Public contracts

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has held, over a sharp dissent, that a public authority’s bad faith violation of the PA Procurement Code payment sections does not require imposition of sanctions or attorneys’ fees. The decision focused on use of t… Read More

Concluding that a dispute clause left homeowners with no effective remedy, a divided South Carolina Supreme Court has stricken an arbitration clause in a home construction contract. The dissent, citing recent US Supreme Court decisions, argued that t… Read More

New York passed a law on June 18, 2016, affecting the right of a public authority to bar a claim due to untimely notice. Richard Dyer of Duane Morris has written a summary. The law appears intended to address the situation where contractors have lost… Read More

A Massachusetts trial court has held that a public authority, which inadvertently prequalified an electrical contractor who did not have the proper license, can override its own prequalification decision and reject a bid from the contractor. The cont… Read More

A contractor was the lowest bidder on a public project, and the second-low bidder was only $11,705 higher. A consultant later discovered that some of the bid quantities that it provided to the contractor (pre-bid) were mistaken. The contractor, who s… Read More

Lawyers hate this question. A contractor and subcontractor, having gone back and forth on a few contract terms while the sub is performing work, reach the end of the project – or at least the end of the sub’s work – without an agreed contract f… Read More

Referring to the “novelty of the U.S. Department of Labor’s interpretation,” a federal Court of Appeal has held that construction of the CityCenterDC private development project is not subject to Davis-Bacon wage rates, even though the land… Read More

Sometimes a construction contract allows for the amount of retainage being withheld by the owner to reduce, once the project is more than half complete. For instance, retainage that starts at 10% may reduce, at the halfway mark, to 5% being withheld… Read More