Fairfield Connecticut Building Expert Directory

Real Estate & Construction News Round-Up (01/25/23) – Artificial Intelligence, Proptech Innovation, and Drone Adoption

February 14, 2023 — Pillsbury's Construction & Real Estate Law Team - Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law Blog
This week’s round-up explores new artificial intelligence tools and their projected impact on real estate agents, key trends driving proptech innovation, barriers to adopting drones in the construction industry, and more.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to become an invaluable tool to streamline the selling journey of a property, empower buyers to make informed decisions, and enhance the work of real estate agents. (Alexandra Cain, The Urban Developer)
Miami real estate agents experiment with the new artificial intelligence tool, ChatGPT, which can generate text based on simple prompts, to write house listings, communicate with developers, and produce content. (Martin Vassolo, Axios)
Asset owners in Asia and Europe turn to artificial intelligence to collect ESG information across public and private markets, including from residential buildings in Japan. (Hugo Cox, Asian Investor)

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Reprinted courtesy of Pillsbury's Construction & Real Estate Law Team

Arizona Purchaser Dwelling Actions Are Subject to a New Construction

September 04, 2019 — William L. Doerler - The Subrogation Strategist
Arizona recently amended its Purchaser Dwelling Action statute to, among other things, involve all contractors in the process, establish the parties’ burdens of proof, add an attorney fees provision, establish procedural requirements and limit a subcontractor’s indemnity exposure. The governor signed the bill—2019 Ariz. SB 1271—on April 10, 2019, and the changes go into effect and apply, retroactively “to from and after June 30, 2019.” The following discussion details some of the changes to the law. Notice to Contractors and Proportional Liability Under the revised law, a “Seller” who receives notice of a Purchaser Dwelling Action (PDA) from a residential dwelling purchaser pursuant to A.R.S. § 12-1363* has to promptly forward the notice to all construction professionals—i.e. architects, contractors, subcontractors, etc., as defined in A.R.S. § 12-1361(5)—that the Seller reasonably believes are responsible for an alleged construction defect. A.R.S. § 12-1363(A). Sellers can deliver the notice by electronic means. Once construction professionals are placed on notice, they have the same right to inspect, test and repair the property as the Seller originally placed on notice. A.R.S. § 12-1362(B), (C). To the extent that the matter ultimately goes to suit, A.R.S. § 12-1632(D) dictates that, subject to Arizona Rules of Court, construction professionals “shall be joined as third-party defendants.” To establish liability, the purchaser has the burden of proving the existence of a construction defect and the amount of damages. Thereafter, the trier of fact determines each defendant’s or third-party defendant’s relative degree of fault and allocates the pro rata share of liability to each based on their relative degree of fault. However, the seller, not the purchaser, has the burden of proving the pro rata share of liability for any third-party defendant. A.R.S. § 12-1632(D). Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of William L. Doerler, White and Williams LLP
Mr. Doerler may be contacted at doerlerw@whiteandwilliams.com

Default Should Never Be An Option

June 19, 2023 — Christopher G. Hill - Construction Law Musings
Every time I think that the construction industry has learned that failure to respond to a lawsuit is never the correct response, another case of default judgment comes out. I’ve discussed on multiple occasions that failure to respond can only lead to disaster. Aside from being barred from making any substantive response to the allegations against you, there are other consequences including the inability to seek a reasonable settlement because the other side has no reason to negotiate. One of the more disastrous results recently came about in the Norfolk Division of the Eastern District of Virginia District Court. The case of L & W Supply Corp v. Driven Construction et. al. involved a supplier that sought to enforce its credit agreement against both the corporate entity of the contractor, Driven, and the guarantor, a principal of the company. Needless to say, there was no response to the lawsuit and the Plaintiff filed for default judgment. 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

Penn Station’s Revival Gets a $1.6 Billion Down Payment

February 08, 2021 — James S. Russell - Bloomberg
The newly opened Moynihan Train Hall at New York Penn Station, America’s busiest rail hub, is the culmination of a vision that New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan first promoted in the early 1990s. Moynihan, a champion of civic-minded federal architecture, proposed converting a portion of the Farley Post Office building to expand the crowded and much-unloved Penn Station facilities underneath Madison Square Garden. That scheme was repeatedly delayed, but on January 1, 2021, the result of those efforts – a $1.6 billion train hall designed by architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) – welcomed its first passengers. It’s a beautiful new space. Roofed by elegant bubbles of glass tensioned by almost-invisible cables, the shafts of daylight in contrast to the gloom of the long-neglected Penn Station are heartening. The hall is lined by glass-walled ticket offices for the Long Island Railroad and Amtrak. Sleek new escalators descend to the platforms. Airy new entrances draw passengers from the west. Above one entrance, breakdancers ebulliently leap from cloud to cloud in a stained-glass sky — an artwork by Kehinde Wiley. Above the other, an abstract skyline by Elmgreen & Dragset hangs overhead like urban stalactites. A waiting room evokes a suavely Art Deco diner. Moynihan Hall is a bracing restorative vision, at a time when rail travel needs all the help it can get. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of James S. Russell, Bloomberg

Lakewood First City in Colorado to Pass Ordinance Limiting State Construction Defect Law

October 15, 2014 — Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFF
The Denver Post reported that the Lakewood City Council passed an ordinance “designed to soften the effects of Colorado's controversial construction-defects law.” Specifically, the ordinance “gives developers and builders a ‘right to repair’ defects before facing litigation and would require condominium association boards to get consent from a majority of homeowners — rather than just the majority of the board — before filing suit.” Not all residents are in favor of the ordinance. "It protects builders and big business at the expense of homeowners," Chad Otto, former president of the Grant Ranch homeowners association, told the crowd, as quoted by the Denver Post. "Does Lakewood want to be known as the mecca of poorly built condos?" Proponents of the measure, including Lakewood Mayor Bob Murphy, claim that “Colorado's defects law…has forced up insurance premiums on new condo projects to the point where they are no longer feasible to build.” Furthermore, according to the Denver Post, “Condos represented only 4.6 percent of total new home starts in metro Denver in the second quarter of 2014, versus more than 26 percent in 2008, according to Metrostudy.” Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of

Terminating Notice of Commencement Without Contractor’s Final Payment Affidavit

October 23, 2018 — David Adelstein - Florida Construction Legal Updates
Prior to construction work being performed on your property, a Notice of Commencement should be recorded. Among other things, construction liens will relate back in time to an effective Notice of Commencement (meaning it has not expired). For this reason, lenders or others will want the Notice of Commencement to be terminated when the job is complete by recording in the official records a Notice of Termination of the Notice of Commencement. There is a statutory procedure to terminate a Notice of Commencement pursuant to Florida Statute 713.132. Frequently, a clerk will want the Notice of Termination of the Notice of Commencement to be accompanied with a Contractor’s Final Payment Affidavit because 713.132 says, in material part:

(2) An owner has the right to rely on a contractor’s affidavit given under s. 713.06(3)(d), except with respect to lienors who have already given notice, in connection with the execution, swearing to, and recording of a notice of termination. However, the notice of termination must be accompanied by the contractor’s affidavit.

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Reprinted courtesy of David Adelstein, Kirwin Norris
Mr. Adelstein may be contacted at dma@kirwinnorris.com

California Supreme Court Declines to Create Exception to Privette Doctrine for “Known Hazards”

September 13, 2021 — Tracy D. Forbath - Lewis Brisbois
In Gonzalez v. Mathis (Aug. 19, 2021, S247677) __ Cal.5th___, the California Supreme Court reversed an appellate decision holding that a landowner may be liable to an independent contractor, or the contractor’s workers, for injuries resulting from “known hazards,” as running contrary to the Privette doctrine. In Gonzalez, the contractor, who specialized in washing skylights, slipped and fell while accessing the landowner’s particularly hard to reach skylight from a narrow retaining wall that was allegedly covered in loose gravel and slippery. (Slip opn., p. 3.) While the trial court initially granted the landowner summary judgment pursuant to the Privette doctrine, the appellate court reversed and held that the landowner had a responsibility to take reasonable safety precautions where there was a known safety hazard on the landowner’s premises. (Id. at p. 6.) Whether the landowner could have taken various safety precautions also raised disputed issues of material fact precluding summary judgment. (Ibid.) However, the California Supreme Court concluded that no broad, third exception to the Privette doctrine lies; “unless a landowner retains control over any part of the contractor’s work and negligently exercises that retained control in a manner that affirmatively contributes to the injury [citation], it will not be liable to an independent contractor or its workers for an injury resulting from a known hazard on the premises.” (Slip opn., p. 2.) Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Tracy D. Forbath, Lewis Brisbois
Ms. Forbath may be contacted at Tracy.Forbath@lewisbrisbois.com

Making the World’s Longest Undersea Railway Tunnel Possible with BIM

December 11, 2018 — Aarni Heiskanen - AEC Business
Finland and Estonia are Baltic sea neighbors separated by the Gulf of Finland. Over eight million travelers and 1.2 million cars travel between Helsinki and Tallinn every year by boat. However, a consortium of companies is now planning to build the Finest railway tunnel between the two countries. The vision of such a tunnel has been around since the 1990s. In June 2016, Peter Vesterbacka, previously known as the marketer behind Rovio’s Angry Birds, made the latest endeavor public in his AEC Hackathon presentation. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Aarni Heiskanen, AEC Business
Mr. Heiskanen may be contacted at aec-business@aepartners.fi

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