WHATCOM COUNTY WASHINGTON CONSTRUCTION EXPERT WITNESS
DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES

Applying Jury Verdict Method in Quantifying Damages Due to Defective Specifications

March 31, 2026 — David Adelstein - Florida Construction Legal Updates
An older case deals with three important considerations: (1) defective specifications; (2) whether the defective specifications were misleading or misrepresentative; and (3) applying the jury verdict method in quantifying damages. In Metric Construction Co., Inc. v. U.S., 80 Fed. Cl. 178 (Fed. Cl. 2008), a contractor was contracted by the federal government to construct a warehouse. There were defects in the structural steel design specifications underlying the standing seam metal roof installed by the contractor and, as a result, the roof system leaked causing damage. The contractor incurred significant costs in repairing the damage, and pursued recovery of these costs against the government. The contractor claimed the structural steel design serving as the framework for the metal roof was defective and misleading and caused the leaks. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of David Adelstein, Kirwin Norris
Mr. Adelstein may be contacted at dma@kirwinnorris.com

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Federal Court Highlights the Strategic Value of Additional Insured Coverage

June 22, 2026 — Michael S. Levine - Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog
A recent decision from the District of Maryland underscores a recurring—but often underutilized—opportunity for policyholders: securing and enforcing additional insured coverage under another party’s liability policy. In Charter Oak Fire Insurance Co. v. Builders Premier Insurance Co., the court held that an equipment lessor qualified as an additional insured under the lessee’s policy and was entitled to a primary defense. The decision is a useful reminder that additional insured coverage can fundamentally shift defense obligations and materially reduce a policyholder’s exposure. We build on the decision to highlight the practical steps policyholders should take to ensure that all potentially available insurance is identified and pursued. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Michael S. Levine, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP
Mr. Levine may be contacted at mlevine@hunton.com

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Appeals Court Upholds Skanska, Granite Win in ‘I-4 Ultimate’ JV Dispute

June 15, 2026 — Bryan Gottlieb - Engineering News-Record
A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s decision requiring The Lane Construction Corp. to pay roughly $79 million in damages, plus interest, to joint venture partners Skanska USA Civil Southeast and Granite Construction for work on Florida’s I-4 Ultimate highway megaproject in Orlando, which was completed in 2022. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Bryan Gottlieb, Engineering News-Record
Mr. Gottlieb may be contacted at gottliebb@enr.com

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HDR Agreed to $12M Settlement With Miami Bridge Design-Build Team

May 12, 2026 — Richard Korman - Engineering News-Record
HDR last year agreed to pay $12 million to the design-build construction contractor Archer Western-de Moya Group to settle its claims that the engineer had incompletely designed and under-designed Miami's new Signature Bridge when the joint venture committed to a fixed price prior to construction in 2018. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Richard Korman, Engineering News-Record
Mr. Korman may be contacted at kormanr@enr.com

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Fort Lauderdale Associate Secures Summary Judgment in Rare Premises Liability Win

February 23, 2026 — Lewis Brisbois Newsroom
Fort Lauderdale associate Kyle Hollander recently secured a summary judgment victory for his client, Winn-Dixie, in a contested premises liability case. This was a hotly disputed liability case of water on the floor near an ice cooler with surveillance footage of a customer constantly bringing bags of ice to and from the cooler to the register. The plaintiff unknowingly stepped into the area of dripped melted ice and fell. Kyle successfully argued based on the plaintiff’s own deposition testimony and the surveillance footage that Winn-Dixie didn’t have the requisite actual notice. Additionally, Kyle argued that the brief duration the condition remained on the floor was legally insufficient to establish constructive notice under Florida law. The Court agreed, finding that the evidence would not survive a directed verdict and granting summary judgment in favor of the defense. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Lewis Brisbois

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The AI Knows Too Much: When Employees Feed Trade Secrets into Generative AI Tools

April 14, 2026 — Kazim A. Naqvi & John V. Mysliwiec - Sheppard
Every time an employee pastes proprietary source code, a customer list, or a confidential business strategy into ChatGPT, Claude, or Google Gemini, they may be quietly dismantling the legal protections that make those secrets worth protecting. Courts and regulators are only beginning to grapple with this problem, and right now, the burden of preventing it falls squarely on employers. The Legal Stakes Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) and the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“UTSA”) as adopted across most states, a trade secret plaintiff must show that the information at issue was subject to reasonable measures to maintain its secrecy. Courts have historically credited measures like confidentiality agreements, physical access controls, and employee training—but those safeguards were designed for a world of thumb drives and disgruntled employees. They were not built for a world where a well-meaning engineer can, in seconds, transmit an entire corpus of proprietary data to a third-party AI platform operating under terms of service that may permit the provider to use inputs for model training. Reprinted courtesy of Kazim A. Naqvi, Sheppard and John V. Mysliwiec, Sheppard Mr. Naqvi may be contacted at knaqvi@sheppard.com Mr. Mysliwiec may be contacted at jmysliwiec@sheppard.com Read the full story...

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In the Eye of the Beholder: Court of Appeal Finds Duty of Care Owed by Owner and Contractors for Death of Minors Caused by Independent Truck Driver

May 05, 2026 — Garret D. Murai - California Construction Law Blog
I was a T.A. for my high school history teacher, a really smart and nice guy, Mr. Reynolds. In the room at the back of the classroom which served as his office he had the picture above. It’s called “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law” and is taken from a German postcard from 1888. Depending on how you look it, you might see fashionable young lady, or an old lady. Cases can sometimes be like that: You see what you want to see. The next case is also like that. In Lorenzo v. Calex Engineering, Inc., 110 Cal.App.5th 49 (2025), the 2nd District Court of Appeals reversed a motion for summary judgment granted in favor of an owner and its contractors in a case involving the death of two minors struck by a dump truck enroute to a non-permitted off-site staging area. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Garret D. Murai, Nomos LLP
Mr. Murai may be contacted at gmurai@nomosllp.com

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Contractor Entitled to Defense Under Subcontractor’s Policy

March 10, 2026 — Tred R. Eyerly - Insurance Law Hawaii
The appellate court affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to the contractor’s insurer finding that the sumcontractor’s insurer had a duty to defend the contractor. Navigators Specialty Ins. Co. v. TBR Construction, LLC, et al., 2025 Ill. App. Unpub. LEXIS 2177 (Ill. Ct. App. Dec. 3, 2025). Greenscape Homes, LLC was the general contractor for a residential development. Greenscape hired TBR Construction, LLC as a carpentry-framing subcontractor pursuant to a “Trade Contractor Agreement.” The Trade Agreement required TBR to name Greenscape as an additional insured. TBR was insured by Utica. Greenscape was insured by Navigators. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Tred R. Eyerly, Damon Key Leong Kupchak Hastert
Mr. Eyerly may be contacted at te@hawaiilawyer.com

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