PulteGroup Fires Exec Accused of Defamation By Founder’s Heir
January 17, 2023 —
Patrick Clark - BloombergPulteGroup Inc. fired a senior executive for violating the company’s code of conduct two days after the grandson of the homebuilder’s founder sued the executive for alleged defamation.
The company, which is the third-largest US homebuilder, said in a statement Friday that it had terminated Brandon Jones after the results of an independent investigation. Jones had been slated to assume the role of chief operating officer in January.
Bill Pulte, 34, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in Palm Beach County, Florida, alleging that Jones had used anonymous Twitter accounts to smear members of the Pulte family. The lawsuit accused the executive of impersonating a business journalist and making a false claim that Pulte manipulated his grandfather.
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Patrick Clark, Bloomberg
“Details Matter” is the Foundation in a Texas Construction Defect Suit
March 01, 2012 —
CDJ STAFFThe Court of Appeals of Texas has ruled in the case of Barzoukas v. Foundation Design. Mr. Barzoukas contracted with Heights Development to build a house. He subsequently sued Heights Developments and “numerous other defendants who participated in the construction of his house.” Barzoukas eventually settled with all but two defendants, one who went bankrupt and Foundation Design, the defendant in this case. In the earlier phase, Barzoukas made claims of “negligence, negligent misrepresentation, fraud, fraudulent inducement, conspiracy, and exemplary damages in connection with the foundation.”
Foundation Design had been hired to install 15-foot piers to support the foundation. The engineer of record, Larry Smith, sent a letter to Heights Development noting that they had encountered hard clay stone when drilling. Smith changed the specifications to 12-foot piers. Initially, the City of Houston called a halt to work on the home when an inspector concluded that the piers were too shallow. Heights Development later convinced the city to allow work to continue. Subsequently, experts concluded that the piers were too shallow.
Foundation Design filed a motion for summary judgment. The trial court granted this, “without specifying the basis for its ruling.” Barzoukas contends the court was in error. Foundation Design contends that “Barzoukas failed to proffer competent evidence establishing that their conduct proximately caused damages.” Further, they did not feel that Smith’s letter gave “rise to viable claims for fraud and fraudulent inducement.”
One problem the court had was a lack of evidence. The court noted that “the purported subcontract is entirely missing” in the pleadings. The court has no contract between Bazourkas and Heights Development, nor one between Heights Development and either Foundation Design or Smith. The court underscored the importance of this, writing, “details matter.” They found that “the details are largely missing here.” Without the contract, the court found it impossible to determine if “Smith or an entity related to him agreed to indemnify Heights Development for damages arising from Smith’s negligent performance.”
As the material facts are in dispute, the appeals court found that there were no grounds for a summary judgment in the case. “Pointing to the existence of a contract between Heights Development and Barzoukas, or to the existence of a subcontract, is the beginning of the analysis ? not the end.”
Foundation Design and Smith also claimed that Barzoukas’s expert did not proffer competent evidence and that the expert’s opinions were conclusory. The trial court did not rule on these claims and the appeals court has rejected them.
Finally, Barzoukas made a claim that the trial court should not have rejected his argument of fraud and fraudulent inducement. Here, however, the appeals court upheld the decision of the lower court. “Barzoukas did not present evidence supporting an inference that Smith or Foundation Design made a purposeful misrepresentation.
The court remanded the case to the trial court for reconsideration. One member of the panel, Judge Charles Seymore, upheld the entire decision of the trial court. He dissented with the majority, finding that the economic loss rule foreclosed the claim of negligence.
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Seven Former North San Diego County Landfills are Leaking Contaminants
April 07, 2011 —
Beverley BevenFlorez CDJ STAFFDeborah Sullivan Brennan of the North County Times reported that seven former dumps in San Diego are leaking contaminants into the surrounding groundwater. John R. Odermatt, a senior engineering geologist for the California Regional Water Quality Control Board s San Diego region, told the North County Times, “the risk to most county residents is very small or negligible, while local water supplies located in more rural areas may be at a somewhat elevated but unquantified level of risk.”
This issue is causing heavy scrutiny of a new proposed landfill in Gregory Canyon. The landfill would be located on 308 acres of undeveloped land near Pala, alongside the San Luis Rey River. The group “Save Gregory Canyon” has been speaking out against the landfill, stating that “the project threatens major detrimental impacts to both surface and groundwater, as well as a potential compromise of the two major San Diego Water Authority pipelines nearby.” Richard Felago, a Gregory Canyon Ltd. Consultant, told the North County Times that the 8-foot-thick liner, composed of layers of gravel and synthetic material, would not leak.
The appeal hearing is being rescheduled later this month after one of the three panelists recused himself due to having a competing interest in the property, according to the article by Gary Warth in the North County Times.
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New OSHA Regulations on Confined Spaces in Construction
May 20, 2015 —
Craig Martin – Construction Contractor AdvisorOn May 1, OSHA announced its final rules for construction workers in confined spaces. The Final Rules, which will take effect August 3, 2015, will require more comprehensive training , with the goal of providing construction workers the same or similar protections as employees in manufacturing and general industry.
The final rule will cover confined spaces such as:
- Crawl spaces
- Manholes
- Tanks
- Sewers
The final rule will require the following:
- Confined spaces must be large enough for an employee to enter and have a means of exiting.
- The air in confined spaces must be tested before workers enter them to ensure that the air is safe.
- Construction workers must share safety information with others when they are going to work in enclosed/confined spaces.
- Hazards associated with confined spaces must be continuously monitored and abated to the extent possible.
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Craig Martin, Lamson, Dugan and Murray, LLPMr. Martin may be contacted at
cmartin@ldmlaw.com
Massachusetts Pulls Phased Trigger On Its Statute of Repose
December 21, 2020 —
Kyle Rice - The Subrogation SpecialistIn D’Allesandro v. Lennar Hingham Holdings, LLC, 486 Mass 150, 2020 Mass. LEXIS 721, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts answered a certified question regarding how to apply the Massachusetts statute of repose, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 260, § 2B, in regards to phased construction projects. The court held that, in this context, the completion of each individual “improvement” to its intended use, or the substantial completion of the individual building and the taking of possession for occupancy by the owner or owners, triggers the statute of repose with respect to the common areas and limited common areas of that building. Additionally, the court held that where a particular improvement is integral to, and intended to serve, multiple buildings (or the development as a whole), the statute of repose is triggered when the discrete improvement is substantially complete and open to its intended use.
In D’Allesandro, the action arose out of the construction, marketing, sale and management of the Hewitts Landing Condominium (the Condominium) project. Ultimately, 150 units were constructed over 24 phases of construction, enclosed in 28 different buildings. Throughout construction, the project’s architect submitted declarations to the Town of Hingham swearing that the individual units were “substantially complete” and could be occupied for their intended use. The Town of Hingham then issued certificates of occupancy for the unit or building.
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Kyle Rice, White and WilliamsMr. Rice may be contacted at
ricek@whiteandwilliams.com
Shifting the Risk of Delay by Having Float Go Your Way
July 05, 2021 —
Christopher J. Brasco & Matthew D. Baker - ConsensusDocsCritical path delay plays a central role in allocating responsibility for project delay. The interrelated concept of concurrency is also frequently determinative of entitlement on a range of claims including by owners for liquidated damages and by contractors for delay damages. What constitutes critical/concurrent delay, however, is hotly debated by scheduling experts. The lack of real consensus regarding how critical/concurrent delay should be determined and analyzed has created significant uncertainty in scheduling disputes. Indeed, courts have adopted differing and at times conflicting theories of concurrency that can produce divergent outcomes for the parties. In an effort to reduce uncertainty, stakeholders have increasingly adopted specialized contractual provisions and scheduling techniques which have significant implications for the evaluation of the companion concepts of criticality and concurrency. One such mechanism is float sequestration. Regardless of whether float sequestration is ultimately in the construction industry’s broader interest, stakeholders must be able to recognize its use and appreciate the implications for delay disputes on their projects.
Simply defined, float is the number of days an activity can be delayed before affecting the project’s critical path (i.e., the longest chain of activities which determines the project’s minimal duration). Typically, only delays affecting the critical path can produce concurrent delay. Consequently, the concept of float is integral to understanding and resolving issues of both criticality and concurrency.
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Christopher J. Brasco, Watt, Tieder, Hoffar & Fitzgerald, LLP and
Matthew D. Baker, Watt, Tieder, Hoffar & Fitzgerald, LLP
Mr. Brasco may be contacted at cbrasco@watttieder.com
Mr. Baker may be contacted at mbaker@watttieder.com
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WSHB Ranks No.10 in Law360’s Best of Law Firms for Women
April 28, 2016 —
Beverley BevenFlorez-CDJ STAFFLaw360 recently published the survey findings and listed the “100 Best Law Firms for Female Attorneys,” and
Wood Smith Henning & Berman LLP (WSHB) ranked tenth.
“I was thrilled to help spearhead a recruitment committee to attract and retain female lawyer talent,” Victoria Ersoff, the first named partner at WSHB, stated. “Long before it was fashionable, the leaders at WSHB recognized that in order to retain first-class lawyers, they need to provide them with opportunities to balance their work and personal life.”
Janice Michaels, managing partner of WSHB’s Las Vegas office, praised the firm for treating all attorneys equally: “Female lawyers at WSHB are on equal footing with their male counterparts, whether it’s trial experience, mentoring or expanding professional opportunities. It is a great environment to learn and grow without the impediment of a glass-ceiling.”
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Fire Fears After Grenfell Disaster Set Back Wood Building in UK
May 29, 2023 —
Olivia Rudgard - BloombergThis article is part of the Bloomberg Green series Timber Town, which looks at the global rise of timber as a low-carbon building material.
To get fire department approval for their six-story London office project made of strong engineered wood known as
mass timber, Theo Michell and Richard Walker had to build a full-scale section of it in the UK, ship it to Poland and attempt to set it on fire.
The mockup was set alight “with enough material that replicates the fire load that you get from furniture and carpets and desks, and all the rest of it, and you see how that structure performs,” says Michell.
“It was cool,” adds Walker. “It looked amazing.”
Their building, called Paradise, passed the fire test and is under construction, though not without a significant drag on their budget and time.
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Olivia Rudgard, Bloomberg
