FAIRFIELD CONNECTICUT BUILDING EXPERT
DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES

Consulting Firm Indicted and Charged with Falsifying Concrete Reports

August 17, 2011 — CDJ STAFF

The New York Times reports that a company paid to inspect concrete at major public works projects in New York has been charged with falsifying results. They had been hired by the city three years ago after their predecessor was found to have falsified results.



According to the Times, investigators found nothing legitimate in nearly three thousand reports. The owner and five employees of American Standard Testing and Consulting Laboratories have been indicted on twenty-nine counts, including charges under New York’s racketeering law. Prison terms could be up to twenty-five years.



Prior to the city’s contract with American Standard, the city employed a firm called Testwell. Testwell was found in 2008 to have falsified its test results.

Read the full story…

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

---

EEOC Issues Anti-Harassment Guidance To Construction-Industry Employers

July 22, 2024 — Christopher Kelleher & Andrew Scroggins - The Construction Seyt
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has issued guidance tailored to the construction industry regarding compliance with anti-harassment laws. This lines up with our prediction in early 2024 that the EEOC had put the construction industry squarely in its sights. The guidance is important for construction-industry leaders and employers to understand to prevent and remedy workplace harassment, and to avoid potential harassment liability. On June 18, 2024, the EEOC issued its Promising Practices for Preventing Harassment in the Construction Industry. This guidance provides key recommendations that construction-industry leaders and employers should consider implementing to prevent and address harassment in the workplace, and avoid being the target of the EEOC’s enforcement efforts. The guidance is intended to supplement the EEOC’s Strategic Enforcement Plan (“SEP”) for fiscal years 2024-2028, which provides direction on the EEOC’s current objectives, principles, and enforcement efforts – among them, increasing diversity in the construction industry and remedying harassment. (We’ve written previously about the proposed and final SEP.) Reprinted courtesy of Christopher Kelleher, Seyfarth and Andrew Scroggins, Seyfarth Mr. Kelleher may be contacted at ckelleher@seyfarth.com Mr. Scroggins may be contacted at ascroggins@seyfarth.com Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of

---

Project-Specific Policies and Products-Completed Operations Hazard Extensions

May 31, 2021 — Jeremiah M. Welch - Saxe Doernberger & Vita
1. Understanding the “Products-Completed Operations Hazard” ISO commercial general liability (“CGL”) policies use the term “products-completed operations hazard” (“PCOH”) to define a category of risk which is treated specially by certain exclusions within the policy and often subject to separate limits of insurance. In construction, we think about PCOH as being about coverage for completed work. Bodily injury and property damage arising out of completed work is a significant construction risk. Most construction contracts include warranty and indemnity obligations for completed work. All states allow lawsuits to be brought alleging bodily injury or property damage because of completed work based on common law. Contract and common law claims are subject to statutes of limitation – laws which define the time in which suits must be brought. Most states provide exceptions to their statutes of limitation for common law claims – the most common example is an extension to file a lawsuit based on a latent defect until the defect is discovered. Most states also have “statutes of repose” – laws that set a date after which suit may no longer be brought, no matter what the circumstances are. A construction contractor, therefore, has potential liability until the statute of repose period has expired. Thus, a contractor looks to ensure that it has coverage for the PCOH for its full statute of repose liability period. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Jeremiah M. Welch, Saxe Doernberger & Vita
Mr. Welch may be contacted at JWelch@sdvlaw.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

---

Recent Developments with California’s Right to Repair Act

June 11, 2014 — Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFF
In Lexology, Amy Kuo Alexander of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, LLP analyzed recent decisions involving California’s Right to Repair Act, SB 800. According to Alexander, “SB 800, applies to all new residential construction sold after January 1, 2003” and “[i]t establishes a process to resolve certain construction defect claims prior to the filing of any lawsuit by a homeowner of new residential construction.” Alexander’s three main discussion points include “SB 800 is Not the Exclusive Remedy,” “Notice Requirements to Builder Under SB 800,” and “Parties Can Opt Out of SB 800 to Adopt Their Own Prelitigation Procedure So Long as the Terms Are Not Unconscionable.” Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of

---

Hunton Andrews Kurth Promotes Insurance Recovery Lawyer Andrea (Andi) DeField to Partner

April 05, 2021 — Lorelie S. Masters - Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog
Effective April 1, 2021, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP has promoted insurance recovery lawyer, Andi DeField, and six other attorneys, to partner. “Andi has been a superstar in our practice since the day she arrived,” said insurance recovery practice head, Walter Andrews, adding that “Andi’s promotion reflects the incredible hard work she has contributed to the practice and outstanding results she has achieved for our clients over the years.” A native of Miami, Andi ascended through the ranks at Hunton in its Miami office, joining the firm as a contract lawyer before earning promotions to associate, counsel and, now, partner. But Andi’s rapid ascension did not come without much hard work. Since joining the firm, “Andi has, year after year, consistently knocked the cover off the ball in terms of her tireless work ethic, the superior results she has achieved and her extraordinary aptitude for marketing herself, our practice and the firms many other practices,” said insurance recovery partner, Mike Levine. Levine added, “Andi is an amazing lawyer and a true champion for her clients. I’m proud to now call her my partner.” Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Lorelie S. Masters, Hunton Andrews Kurth
Ms. Masters may be contacted at lmasters@HuntonAK.com

---

Arctic Fires Are Melting Permafrost That Keeps Carbon Underground

December 27, 2021 — Eric Roston - Bloomberg
Few things signal something's gone haywire on the planet quite like frozen land on fire. Now scientists have determined that Arctic fires, even milder ones, can reshape a landscape for decades, in ways that may make it even harder to keep global heating from eclipsing international goals. It's mostly rising temperatures that are thawing out frozen Arctic ground but northern blazes — already increasing — are now understood to play a disproportionate role, according to a study published last week in the journal One Earth. Previous research has shown that higher temperatures, drier soil and more lightning storms will lead to more fires. That work, with the new paper, mean that “in the future we might expect to see an outsized influence on thaw from the fires that will likely increase," said Róisín Commane, a Columbia University assistant professor who studies atmospheric composition and wasn’t involved in the new study. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Eric Roston, Bloomberg

---

Garlock Five Years Later: Recent Decisions Illustrate Ongoing Obstacles to Asbestos Trust Transparency

September 03, 2019 — Amy E. Vulpio - Complex Insurance Coverage Reporter
In In re Garlock Sealing Technologies, LLC, 504 B.R. 71 (Bankr. W.D.N.C. 2014), the court confirmed what many asbestos defendants and their insurers long suspected: that “the withholding of exposure evidence by plaintiffs and their lawyers was significant and had the effect of unfairly inflating the recoveries against Garlock” and other defendants. This “startling pattern of misrepresentation” included plaintiffs’ attorneys who, out of “perverted ethical duty,” counseled their clients to file claims against multiple trusts without valid factual grounds for so doing. Such “double dipping” and other abuse not only harms asbestos defendants and insurers, but also dilutes recoveries for legitimate claims. Now – five years after Garlock – the Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a coordinated initiative to fight asbestos trust fraud and mismanagement. However, a series of recent bankruptcy court rulings suggests that this initiative stumbled out of the gate by focusing on the wrong issues. Asbestos defendants and their insurers can learn from the DOJ’s missteps. In November 2017, invoking Garlock, 20 state attorneys general wrote to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking him to devote DOJ resources to fighting asbestos trust abuse. A September 13, 2018 DOJ press release announced an initiative to increase the transparency and accountability of asbestos trusts. Through its United States Trustee Program (UST), the DOJ objected to the debtors’ proposed legal representative for future claims (FCR) in several Chapter 11 cases involving asbestos liabilities: Lawrence Fitzpatrick in Duro Dyne and James L. Patton, Jr. in Maremont, Fairbanks and Imerys Talc. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Amy E. Vulpio, White and Williams LLP
Ms. Vulpio may be contacted at vulpioa@whiteandwilliams.com

---