Fairfield Connecticut Building Expert Directory

Wildfire Risk Scores and Insurance Placement: What You Should Know

July 15, 2024 — Louis "Dutch" Schotemeyer & Molly L. Okamura - Newmeyer Dillion
What Are Wildfire Risk Scores and How Are They Calculated? Wildfire risk scores are scores assigned to properties by third-party vendors based on the likelihood of direct or indirect exposure to a wildfire. Wildfire risk scores can be a factor used by insurance companies when making coverage decisions. Additionally, wildfire risk scores can be a helpful metric for real estate developers to consider when determining whether to buy a piece of property. There are a variety of vendors that use unique methods to calculate wildfire risk scores. For example, CoreLogic, FireLine, and RedZone are vendors used by insurance companies in California. Some vendors' scoring scales are from 1-10, and some are from 1-100, but generally the higher the score, the higher the likelihood of a wildfire impacting the property. There is no national, standardized scoring scale. Reprinted courtesy of Louis "Dutch" Schotemeyer, Newmeyer Dillion and Molly L. Okamura, Newmeyer Dillion Mr. Schotemeyer may be contacted at dutch.schotemeyer@ndlf.com Ms. Okamura may be contacted at molly.okamura@ndlf.com Read the court decision
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Nevada Lawmakers Had Private Meetings on Construction Defects

February 21, 2013 — CDJ STAFF
Both Democratic and Republican members of the Nevada legislature had closed door meetings with representatives of the construction industry. Democratic lawmakers also met with the other side of the discussion over construction defect laws, lobbyists representing trial lawyers. When asked by the Las Vegas Sun why this was done in private meetings instead of a public hearing, Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick didn’t have an answer, other than that “everyone in the building did it yesterday.” The meetings were described as briefings on general policy issues, offering legislators a chance to ask questions. The Sun notes that under Nevada’s open meeting law, government agencies would not be allowed to do this in a closed meeting, but that the legislature exempted itself from the law. Read the court decision
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Deadlines Count for Construction Defects in Florida

November 06, 2013 — CDJ STAFF
Scott Kiernan, an attorney in the Orlando offices of Becker & Poliakoff, writing on their Florida Construction Law Authority site notes that “nothing lasts forever, especially the right to sue for building defects.” Under Florida law, according to Mr. Kiernan, the time in which a condominium association can file a construction defect is “only 4 years from the time that the Condominium Association knew or should have known of the defect(s).” However, for defects that aren’t even discovered during those first four years, there is a ten-year period where claims for latent defects can become the subject of a construction defect claim. Read the court decision
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Struggling Astaldi Announces Defaults on Florida Highway Contracts

April 22, 2019 — Scott Judy - Engineering News-Record
Astaldi Construction Corp. announced on March 28 that it was voluntarily defaulting on four contracts with the Florida Dept. of Transportation. Included among those was a $108.3-million contract covering the 3.5-mile-long Section 7A for the $1.6-billion Wekiva Parkway project. Astaldi’s default on that project comes nearly a year after the contractor commenced work on April 1, 2018. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Scott Judy, ENR
Mr. Judy may be contacted at judys@enr.com

Dave McLain named Barrister’s Best Construction Defects Lawyer for Defendants for 2019

January 20, 2020 — David M. McLain – Colorado Construction Litigation
The attorneys and staff at Higgins, Hopkins, McLain & Roswell are proud to announce that Law Week Colorado named Founding Member Dave McLain as the 2019 People’s Choice for Best Construction Defects Lawyer for Defendants. According to the publication:

Law Week Colorado asked its readership to weigh in on the best attorneys in just about every practice area we could think of. We received hundreds of responses and sifted through the votes for each category to determine the “People’s Choice” winner – the top attorney in each practice area according to other attorneys. And then we handed it to the “Barrister” (the hive mind of Law Week staff, supplemented by public votes and a healthy dose of additional research) to determine the Barrister’s Choice.

In recognizing Mr. McLain this year, Law Week Colorado stated:

Previously appearing in Law Week’s 2015 Barrister’s Best issue [in which he was recognized as the Barrister’s Choice as Best Construction Defects Lawyer for Defendants], David McLain participates in numerous speaking engagements on construction defects claims and is seen as a leader in the field. His extensive experience over the last two decades of practice speaks for itself.

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

Sustainable, Versatile and Resilient: How Mass Timber Construction Can Shake Up the Building Industry

April 10, 2023 — Cait Horner, Adam J. Weaver & Allan C. Van Vliet - Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law Blog
Design professionals, real estate developers and builders alike are advocating for a relatively new way of using one of the world’s oldest building materials—wood—in large-scale commercial and residential construction projects. Mass timber, or structural timber, touts such benefits as carbon reduction and seismic durability—all with a lower construction time. With ESG on the minds of clients, investors and tenants, mass timber projects present an attractive construction option for the integration of sustainable resources and these various benefits. The most common and popular form of mass timber, cross-laminated timber (CLT), has been recently gaining popularity in the U.S. after widespread adoption in Europe over the past 20 years. CLT consists of layers of trimmed and kiln-dried lumber boards, usually three, five or seven across, stacked and glued crosswise at 90-degree angles. These stacked lumber boards create large slabs that are used to build floors, walls and ceilings—put those fabricated pieces together, and you have a whole building constructed of CLT. Reprinted courtesy of Cait Horner, Pillsbury, Adam J. Weaver, Pillsbury and Allan C. Van Vliet, Pillsbury Ms. Horner may be contacted at cait.horner@pillsburylaw.com Mr. Weaver may be contacted at adam.weaver@pillsburylaw.com Mr. Van Vliet may be contacted at allan.vanvliet@pillsburylaw.com Read the court decision
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Hurricane Claim Cannot Survive Anti-Concurrent Causation Clause

May 15, 2023 — Tred R. Eyerly - Insurance Law Hawaii
The court upheld the insurer's denial of coverage for hurricane damage caused by storm surge. Heritage Motorcoach Resort & Marina Condominium Association, Inc v. Axis Ins. Co., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 58931 (S.D. Ala. April 4, 2023). Heritage operated a resort with a marina, dock and clubhouse. Hurricane Sally caused damage to the property. Heritage submitted a claim to its insurer, Axis. Axis investigated the claim. One investigator reported that the marina structures sustained damage caused by storm tide forces, wave action and debris impact. He opined that the marina structures did not sustain wind damage. When deposed, he testified that there was a combination of vessels and wave action causing damage to the marina. A second investigator found that the storm drove boats and other debris into the marina area causing much of the damage. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Tred R. Eyerly, Damon Key Leong Kupchak Hastert
Mr. Eyerly may be contacted at te@hawaiilawyer.com

Case-Shiller Redo Shows Less Severe U.S. Home-Price Slump

September 03, 2014 — Lorraine Woellert – Bloomberg
The collapse in U.S. home prices that stoked the worst recession since the Great Depression wasn’t quite as severe as initially estimated, according to data from S&P/Case-Shiller. Property values nationally fell 26 percent from the February 2007 peak to the December 2011 trough, not 34 percent as previously reported, revised data showed last week. The index will now be issued monthly rather than quarterly. The change is the result of CoreLogic Inc. (CLGX)’s $6 million purchase of the S&P/Case-Shiller index from technology company Fiserv Inc. in March 2013. Case-Shiller has spent more than a year retrofitting its model with CoreLogic’s bigger, higher-quality data set, leading to a change in how the index looks. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Lorraine Woellert, Bloomberg
Ms. Woellert may be contacted at lwoellert@bloomberg.net

FAIRFIELD CONNECTICUT BUILDING EXPERT DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES