with Hanover Insurance Company, coverage was denied, leading to litigation. Applicable Policy Provisions The policy in question was a Commercial Marine/Commercial Lines Builders’ Risk insurance policy. Builders’ risk insurance is designed to cover direct physical loss to covered property during construction unless the loss is excluded or limited by the policy. Key exclusions of the policy at issue included losses caused by faulty, inadequate, or defective:

Planning, zoning, surveying, or development
Design, specifications, workmanship, repair, construction, renovation, remodeling, grading, or compaction
Materials used in construction or renovation
Maintenance of the covered property

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Reprinted courtesy of David McLain, Higgins, Hopkins, McLain & Roswell, LLC
Mr. McLain may be contacted at mclain@hhmrlaw.com

Persimmon Offers to Fix Risky Homes as Cladding Crisis Grows

February 22, 2021 — Olivia Konotey-Ahulu - Bloomberg
Persimmon Plc, the U.K.’s biggest homebuilder, has offered to pay for work on potentially unsafe buildings in the wake of the cladding scandal that arose from London’s Grenfell Tower fire. The firm has made a provision of 75 million pounds ($104 million) in its 2020 results for any necessary repair work on 26 buildings it developed that may be affected by the issue, it said in a statement Wednesday. It no longer owns the properties and said it would provide support where owners failed to accept their legal responsibilities. “The concern around now banned cladding is affecting many thousands of homeowners who live in high-rise buildings right across the country,” Chairman Roger Devlin said in the statement. “We believe we have a clear duty to act to address this issue.” Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Olivia Konotey-Ahulu, Bloomberg

Trump Soho May Abandon Condos to Operate Mainly as Hotel

January 28, 2015 — Nadja Brandt – Bloomberg
Lower Manhattan’s Trump Soho, the five-year-old tower that was seized in a foreclosure amid slow sales of its condominiums, may drop its focus on part-time residences and operate most of the property solely as a hotel. The building’s new owner, Los Angeles-based CIM Group, is “stepping away” from marketing the roughly two-thirds of condos that remain unsold, said Gary Schweikert, the building’s managing director. The company is considering converting the unsold units at the tower permanently into hotel rooms, he said. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Nadja Brandt, Bloomberg
Ms. Brandt may be contacted at nbrandt@bloomberg.net

Leaning San Francisco Tower Seen Sinking From Space

November 30, 2016 — The Associated Press (Jocelyn Gecker) – Bloomberg
San Francisco (AP) -- Engineers in San Francisco have tunneled underground to try and understand the sinking of the 58-story Millennium Tower. Now comes an analysis from space. The European Space Agency has released detailed data from satellite imagery that shows the skyscraper in San Francisco's financial district is continuing to sink at a steady rate — and perhaps faster than previously known. The luxury high-rise that opened its doors in 2009 has been dubbed the Leaning Tower of San Francisco. It has sunk about 16 inches into landfill and is tilting several inches to the northwest. A dispute over the building's construction in the seismically active city has spurred numerous lawsuits involving the developer, the city and owners of its multimillion dollar apartments. Engineers have estimated the building is sinking at a rate of about 1-inch per year. The Sentinel-1 twin satellites show almost double that rate based on data collected from April 2015 to September 2016. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Bloomberg

New York Bars Developers from Selling Condos due to CD Fraud Case

October 15, 2014 — Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFF
According to GlobeSt, New York “Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has announced a settlement agreement that bars developers Joseph Scarpinito and Shiraz Sanjana—and five affiliated entities they own and operate—from offering or selling securities, including condo and coop sales, in or from New York State.” The settlement is in “result of an investigation by the Attorney General’s real estate finance bureau into allegations of fraud by the developers of the Mirada, an eight-story Harlem condominium.” GlobeSt also stated that the agreement “provides for binding arbitration with the condo purchasers for alleged construction defects, and requires the developers to pay $500,000 in penalties and fines to New York State.” Read the court decision
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Difficult Task for Court to Analyze Delay and Disorder on Construction Project

August 23, 2021 — David Adelstein - Florida Construction Legal Updates
One of my favorites quotes from a case, and I am sure others in the construction industry feel the same way or can relate, is from the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Blake Construction Co., Inc. v. C.J. Coakley Co., Inc., 431 A.2d 569, 575 (D.C. 1981):

We note parenthetically and at the outset that, except in the middle of a battlefield, nowhere must men coordinate the movement of other men and all materials in the midst of such chaos and with such limited certainty of present facts and future occurrences as in a huge construction project such as the building of this 100 million dollar hospital. Even the most painstaking planning frequently turns out to be mere conjecture and accommodation to changes must necessarily be of the rough, quick and ad hoc sort, analogous to ever-changing commands on the battlefield. Further, it is a difficult task for a court to be able to examine testimony and evidence in the quiet of a courtroom several years later concerning such confusion and then extract from them a determination of precisely when the disorder and constant readjustment, which is to be expected by any subcontractor on a job site, become so extreme, so debilitating and so unreasonable as to constitute a breach of contract between a contractor and a subcontractor.

Do you agree with this sentiment? The reality is that retrospectively analyzing delay on a complicated construction project with numerous moving parts on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, basis is no easy feat. It is not easy for the parties and certainly not easy for courts to unravel. With every party claiming delay based on a retrospective analysis there will be another party with either a different delay analysis or providing credible cross examination as to flaws with the delay analysis. The same bodes true with loss of productivity / inefficiency claims and the particular case-specific facts are important, preferably with evidence such as photos, videos, notifications, daily reports, manpower reports, etc., supporting the facts. But the facts are complicated, and the delay analysis is complicated, and it is a difficult task for a trier of fact to unravel these facts. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of David Adelstein, Kirwin Norris, P.A.
Mr. Adelstein may be contacted at dma@kirwinnorris.com

Bad Faith Claim for Inadequate Investigation Does Not Survive Summary Judgment

May 20, 2015 — Tred R. Eyerly – Insurance Law Hawaii
The insured's claim for bad faith investigation regarding their hail damage claim did not survive the insurer's motion for summary judgment. Amarillo Hospitality Tenant, LLC v. Mass. Bay Ins. Co., 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56228 (N. D. Tex. April 29, 2015). A hailstorm caused damage to the Courtyard Marriot. The day after the storm, the insured inspected the roof of the hotel and observed damage to a sign and some aluminum vent tubes. No damage to the roof itself was observed. Subsequently, leaks were found on the tenth floor of the hotel. A public adjuster concluded that the roof had sustained damage during the hailstorm. The insured filed a claim with Massachusetts Bay Insurance Company. The insurer paid for the cost of repairing the damaged sign. To determine whether the damage to the roof was caused by the hailstorm, the insurer hired Donna Engineering, who conducted two inspections of the roof. Both inspections concluded that the hailstorm did not cause damage to the roof. Consequently, the claim was denied. 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

Supreme Court of California Rules That Trial Court Lacking Subject Matter Jurisdiction May Properly Grant Anti-SLAPP Motion on That Basis, and Award Attorney’s Fees

January 19, 2017 — David W. Evans & Stephen J. Squillario - Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP
In Barry v. The State Bar of California (No. S214058 – 1/5/2017), the California Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s grant of the State Bar of California’s (“State Bar”) underlying anti-SLAPP motion (Code of Civil Procedure §425.16) on the grounds that plaintiff Patricia Barry (“Barry”), an attorney, had failed to show a probability of prevailing because, among other reasons, the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over Barry’s claims. The Court confirmed that the absence of subject matter jurisdiction did not prevent a trial court from basing a decision to grant an anti-SLAPP motion on that ground, or to award the prevailing defendant its attorney’s fees. Reprinted courtesy of David W. Evans, Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP and Stephen J. Squillario, Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP Mr. Evans may be contacted at devans@hbblaw.com Mr. Squillario may be contacted at ssquillario@hbblaw.com Read the court decision
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FAIRFIELD CONNECTICUT BUILDING EXPERT DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES