SILVA MISSOURI CONSTRUCTION EXPERT WITNESS
DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES

Leaders in Dispute Resolution Need to Make Unbiased Decisions for Mediation to Succeed

March 31, 2026 — Rick G. Erickson - Snell & Wilmer
As a mediator helping to settle construction disputes and as an arbitrator deciding outcomes of these disputes, I found certain lessons to be especially helpful after graduating last summer from the Executive Education program at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). The exceptional HKS curriculum included courses focused on negotiation strategies for multiparty disputes, decisive leadership during crisis, and human behavior affecting dispute resolution. In particular, our HKS class debated the impact of cognitive bias in dispute resolution, and we studied a central theme that decision-making is universally scientific. That is, parties making decisions in dispute resolution exhibit and rely upon empirical factors that good mediators and decision makers should appreciate and understand. Bias, for example, can cause key players to discount persuasive witnesses, admissible evidence, and reliable expert opinions that influence the outcome of a construction dispute. Biased decision makers may also choose to withhold key information from the mediator, as though doing so will help rather than hurt what is supposed to be an objective and diplomatic process. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Rick G. Erickson, Snell & Wilmer
Mr. Erickson may be contacted at rerickson@swlaw.com

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Top Developments 2025 - Issue 4

December 22, 2025 — John S. Anooshian, Paul A. Briganti, Elizabeth L. Ferguson, Alexandra M. George & Haley S. Newman - The Complex Insurance Coverage Reporter
“ARISING OUT OF” Rowe v. State Mut. Ins. Co., 2025 Me. LEXIS 89 (Me., Sept. 23, 2025) Maine Supreme Court, in the premises liability context, holds that an exclusion in a mobile homeowners policy for injury or damage "arising out of a premises . . . that is not an insured location'” precluded coverage for underlying negligent failure-to-warn claims. The court looked to authority from a workers compensation case, where it stated that “the term ‘arising out of' employment means that there must be some causal connection between the conditions under which the employee worked and the injury, or that the injury, in some proximate way, had its origin, its source, or its cause in the employment. . . . [T]he employment need not be the sole or predominant causal factor for the injury and . . . the causative circumstance need not have been foreseen or expected.” In this case, it found there to be “an immediate relationship between the injury and a condition of the uninsured premises” (specifically, a gap created by the owner-insured at the entrance to a mobile home), and rejected the claimant’s argument that the injury instead arose from the insureds’ negligent conduct in failing to warn. Separately, the court held that the property did not qualify as an “insured location,” reasoning it was not listed in the declarations and there was no evidence the insureds had resided there or acquired it for use as a residence. Reprinted courtesy of John S. Anooshian, White and Williams LLP, Paul A. Briganti, White and Williams LLP, Elizabeth L. Ferguson, White and Williams LLP, Alexandra M. George, White and Williams LLP and Haley S. Newman, White and Williams LLP Mr. Anooshian may be contacted at anooshianj@whiteandwilliams.com Mr. Briganti may be contacted at brigantip@whiteandwilliams.com Ms. Ferguson may be contacted at fergusone@whiteandwilliams.com Ms. Newman may be contacted at newmanh@whiteandwilliams.com Read the full story...

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$27B Meta Data Center Pushes Louisiana Toward Massive Power Expansion

April 27, 2026 — Vince Kong - Engineering News-Record
Meta Platforms has reached an agreement with Entergy Louisiana to fund new energy infrastructure to support its planned $27-billion data center in Richland Parish, a project the company says could ultimately scale to 5 GW, becoming its largest facility to date. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described the site as large enough to cover a significant portion of Manhattan. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Vince Kong, Engineering News-Record
Mr. Kong may be contacted at kongv@enr.com

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Ninth Circuit Holds That Policies Covering Environmental Claims Do Not Have Aggregate Limits

May 12, 2026 — Lorelie S. Masters & Joseph T. Niczky - Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog
In the case of County of San Bernardino v. Insurance Company of the State of Pennsylvania, the Ninth Circuit recently addressed the issue of whether general liability policies issued in the 1960s and 1970s included aggregate limits for claims arising under the premises-operations coverage in CGL policies. The difference between the policyholder’s interpretation of the policies’ limits clauses and the insurer’s interpretation was worth hundreds of millions of dollars in exposure for the insurer. The Court closely examined the policy language and extrinsic evidence from both the insurance industry’s drafting history and the parties before concluding that the policies were ambiguous. The Court construed that ambiguity in favor of the policyholder and ruled that aggregate limits did not apply to the claims at issue. The Court’s decision underscores the importance of carefully examining a policy’s limits, especially for older policies written before 1986 when the insurance industry revised the standard-form CGL policy to state the aggregate limits apply not only to products liability claims but to premises-operations claims as well. Decades of insurance industry drafting history confirms, as the policyholder’s submissions in this case indicate, that the industry well understood that operations claims like the environmental waste-disposal claims at issue here typically were not subject to aggregate limits. Reprinted courtesy of Lorelie S. Masters, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP and Joseph T. Niczky, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP Ms. Masters may be contacted at lmasters@hunton.com Mr. Niczky may be contacted at jniczky@hunton.com Read the full story...

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Real Estate & Construction News Roundup (11/5/25) – Apartment Conversion Projects Surge, Targeted AI in Real Estate Increases and Hotel Lobby Urge End of Government Shutdown

December 02, 2025 — Pillsbury's Construction & Real Estate Law Team - Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law Blog
In our latest roundup, government shutdown affects contractors, hotel construction stays flat, and more!

• The total U.S. hotel construction pipeline stayed relatively flat year over year in the third quarter of 2025, while brand conversions saw record-high project totals. (Lara Ewen, Construction Dive)
• Construction attorneys say some federal jobs during the government shutdown may require contractors to keep working, even if they’re not getting paid. (Sebastian Obando, Construction Dive)
• The government shutdown has resulted in an estimated $650 million in lost hotel business, with each day of the shutdown costing the economy $31 million “in activity that would’ve been generated by hotel stays.” (Lara Ewen, Hotel Dive)

Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Pillsbury's Real Estate & Construction Law Team

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Las Vegas Partner Jeffrey Saab and Team Leader D. Ryan Efros Secure a $0.00 Settlement on a Multimillion-Dollar Construction Defect Case!

April 14, 2026 — Dolores Montoya - Bremer Whyte Brown & O'Meara LLP
Partner Jeffrey Saab and Team Leader D. Ryan Efros’ client was a construction supervisor on a palatial mansion. The homeowners claimed millions of dollars in damages and asserted the client was a general contractor (GC) and so responsible for the alleged defects. Jeff and Ryan took more than 15 depositions, reinforcing their trial strategy theme: that the client was not a GC, but Plaintiffs were. They secured significant concessions from Plaintiffs, pressed Plaintiffs’ own negligent construction choices, and made the risk of trying the case intolerable. On the eve of trial, Plaintiffs backed down, settling out Jeff and Ryan’s client for $0.00. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Dolores Montoya, Bremer Whyte Brown & O'Meara LLP

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Amended Again?! Critical Changes to RPAPL § 881: What New York Contractors and Construction Managers Need to Know

March 10, 2026 — Mark A. Snyder & David Polazzi - Peckar & Abramson, P.C.
Recent amendments to New York’s RPAPL § 881 will significantly change how project teams obtain and maintain access to adjoining properties for construction-related work. The 2025 amendment signed into law by Governor Hochul, and the newly enacted 2026 revisions, will directly impact general contractors (GCs) and construction managers (CMs), as well as their trade contractors who regularly confront neighbor‑access, support‑of‑excavation, and protection‑of‑adjoining‑property challenges. Although we do not advise that GCs and CMs get involved in the “weeds” of license agreements or the prosecution of an action to obtain access pursuant to an RPAPL § 881 action, which are typically owner responsibilities, GCs and CMs should understand the change in law, as there may be circumstances where they are responsible for securing access. This alert outlines the key statutory changes and explains the operational, scheduling, insurance, and risk‑management implications for the New York construction industry. Reprinted courtesy of Mark A. Snyder, Peckar & Abramson, P.C. and David Polazzi, Peckar & Abramson, P.C. Mr. Snyder may be contacted at msnyder@pecklaw.com Mr. Polazzi may be contacted at dpolazzi@pecklaw.com Read the full story...

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Construction’s AI Moment — Why Contractors Are Increasingly Optimistic

December 30, 2025 — Aarni Heiskanen - AEC Business
A new industry research report from Dodge Construction Network in partnership with CMiC reveals a striking level of optimism among contractors about the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in construction. According to the survey, 87% of contractors believe AI will meaningfully transform their businesses, even though current adoption remains relatively low. This optimism reflects a growing recognition that AI isn’t just a buzzword, but a set of capabilities beginning to deliver tangible operational value across the built environment. Evolving roles One of the most interesting shifts the report highlights is how contractors envision their own roles evolving. Instead of being bogged down in repetitive administrative tasks, project teams expect AI to enable them to work more strategically, focusing on predictive insights rather than reactive fire-fighting. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Aarni Heiskanen, AEC Business
Mr. Heiskanen may be contacted at aec-business@aepartners.fi

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