SEATTLE WASHINGTON BUILDING EXPERT
DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES

Insurance Law Alert: Ambiguous Producer Agreement Makes Agent-Broker Status a Jury Question

September 10, 2014 — Valerie A. Moore & Christopher Kendrick - Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP
In Douglas v. Fidelity National Ins. (No. A137645; filed 8/29/14), a California appeals court held that it was a jury question whether a retail insurance service with limited binding authority should be deemed a broker or an agent for the purpose of determining if application misrepresentations would void coverage. In Douglas, the homeowners needed insurance for a house they had used as a group home. They sought coverage from Cost-U-Less, which provided personal lines insurance from, among others, Fidelity National Insurance Company. According to the couple’s wife, she went to a Cost-U-Less office where she answered application questions from a person on the telephone, who was later identified as an employee of another company, InsZone. InsZone had a producer contract with Fidelity. In practice, InsZone would be contacted by Cost-U-Less via telephone, at which point an InsZone employee would verbally solicit information from the client, with the information being entered into a computer by the InsZone employee and then transmitted electronically to Fidelity. Reprinted courtesy of Valerie A. Moore, Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP and Christopher Kendrick, Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP Ms. Moore may be contacted at vmoore@hbblaw.com; Mr. Kendrick may be contacted at ckendrick@hbblaw.com Read the court decision
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Georgia Local Government Drainage Liability: Nuisance and Trespass

November 29, 2021 — David R. Cook Jr. - Autry, Hall & Cook, LLP
A long-running dispute between a landowner and a municipality has escalated to the Georgia Court of Appeals and in the federal court for the Northern District of Georgia.[1] The municipality maintained a stormwater system that discharged on property uphill from the landowner’s property. The uphill property was used as an illegal dump, and debris washed downhill from the dump to the landowner’s property. The debris clogged the landowner’s surface water drainage system, which caused flooding of the property and a building. State Case The landowner sued for trespass, nuisance, takings, and inverse condemnation. While the other claims were barred by the four-year statute of limitations, the court addressed the plaintiff-landowner’s claim for continuing nuisance. Municipalities may be liable when they negligently construct or maintain a sewer or drainage system that causes repeated flooding of property, such that it results in a continuing, abatable nuisance.[2] For a municipality to be liable for maintenance of a nuisance:

the municipality must be chargeable with performing a continuous or regularly repetitious act, or creating a continuous or regularly repetitious condition, which causes the hurt, inconvenience or injury; the municipality must have knowledge or be chargeable with notice of the dangerous condition; and, if the municipality did not perform an act creating the dangerous condition, . . . the failure of the municipality to rectify the dangerous condition must be in violation of a duty to act.[3]

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Reprinted courtesy of David R. Cook Jr., Autry, Hall & Cook, LLP
Mr. Cook may be contacted at cook@ahclaw.com

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Walkability Increases Real Estate Values

June 18, 2014 — Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFF
CNBC reported that environmentally-conscious Millennials are looking for homes that are within walking or biking distance to stores and work. The “areas that offer so-called walkability should see more home buyers and renters than those that don't.” "Cities that want to thrive in our new economic and demographic realities will need to find ways to create and support more of these dynamic, productive walkable districts that are in high demand," Geoff Anderson, CEO of Smart Growth America, told CNBC. Anderson, “in conjunction with George Washington University School of Business, released a new report ranking the walkability of the nation's 30 largest metropolitan areas.” Read the court decision
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Zombie Foreclosures Plaguing Various Cities in the U.S.

July 16, 2014 — Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFF
Many homeowners are simply abandoning their homes before banks have completed the foreclosure process, according to USA Today. Banks are not always in a hurry to take ownership of property, and often will wait until they are ready to dispose of it before doing so: “There are two primary things that can factor into their decision," Eric Eckardt, vice president and general manager of Hubzu.com, told the Mail Tribune. "One, they may have a surplus of REO properties they're trying to move off the balance sheet. The second is, costs associated with foreclosure may be greater than the value. At the end of the day, it's really a case-by-case matter.” USA Today reported that “[t]he length of the entire foreclosure process is a major contributor to vacancy rates because homeowners are more likely to give up on their homes the longer they have to wait for a resolution.” These abandoned homes may have a negative impact on sales of neighboring homes, according to the Mail Tribune. Gary Poulos, a retired Harry & David systems engineer, lives next door to a ‘zombie foreclosure,’ and spent a year trying to get maintenance work completed on the neighboring property so that he could be in a position to sell his own. He created a blog about his experience (myneighborchasebank.blogspot.com). Big Builder analyzed May 2014 data from CoreLogic, and identified the five states with the highest foreclosure inventory: New Jersey, Florida, New York, Hawaii, and Maine. While the five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory were Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Minnesota. Read the full story, USA Today... Read the full story, Big Builder... Read the full story, Mail Tribune... Read the court decision
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Roof Mounted Solar Panels: Lower Your Risk of Fire

September 25, 2023 — The Hartford Staff - The Hartford Insights
As the federal government, individual states, businesses and consumers take steps to address climate change, the use of renewable energy – including roof-mounted solar panels – has steadily increased. Over the past decade, the use of solar energy solutions has grown by 33% annually. This is driven by tax-based incentives for clean energy, combined with installation costs that are down more than 50% from 10 years ago.1 As more companies execute climate-focused goals to limit greenhouse emissions, reduce their carbon-footprint and lower energy costs, the use of solar power for commercial buildings is likely to increase. Currently, it's estimated that only 3.5% of commercial buildings have rooftop solar panels, but 70% are potential targets for solar.2 We know the use of solar power can have positive impacts on the environment and generate long-term energy cost savings. However, there are several considerations and potential risks that commercial property owners and facilities managers should consider prior to investing in solar, says Tracey Greene, underwriting director for Middle and Large Commercial Real Estate at The Hartford. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of The Hartford Staff, The Hartford Insights

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Two-Part Series on Condominium Construction Defect Issues

May 19, 2014 — Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFF
Gregory L. Shelton, construction law attorney at Horack, Talley, Pharr & Lowndes, P.A., wrote a two-part series in the Charlotte Observer about condominium construction defect issues. The first part described “common defects and their consequences,” while the second part explained “how legal time limits can prevent the association or its owners from suing the parties responsible for defective construction.” If interested in purchasing a condo unit, Shelton recommended hiring a building inspector, though he cautioned that “the inspector should be truly independent. His client should be you and not ‘the sale.’” In the second part, Shelton discussed the complexities of statutes of limitations and statutes of repose. Read the full story, Part 1... Read the full story, Part 2... Read the court decision
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President Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” Executive Order and the Construction Industry

June 05, 2017 — Garret Murai - California Construction Law Blog
On April 18, 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order No. 13788 implementing his “Buy American, Hire American” campaign promise. Federal construction contractors familiar with “Buy American” clauses in federal contracts under the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR)–which require materials to be manufactured in the United States (or, depending on the clause, not manufactured in certain countries) unless a waiver is obtained–have waited anxiously to see what Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” promise would mean for them. Well . . . as it turns out, not much, at least not yet. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Garret Murai, Wendel Rosen Black & Dean LLP
Mr. Murai may be contacted at gmurai@wendel.com

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SEC Approves New Securitization Risk Retention Rule with Broad Exception for Qualified Residential Mortgages

November 26, 2014 — Neil P. Casey & Lori S. Smith – White and Williams LLP
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and five other federal agencies recently approved a joint rule (the “Risk Retention Rule”) mandating that sponsors of certain types of securitizations retain a minimum level of credit risk exposure in those transactions and prohibiting such sponsors from transferring or hedging against that retained credit risk.[i]The final Risk Retention Rule will be effective one year after its publication in the Federal Register for securitizations of residential mortgages, and two years after publication for securitizations of all other asset types. The SEC vote was 3-2, with sharp dissents from Commissioners Gallagher and Piwowar concluding that the adopting agencies had missed a prime opportunity to rein in risky mortgage lending practices that had precipitated the 2008 financial crisis. Background Following the meltdown of the securitization markets in 2007 (particularly subprime residential mortgage-backed securities), and the resulting global financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act mandated that the U.S. federal banking, securities and housing agencies adopt and implement rules to require sponsors of most new securitizations to retain not less than five percent of the credit risk of any assets that the securitizer, through the issuance of an asset-backed security, transfers, sells or conveys to a third party. It was thought that requiring securitization sponsors to keep “skin in the game” would align the interests of the sponsors with the interests of investors and thereby incentivize the sponsors to ensure the quality of the assets underlying the securitization through appropriate due diligence and underwriting procedures when selecting assets for securitization. Although the Dodd-Frank Act explicitly exempted securitizations of certain types of mortgage loans called “qualified residential mortgages” (or “QRMs”) from this risk retention requirement, it invited the rulemaking agencies to define that key term, provided that their definition could be no broader than the definition of “qualified mortgage”adopted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) pursuant to the Truth in Lending Act.[ii] In considering how to define QRM, the rulemaking agencies were directed by the Dodd-Frank Act to take into consideration “underwriting and product features that historical loan performance data indicate result in a lower risk of default.”[iii] Reprinted courtesy of Neil P. Casey, White and Williams LLP and Lori S. Smith, White and Williams LLP Mr. Casey may be contacted at caseyn@whiteandwilliams.com; Ms. Smith may be contacted at smithl@whiteandwilliams.com Read the court decision
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