Fairfield Connecticut Building Expert Directory

After More than Two Years, USDOT Rejects WSDOT’s Recommendation to Reinstate Non-Minority Women-Owned DBEs into DBE Participation Goals

February 24, 2020 — Ellie Perka - Ahlers Cressman & Sleight PLLC
For the past several years, Ahlers Cressman & Sleight has been closely following news of Washington State Department of Transportation’s (“WSDOT’s”) exclusion of non-minority women-owned Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (“DBEs”)[1] from qualifying toward Condition of Award (“COA”) Goals on federally-funded projects. See ACS’s letter of January 9, 2014 and blog articles of June 2, 2017 and September 21, 2017. In a striking—and long awaited—decision issued just days ago, USDOT rejected WSDOT’s recommendation to unwind the exclusion of non-minority women-owned DBEs from COA Goals, meaning women-owned DBEs in Washington remain excluded from DBE COA participation goals until September 2020. As background, the DBE program is a program created by Congress with the goal of increasing women and minority-owned business participation in federally-funded transportation contracting. To withstand constitutional scrutiny, each state must tailor its program to the specific discrimination found to exist in that state.[2] To that end, every three years, WSDOT must conduct a “Disparity Study,” aimed at statistically measuring the “discrimination” in the marketplace. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Ellie Perka, Ahlers Cressman & Sleight PLLC
Ms. Perka may be contacted at ellie.perka@acslawyers.com

Nine ACS Lawyers Recognized as Super Lawyers – Including One Top 10 and Three Top 100 Washington Attorneys

August 14, 2023 — Travis Colburn - Ahlers Cressman & Sleight
Our blog articles usually cover construction-related issues, but Ahlers Cressman & Sleight, PLLC – once again – is honored to announce nine members of our firm were awarded the distinction of being a “Super Lawyer” in Washington. To become a Super Lawyer, only the top attorneys are nominated by their peers. Once nominated, candidates are researched and evaluated by an independent third-party across twelve key categories, such as experience, honors/awards, verdicts/settlements, and others. Next potential Super Lawyers are evaluated by a highly-credentialed “Blue Ribbon Panel” of peers before final selection. The process is extremely competitive and only 5 percent of the total lawyers in Washington are nominated as Super Lawyers. The following – including one Top 10 and three Top 100 attorneys – are Ahlers Cressman & Sleight, PLLC’s Super Lawyers: John P. Ahlers, one of the firm’s founding partners, was again recognized as a Top 10 Super Lawyer in Washington State for 2023 – this is his seventh year in a row in the Top 10. A founding member of Ahlers Cressman & Sleight, PLLC, he has been named a Super Lawyer in Construction Litigation since 2001—23 years in a row. To read Mr. Ahlers’ full profile, click here. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Travis Colburn, Ahlers Cressman & Sleight
Mr. Colburn may be contacted at travis.colburn@acslawyers.com

Chinese Brooklyn-to-Los Angeles Plans Surge: Real Estate

April 01, 2014 — Nadja Brandt and John Gittelsohn – Bloomberg
It took just one 15-minute phone call in July to persuade Ifei Chang to join Shanghai-based developer Greenland Holding Group Co. and lead a U.S. expansion. Within three months, she was running $6 billion of projects as part of a record push by Chinese investors into American property. Greenland reached a preliminary agreement in October to buy a 70 percent stake in the $5 billion Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, New York. That followed a July deal to acquire a $1 billion residential-and-entertainment project in downtown Los Angeles. Chang, who took charge of that site upon arriving in the U.S., is now on the hunt for more investments. “In China, you climb a ladder where everything is floating and moving so fast,” Chang, 49, said in an interview at her sparsely furnished 46th-floor L.A. office overlooking the empty lot where the Metropolis project will be built. “We come from a country of 1.4 billion people and a lot of economic growth. This kind of project and investment speed is very normal in China. That’s why we are so confident we will deliver this project.” Greenland, like other Chinese companies, is committing to a growing number of multibillion-dollar developments outside of its home market. Chinese investments in U.S. commercial properties jumped almost 10-fold last year from 2012, with Manhattan the biggest area for purchases, followed by other New York City boroughs and Los Angeles, according to research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. Ms. Brandt may be contacted at nbrandt@bloomberg.net; Mr. Gittelsohn may be contacted at johngitt@bloomberg.net Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Nadja Brandt and John Gittelsohn, Bloomberg

California’s High Speed Rail Project. Are We Done With the Drama?

October 22, 2014 — Garret Murai – California Construction Law Blog
Proponents of California’s high-speed rail project cleared a major hurdle this past week when the California Supreme Court declined to review a California Court of Appeals ruling which held that the state’s funding plan did not violate Proposition 1A, the voter-approved initiative passed in 2008, which provided initial funding for the project. For those like me who have been following the fits and starts of California’s high-speed rail project, it may be hard to remember how it all got started, and how we got to where we are. California's High-Speed Rail Project California’s high-speed rail project involves the construction of a high-speed passenger rail system running from Northern California to Southern California. The $68 billion system, expected to begin operation in 2029, will initially run from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin in under 3 hours with train speeds capable of over 200 miles per hour. The system will eventually extend from Sacramento to San Diego covering a distance of approximately 800 miles with up to 24 stations. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Garret Murai, Kronick Moskovitz Tiedemann & Girard
Mr. Murai may be contacted at gmurai@kmtg.com

The Riskiest Housing Markets in the U.S.

June 26, 2014 — Ben Steverman – Bloomberg
The real estate rollercoaster ride for U.S. homeowners isn't new. Some markets had even rockier rides in the early 1980s or '90s. When so much wealth is tied up in one asset, the risk -- or stability -- of a local market can mean a lot to a homeowner. (See “The Hidden Risks in Your Housing Market” for more on this.)   Bloomberg.com asked real estate website Zillow.com to help us figure out which U.S. markets have been the riskiest over the last 35 years. Our measure of risk: Assuming buyers held on to their homes for five years before selling, what was their chance of suffering a loss? As a secondary criterion, we compared the worst annual losses homeowners in these markets have experienced since 1979. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Ben Steverman, Bloomberg
Mr. Steverman may be contacted at bsteverman@bloomberg.net

County Officials Refute Resident’s Statement that Defect Repairs Improper

August 27, 2014 — Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFF
Manatee County, Florida officials stated that “they are confident construction defects at the Willowbrook subdivision being fixed by the builder KB Home are being properly supervised and repaired,” according to the Bradenton Herald. However, a resident told the Bradenton Herald previously that “mold remediation isn’t being done properly and good wood was being installed over rotted wood.” John Barnott, director of the Manatee County Building & Development Services Department told the Bradenton Herald that the county building chief has been at the site “every week, three or four times a week.” Carroll Dupre, the county building chief, stated that the development “looks real good.” The commissioner, Vanessa Baugh, stated that she had not received any complaints from Willowbrook residents and that “she was ‘not pleased with the implications of the article.’” Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of

A Court-Side Seat: Butterflies, Salt Marshes and Methane All Around

November 16, 2020 — Anthony B. Cavender - Gravel2Gavel
Our latest summary of some recent developments in the courts and the federal agencies includes a unique case involving salt marshes adjacent to San Francisco Bay. THE FEDERAL COURTS A Wolf Among the Butterflies On October 13, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided the case of North American Butterfly Association v. Chad Wolf, Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The National Butterfly Center is a 100-acre wildlife sanctuary located in Texas along the border between the United States and Mexico, and in 2017, the DHS exerted control over a segment of the sanctuary to construct facilities to impede unauthorized entry into the United States. It was alleged that the government failed to provide advance notice to the sanctuary before it entered the sanctuary to build its facilities. The Association filed a lawsuit to halt these actions for several reasons, including constitutional claims and two federal environmental laws (NEPA and the Endangered Species Act), but the lower court dismissed the lawsuit because of the provisions of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA). That law forecloses the applicability of these laws if the Secretary of DHS issues appropriate declaration. On appeal, the DC Circuit held, in a 2 to 1 decision, that the lawsuit should not have been dismissed. The plaintiffs had standing to file this lawsuit, but the jurisdiction stripping provisions of the IIRIRA, when invoked, required that the statutory claims be dismissed as well as a constitutional Fourth Amendment search and seizure claim. However, the plaintiff’s Fifth Amendment claim that the government’s actions violated their right to procedural due process must be reviewed. The Center was given no notice of the government’s claims and no opportunity to be heard before these actions were taken. The dissenting judge argued that the court was being asked to review a non-final decision, which it should not do. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Anthony B. Cavender, Pillsbury
Mr. Cavender may be contacted at anthony.cavender@pillsburylaw.com

Dorian Lashes East Canada, Then Weakens Heading Out to Sea

September 16, 2019 — The Associated Press (Rob Gillies) - Bloomberg
The storm that already walloped the Virgin Islands, Bahamas and North Carolina lashed at far-eastern Canada with hurricane-force winds for much of Sunday, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people before weakening and heading into the North Atlantic. Dorian had hit near the city of Halifax Saturday afternoon, ripping roofs off apartment buildings, toppling a huge construction crane and uprooting trees. There were no reported deaths in Canada, though the storm was blamed for at least 50 elsewhere along its path. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of The Associated Press (Rob Gillies), Bloomberg

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