Despite Increased Presence in Construction, Women Lack Size-Appropriate PPE
September 26, 2022 —
Robin Marth - Construction ExecutiveFit. Functionality. Comfort. These are absolute musts for any employee wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) for work. Yet for many women in the workplace, finding PPE that fits well remains a challenge.
In 2021, women comprised 11% of construction workers, 7.9% of truck drivers and 29% of manufacturing employees (Bureau of Labor Statistics), and their numbers in these fields continue to increase. Unfortunately, their options for proper-fitting PPE are not growing.
"It's difficult to find PPE that fits women, because there is limited availability of these products, or suppliers do not offer them at all," says Brandy Bossle, owner and principal consultant at Triangle Safety Consulting LLC. "We really need suppliers to go out of their way to offer PPE that's cut for both men and women."
Private fleet driver and Women in Trucking Image Team member Carol Nixon agrees, saying, "You can find men's hats, gloves, jackets and safety vests everywhere, but not with a female fit."
Women can be shaped differently from head to toe—their faces, shoulders, waists, fingers and toes are often narrower, and they often have shorter torsos, among other differences.
In order for PPE to fit many women comfortably and properly, these proportions need to be taken into account. In fact, OSHA states on its website that PPE used by women should be based on female body measurement data and that employers should offer PPE in sizes suitable for women.
Reprinted courtesy of
Robin Marth, Construction Executive, a publication of Associated Builders and Contractors. All rights reserved.
Read the court decisionRead the full story...Reprinted courtesy of
Ms. Marth may be contacted at
media@jjkeller.com
Home Sales Topping $100 Million Smash U.S. Price Records
May 07, 2014 —
Prashant Gopal – BloombergThe U.S. trophy-home market is shattering price records this year as an increasing number of residential properties change hands for more than $100 million.
Barry Rosenstein, founder of hedge fund Jana Partners LLC, has purchased an 18-acre (7.3-hectare) beachfront property in East Hampton, New York, for $147 million, according to the New York Post. That would break the U.S. single-family price record of $120 million set last month with the sale of a Greenwich, Connecticut, waterfront estate on 51 acres. In Los Angeles, a 50,000-square-foot (4,600-square meter) home sold in February for $102 million in cash after a bidding war.
The world’s richest people are moving cash to real estate as they seek havens for their wealth. In the U.S., an improving economy and stocks at a record are bolstering confidence among the affluent. Home purchases of $2 million or more jumped 33 percent in January and February from a year earlier to the highest level for the two-month period in data going back to 1988, according to an analysis by DataQuick.
Read the court decisionRead the full story...Reprinted courtesy of
Prashant Gopal, BloombergMr. Gopal may be contacted at
pgopal2@bloomberg.net
Adobe Opens New Office Tower and Pledges No Companywide Layoffs in 2023
April 18, 2023 —
Edward Ludlow & Brody Ford - BloombergAdobe Inc., breaking ranks with an industry cutting costs and laying off workers, has opened a new office tower in its home city, adding new capacity for staff and pledging no companywide job cuts in 2023.
The Founders Tower is an 18-story, 1.25 million-square-foot shimmering glass addition to San Jose, California, a city Adobe has called home since the early ’90s. The software company’s fourth tower has capacity for 3,000 employee workstations, Adobe said Wednesday in a statement. Despite opening a new office with amenities, the company remains supportive of hybrid and flexible work arrangements.
“We’re actually committed to continuing to grow here,” Adobe Chief People Officer Gloria Chen said in an interview with Bloomberg Television to air Wednesday. “We are committed to not having companywide layoffs.”
Reprinted courtesy of
Edward Ludlow, Bloomberg and
Brody Ford, Bloomberg Read the court decisionRead the full story...Reprinted courtesy of
Liquidated Damages: A Dangerous Afterthought
January 15, 2019 —
Trevor B. Potter - Construction ExecutiveOwners and contractors frequently treat liquidated damages provisions as an afterthought, but they deserve to be treated as a key deal term. If a contractor breaches a contract by failing to complete the work in a timely manner, the remedy is typically an agreed upon amount or rate of liquidated damages.
Liquidated damages provisions seldom get more than a cursory, “back of the napkin” analysis, or worse, parties will simply plug in a number. This practice is dangerous because liquidated damages typically represent the owner’s sole remedy for delay and, more importantly, they are subject to attack and possible invalidation if certain legal standards are not met. The parties to a construction contract should never agree to an amount of liquidated damages without first attempting to forecast and calculate actual, potential damages.
Reprinted courtesy of
Trevor B. Potter, Construction Executive, a publication of Associated Builders and Contractors. All rights reserved.
Read the court decisionRead the full story...Reprinted courtesy of
Sweet News for Yum Yum Donuts: Lost Goodwill is Not an All or Nothing Proposition
October 07, 2019 —
Josh Cohen - California Construction Law BlogLast month a California Court of Appeals clarified that a property owner facing eminent domain is only required to prove partial loss of goodwill, not total loss of goodwill, to be entitled to a trial on the amount of goodwill lost.
Yum Yum Donuts operated a shop in Los Angeles that was subject to eminent domain by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to make way for light railway track. At trial, Yum Yum sought loss of goodwill as part of its condemnation damages under Code of Civil Procedure section 1263.510.
At trial the MTA’s expert testified that Yum Yum could have reduced its goodwill loss if it relocated to one of three alternative locations rather than simply closing the shop. But the expert conceded that even if Yum Yum had relocated, it would have lost some goodwill. Yum Yum refused to relocate, arguing that its relocation costs would render the move unprofitable. The trial court found that Yum Yum’s failure to mitigate its damages barred Yum Yum from having a jury trial to recover any goodwill damages.
Read the court decisionRead the full story...Reprinted courtesy of
Josh Cohen, Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean LLPMr. Cohen may be contacted at
jcohen@wendel.com
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Substitution Hearings Under California’s Listing Law
March 04, 2019 —
Garret Murai - California Construction Law BlogThe next case, JMS Air Conditioning and Appliance Service, Inc. v. Santa Monica Community College District, 2nd District Court of Appeal, Case No. B284068 (December 17, 2018), provides an interesting behind-the-scenes look at substitution hearings under the Subletting and Subcontracting Fair Practices Act.
The Subletting and Subcontracting Fair Practices Act
- The Subletting and Subcontracting Fair Practices Act (Public Contract Code Section 4100 et seq.), also commonly referred to as the “Listing Law,” requires that prime contractors on state and local public works projects “list” the following subcontractors in their bids:
- Subcontractors who are anticipated to perform work with a value in excess of 0.5% of the prime contractor’s total bid; and
Subcontractors, on street, highway and bridge projects, who are anticipated to perform work with a value in excess of the greater of: (a) 0.5% of the prime contractor’s total bid; or (b) in excess of $10,000.
Read the court decisionRead the full story...Reprinted courtesy of
Garret Murai, Wendel RosenMr. Murai may be contacted at
gmurai@wendel.com
Creative Avenue for Judgment Creditor to Collect a Judgment
October 27, 2016 —
David Adelstein – Florida Construction Legal UpdatesI have a judgment against another entity. Now what? I want to briefly talk about this “now what?” in the context of the recent decision in MYD Marine Distributor, Inc. v. International Paint, Ltd., 41 Fla. L. Weekly D2364a (Fla. 4th DCA 2016). Although this case is not a construction case, it poses an interesting issue for any entity that has a judgment entered against it (known as the judgment debtor) while it is contemporaneously the plaintiff and pursuing monetary damages in an unrelated case or cases. This case also presents an avenue for any judgment creditor to pursue in the event other post-judgment collection efforts are unsuccessful.
Read the court decisionRead the full story...Reprinted courtesy of
David Adelstein, Katz, Barron, Squitero, Faust, Friedberg, English & Allen, P.A.Mr. Adelstein may be contacted at
dma@katzbarron.com
Are Construction Defect Laws Inhibiting the Development of Attached Ownership Housing in Colorado?
October 29, 2014 —
James M. Mulligan, Esq. – Snell & Wilmer, LLPThis article responds to the article published in the September 18, 2014 issue of the Construction Defect Journal. It provides a different perspective to this issue, based on the author's experience with these matters during the past decade of attention to this specific challenge.
During recent years, there has been much discussion about the lack of attached ownership housing construction in Colorado. The main culprit, according to several sources within the community, seems to be our state's construction defect laws.
Since 2001, there has been a periodic series of legislative fixes to our construction defect laws that saw the pendulum swing back and forth between the interests of the consuming public who purchase the homes and certain protections of the developers and homebuilders from excessive and unnecessary litigation. Some say that the current state of the law is more onerous than necessary on the developers and homebuilders and it is artificially inhibiting the development of multifamily ownership housing in a time of high demand and low supply.
A recent opinion article in the September 29th, 2014 issue of the Denver Post stated, in part:
"No one is suggesting that developers escape liability for construction defects or that homeowners be denied the right to sue. But under the state's current defect laws, the scales have tilted too far in favor of litigation as the default tool for resolving disputes. And this appears to be the biggest reason for the collapse in the number of new multifamily [ownership] dwellings in recent years."
Rather than the typical conflict between the plaintiffs’ bar (representing the homebuyer) and the homebuilding industry that has produced the "back-and-forth" nature of our construction defect laws in the past, this 2014 legislative session found new constituents and a different perspective on the issue. A broad ranging coalition that included the Metro Mayors Caucus, major segments of the affordable housing community, and the general business community came together to address what their research showed as an astonishing lack of construction of ownership attached housing. There was a continuing boom going on in the development of multifamily "rental" housing, but an even more unusual deficit in multifamily "ownership" housing. Research apparently showed that, although about 20% + of construction of attached housing was in the ownership format throughout the Rocky Mountain West, Colorado was only producing about 2%. Interviews conducted by the research group that was retained by this coalition revealed that the development and homebuilding community were not willing to commence construction of ownership attached housing because of the continuing threat of litigation available under current interpretations of our state's construction defect laws. Lenders were also reluctant to provide financing for such projects faced with the apparent real threat of litigation that could shut down their projects and materially impact their loan viability and the value of the loan's collateral. Moreover, insurance premiums to cover such claims were so high, and many times unavailable, as to make such projects unfeasible.
This lack of available multifamily ownership housing was creating an ever-increasing concern over the resulting imbalance of housing options in and around the metro area, where the urban character of the metro region would need such ownership options in the attached housing format in order to address the more dense character of the urban setting. This imbalance of ownership attached housing was thwarting the advancement of "community" in the context of creating opportunities for all options of housing so important for a community balance. This included ownership options in this format that address the need for the younger professionals entering the workforce, newly forming households, seniors desiring to scale down their housing size and location, as well as the segment of the market who have limited means and need to address the affordability of homeownership. This was being most clearly felt along the FasTracks lines where attached ownership housing was an important element in originally advancing the TOD communities that are expected to be developed around these transit stops.
Rather than engage the battle of creating more contention in the various aspect of construction defect legislation per se, this coalition attempted to temper their approach and address specific issues that seemed to advance protection of the consuming homeowner while, at the same time, advocating a method of dispute resolution encouraged in the state's laws regarding such issues.
Normally, attached ownership housing is developed under our state laws governing the creation of Common Interest Communities ("CIC's"), including those communities where there are units that are attached and contain common elements. These CIC's will be encumbered by certain recorded documents (normally referred to as "Declarations") that structure the "community" within which the units are located and set up certain rules and restrictions that are intended to respect the common interests of the unit owners within that community. There is also a Homeowners Association ("HOA") organized for the common interest community that is charged with the management of the common elements and the enforcement of the rule and regulations governing the community.
The coalition chose to address their concerns through a bill including a couple of changes in the state laws governing CIC's, which would provide further protection to the homeowner and advance alternative dispute resolution as an expedient approach to resolving disputes should they arise. Those changes included:
1. Majority Owner Vote Re: Litigation -Rather than allowing two owners plus a vote of the HOA Board to determine whether or not to file litigation alleging construction defects in a CIC, the proposed change would require a simple majority vote of the unit owners who are members in the respective HOA where the alleged defect occurred. This approach addressed the increasing concern of unit owners whose homes are unmarketable and not financeable during the course of any such litigation.
This does not prevent an aggrieved owner from pursuing claims regarding that person's own unit, it just requires a majority of the owners to vote for litigation that affects the entire CIC in such litigation. This approach also included a provision for advance notice to the owners of such pending litigation accompanied by several disclosures regarding the potential litigation and its potential impact on the respective owner. This approach to protecting the rights of homeowners in a CIC seemed to be in line with everyone's interests, while not preventing an individual consumer/unit owner to advance its own claims.
2. Alternative Dispute Resolution -This proposal clarified the stated intent of the CIC statutes that advances alternative dispute resolution by providing that any mandatory arbitration provisions that are already contained in the Declaration that encumbers the respective unit in a CIC shall not be changed or deleted without the permission of the Declarant (e.g.; the developer of the CIC). This provision was to affirm a provision that the purchasing unit owner was aware of at the time of purchase and that it follows the spirit and intent of the state statutes governing such CIC's.
Notwithstanding the curative nature of these proposals, the legislation did not address the issue because a legislative maneuver was employed that did not allow for its consideration during the waning days of the session.
More recently, one of Colorado's municipalities, the home rule city of Lakewood, passed a local ordinance addressing this issue in a similar fashion, with a few more definitive suggestions regarding how to alleviate the lopsided nature of our current state of law. Without going into detail at this time with that specific ordinance, or the issue of its ability to address matters of a state-wide concern at the local level, the point is that several of Colorado's local communities, frustrated with the inability of the state legislature to deal with the issue are, at the very least, sending a signal that something must be done and, if the state is unwilling to lead on this matter, local communities will have to act.
This issue has not receded into the back room, and we will see a continuing crusade from an updated coalition to address these reasonable modifications to our state laws that will at least provide some protections to the CIC homeowner regarding unwanted litigation and some relief to the homebuilding industry from excessive litigation.
James M. Mulligan is a partner in the Denver office of Snell & Wilmer, LLP, a full-service commercial law firm located in nine cities throughout the Western United States and in Mexico. The firm’s website is http://www.swlaw.com.
Read the court decisionRead the full story...Reprinted courtesy of
