Here is an interesting case binding a Miller Act payment bond surety to an arbitration award against its prime contractor (bond principal) that it received sufficient notice of.  Notice is the operative word.  The surety could have participated in the arbitration, elected not to, and when its prime contractor (bond principal) lost the arbitration, it […]

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Recently, I shared an article with LevelSet about common construction claims and how to manage the risk with construction claims.  Check out the article here.   The article touches upon issues regarding: i) knowing your scope of work; ii) understanding the contract documents; iii) knowing your payment rights; iv) how to mitigate construction claims; v) […]

The post QUICK NOTE: ARTICLE ON CONSTRUCTION CLAIMS AND MANAGING RISK appeared first on Florida Construction Legal Updates.

A general contractor’s subcontract with its subcontractor should include a provision that entitles it to flow down liquidated damages assessed by the owner stemming from delays caused by the subcontractor.  Such a provision does not mean the general contractor does not have to prove delays caused by the subcontractor or can arbitrarily allocate the amount […]

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Do yourself a favor: Don’t sign a construction contract that doesn’t address COVID-19 or any pandemic or epidemic from this point forward! As the number of COVID-19 numbers rise, it would be reasonable to think this could have an impact on ongoing or future construction projects.   For this reason, I want to revisit the […]

The post DON’T SIGN A CONTRACT THAT DOESN’T ADDRESS COVID-19 (OR PANDEMICS AND EPIDEMICS) appeared first on Florida Construction Legal Updates.

If you recording a construction lien (referred to as a claim of lien) and looking to perfect your construction lien foreclosure rights, it is imperative that you work with counsel to ensure your rights are properly preserved.  This is good practice! A claim of lien must be served on an owner within 15 days after […]

The post MAKE SURE TO PROPERLY PERFECT AND PRESERVE CONSTRUCTION LIEN RIGHTS appeared first on Florida Construction Legal Updates.

Largely in the federal contract arena, there is a theory referred to as “cumulative impacts” used by a contractor to recover unforeseeable costs associated with a multitude of changes that have an overwhelming ripple effect on its efficiency, particularly efficiency dealing with its original, base contract work.  In other words, by dealing with extensive changes, there […]

The post HOW THE CUMULATIVE IMPACT THEORY HAS BEEN DEFINED appeared first on Florida Construction Legal Updates.

Teaming agreements are practical and useful agreements on public projects where a prime contractor teams with a subcontractor for purposes of submitting a bid or proposal in response to a solicitation.  The prime contractor and subcontractor work together to pursue that solicitation and have the government award the contract to the prime contractor.  The teaming […]

The post TEAMING AGREEMENTS- A CONTRACT TO PURSUE A SOLICITATION AND NEGOTIATE appeared first on Florida Construction Legal Updates.

If you are a contractor, you are aware of workers’ compensation immunity when it comes to injuries on the site; and, if not, you should be.  It is this workers’ compensation immunity (where workers compensation is the exclusive form of liability for an injured employee) which is why a contractor should generally always want to […]

The post YOU NEED TO BE A CONTRACTOR FOR WORKERS’ COMPENSATION IMMUNITY TO APPLY appeared first on Florida Construction Legal Updates.

Florida’s Uniform Trade Secret Act (included in Florida Statute s. 688.001 en seq.) defines the terms “trade secret” and “misappropriation.”  These definitions (found here) are important in that just because 1) we deem something a trade secret does not, in of itself, make it so, and 2) we deem someone to have misappropriated a trade […]

The post QUICK NOTE: STEPS TO PROTECT AND AVOID THE “MISAPPROPRIATION” OF A “TRADE SECRET” appeared first on Florida Construction Legal Updates.

In a non-construction case, but an interesting case nonetheless, the Second District Court of Appeals talks about the measure of damages when dealing with chattel (property) including loss of use damages.  Chattel, you say?   While certainly not a word used in everyday language, a chattel is “an item of tangible movable or immovable property except […]

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