Volume 7 - Number 7 | February 16, 2009 - Construction Claims Advisor

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You are here: Home » Volume 7 - Number 7 | February 16, 2009

Volume 7 - Number 7 | February 16, 2009

Recent Issues

EDITOR'S NOTES | Issue 7-7: For years, English teachers have strived and struggled to teach students the fundamentals and importance of punctuation. Punctuation has the ability to dramatically alter the meaning of a sentence. To prove their point, English teachers love to write the following sentence on the board and ask students to punctuate it:

Woman without her man is nothing.

Typically, men write, “Woman, without her man, is nothing.” Women give a different version: “Woman: Without her, man is nothing.” Punctuation can make all the difference in the world. In this week’s first case, the Utah Supreme Court based its ruling on the placement of commas and parentheses associated with a termination for convenience clause on the state’s controversial Legacy Highway project.

In another roadway case, this time a bridge in California, a subcontractor sued for breach of contract after the prime contractor failed to utilize the subcontractor for the quantity of work estimated in the unit-price subcontract. Two courts agreed that the estimate did not guarantee the amount of work, and therefore rejected the subcontractor’s claim.

Construction Claims Advisor has covered many mechanic’s lien cases over the years (for a comprehensive list, type “mechanic’s lien” in the search engine on our website). The Montana Supreme Court has expanded the scope of a mechanic’s lien, presented in this week’s final case summary, by allowing a contractor to pursue a lien that involved something other than non-payment for completed work.

CLAIM PREPARATION COSTS RECOVERED IN TERMINATION FOR CONVENIENCE: A heavy highway contractor in Utah gets a lesson in punctuation when the state high court rejects the contractor’s arguments for limiting payment on a termination for convenience dispute.

UNIT-PRICE SUBCONTRACT DID NOT GUARANTEE MINIMUM QUANTITIES: Quantity estimates in a subcontract do not constitute a numerical guarantee unless the contract specifically spells it out, says a California court.

MECHANIC’S LIEN STATUTES ARE NOW PLATFORM FOR LITIGATING DISPUTED WORK: A mechanic’s lien in Montana is no longer limited to non-payment for completed work. The state high court has expanded the scope to include work disputes.