March 5, 2007

EDITOR'S NOTES

“Certainty of change is a constant of the construction process,” write Phil Bruner and Patrick O’Connor, Jr., in their widely accepted seven-tome work on construction law. They continue, “A ‘change’ is defined as an alteration to an existing contract requirement concerning work that is already required to be done. An ‘extra,’ on the other hand, is an addition to the contract involving work that had not been included in the original agreement.”

In the case of a South Carolina school district, the district issued supplementary contracts when it expanded the scope of its original project to include additional work. The question then arose: Is this additional work a “change” to the original contract or “extra” work more appropriately handled via a separate contract? The answer offers a lesson in semantics.

Also this week, a state high court looks at an indemnity clause when a contractor’s employee is injured on the job because of his own negligence. The question that arises in our last case offers answers to whether a supplier has a contractual duty to provide materials for an entire project when the agreement originated with a price quotation on a bid proposal and not an actual contract.

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