Fairfield Connecticut Building Expert Directory

Florida Passes Tort Reform Bill

April 10, 2023 — William Doerler - The Subrogation Strategist
On Friday, March 24, 2023, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law a tort reform bill, HB 837. The bill impacts, among other things, bad faith actions and attorney’s fee awards. Of particular importance to subrogation professionals are provisions impacting comparative fault, the statute of limitations and premises liability with respect to the criminal acts of third persons. With respect to the statute of limitations, the bill amended Fla. Stat. § 95.11(3) and (4), to reduce the statute of limitations for negligence actions from four (4) years to two (2) years. As for comparative fault, Fla. Stat. § 768.81 was amended to move Florida from a pure comparative fault jurisdiction for negligence actions to a modified comparative fault jurisdiction. Pursuant to § 768.81(6), as revised, in a negligence action subject to that section, “any party found to be greater than 50 percent at fault for his or her own harm may not recover any damages.” Section 768.81(6), however, does not apply to actions for damages for personal injury or wrongful death arising out of medical negligence. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of William Doerler, White and Williams LLP
Mr. Doerler may be contacted at doerlerw@whiteandwilliams.com

Updates to AIA Contract Applications

January 07, 2025 — Anand Gupta - Construction Law Zone Blog
The construction industry often relies on contract forms drafted by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). These AIA forms include agreements between owners, designers, consultants, contractors, subcontractors, and construction managers. Some prefer to use the forms in the stock form, but others prefer to modify the language to their benefit. These modifications can be made in Microsoft Word and uploaded into AIA’s current web-based system, ACD5, to create redlines against the standard AIA forms (Checked-Drafts) and final clean versions without the “DRAFT” watermarks. Law firms and clients keep repositories of these modified templates for future projects. A common issue with modifying documents offline in Microsoft Word and passing the documents back-and-forth between different email and document management systems is that the metadata of the forms becomes corrupted. AIA technical support then must reset the metadata, which takes hours or days. This delay can pose challenges to clients when they are up against a deadline. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Anand Gupta, Robinson+Cole
Mr. Gupta may be contacted at agupta@rc.com

Not Just Another Client Alert about Cyber-Risk and Effective Cybersecurity Insurance Regulatory Guidance

April 01, 2015 — Robert Ansehl – White and Williams LLP
The prefix "cyber" was coined about 70 years ago to describe early stage computers, computer networks and virtual reality. Since then, the term has been used as a prefix for hundreds of words, however, the most recent (and newsworthy) usage is its link to the word “risk” and the correlative term “security.” Two sides of the same coin and not a day goes by when a data breach is not reported and the importance of cyber risk and cybersecurity underscored. Insurers, like other financial institutions, are at the forefront of the “cyber-curve.” Many insurers are particularly vulnerable on at least two fronts: (1) from a cyber risk/ cyber invasion perspective and; (2) an insurer’s insurance policy exposure, intentional and not, to third-parties under cyber policies, and even policies such as CGLs that may inadvertently cover such risks. A number of federal and state regulators have spoken to this issue in an effort to address cyber risks with varying degrees of specificity. At last count, in addition to a myriad of existing and proposed state laws and regulations, there are at least nine federal Bills under consideration by Congress (covering six federal agencies including one new agency) that seek to impose regulatory requirements upon the cyber-arena. Those Bills empower six regulatory agencies; including one new agency. Initially, some states required companies to notify affected persons of a data breach. As breaches became more serious, state and federal regulators sought to increase the industry’s awareness of the potential exposures and provided instructions on appropriate steps to protect data from cyber invasions. Now, state insurance regulators are examining not only the threat of data theft, but the balance sheet impact of insurance exposures for underwriting such risks for third-parties’ under cyber risk policies. The regulatory efforts continue to multiply in an effort to stem some of these risks. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Robert Ansehl, White and Williams LLP
Mr. Ansehl may be contacted at ansehlr@whiteandwilliams.com

Is the Removal and Replacement of Nonconforming Work Economically Wasteful?

September 19, 2022 — David Adelstein - Florida Construction Legal Updates
There are times a contractor installs the wrong material or system contrary to the plans and specifications. A nonconformity. The owner wants the already-installed material or system to be replaced in conformity with the plans and specifications. However, what was installed is functionally equivalent to what the plans and specifications required and would be cost prohibitive, i.e., economically wasteful. If the contractor elects to remove and replace the nonconforming work, it may seek a change order because it is economically wasteful. Or, the contractor may refuse (typically, not the best approach) in furtherance of taking on the fight based on the economic wastefulness associated with the removal and replacement. A recent case, David Boland, Inc. v. U.S., 2022 WL 3440349 (Fed.Cl. 2022), talks about this exaction situation and the economic waste doctrine. This is an important doctrine for contractors to understand when faced with a similar predicament. Here, a contractor was hired by the government to construct a wastewater collection system that was to be owned and operated by a private company. The contractor’s work was going to be incorporated into a larger sewer system that the private company already operated. The contractor was required to install sewer manholes reinforced with steel in accordance with an ASTM standard. The manholes could be rejected if they did not conform to the ASTM standard. Compliance with this ASTM standard was also required by the private company’s construction protocol for the infrastructure, which was incorporated into the contractor’s contract with the government. The contractor was required to strictly comply with the contract. 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

Nobody Knows What Lies Beneath New York City

August 10, 2017 — Greg Milner - Bloomberg
Before a single raindrop fell, Alan Leidner knew the waters could rise and throw the city into darkness. On this point, the maps were as clear as a crystal ball. All you had to do was look. It was 2010, and Leidner was consulting for the government services company Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., contracted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities in the nation’s critical infrastructure. Leidner was examining a region that included New York and New Jersey. One day he was thinking about the area’s electrical power grid. He consulted some flood projection maps the Federal Emergency Management Agency had prepared. Then he stared at a map of the grid maintained by Consolidated Edison Inc., the region’s power supplier. And it just jumped out at him: The substation at East 13th Street, on the banks of the East River, was smack in the middle of a flood zone. Leidner voiced his concerns with utilities, hospitals, and other major facilities. “The reaction was mostly, ‘Eh,’ ” he recalls, as we sit in the Tribeca offices of the Fund for the City of New York, where he directs the nonprofit organization’s Center for Geospatial Innovation. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Greg Milner, Bloomberg

Trial Date Discussed for Las Vegas HOA Takeover Case

February 04, 2014 — Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFF
Jeff German of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Justice Department attorneys filed papers January 28th demanding the trial involving 11 defendants charged in a scheme to take over the Las Vegas Valley homeowners associations to be held no later than September 2nd. The prosecutors claimed “they have gone out of their way to ease the burden on the defense as they have turned over mountains of evidence in the past year.” However, the defense attorneys allege that they need “at least a year and likely more time” to go through the “more than 3 million pages of documents” and to create a trial strategy, according to German. The defense “asked for an initial late January 2015 trial date.” The case involves charges against “lawyers, former police officers and corrupt board members” for “packing HOA boards to gain legal and construction defect contracts for themselves.” Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of

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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Reprinted courtesy of

Final Rule Regarding Project Labor Agreement Requirements for Large-Scale Federal Construction Projects

January 29, 2024 — Aaron C. Schlesinger & Julia Loudenburg - Peckar & Abramson, P.C.
Beginning on January 22, 2024, in compliance with President Biden’s February 4, 2022 Executive Order, 14603, federal construction projects with a total estimated cost of $35 million are required to utilize a project labor agreement (“PLA”) unless the contracting agency grants an exception. The Federal Register estimates that this rule will impact approximately 119 IDIQ contracts each year; these contracts have an average award value of about $114 million. The White House claims the PLAs will improve projects by:

Eliminating project delays from labor unrest, such as strikes;
Creating dispute resolution procedures and cooperation for labor-management disputes, such as those over safety;
Including provisions “to support workers from underserved communities and small businesses”;
Helping to create a steady pipeline of workers for federal projects; and
Promoting competition on government contracts so that all builders, even those who are non-union, can bid on jobs that require a PLA.

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Reprinted courtesy of Aaron C. Schlesinger, Peckar & Abramson, P.C.
Mr. Schlesinger may be contacted at aschlesinger@pecklaw.com

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