Real Estate & Construction News Roundup (6/24/26) – HUD to Fund AI Grants, Luxury Hotel Deal Investment Activity to Surge, ESPCs to Fund Energy and Infrastructure Improvements
July 06, 2026 —
Pillsbury's Construction & Real Estate Law Team - Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law BlogIn our latest roundup, data centers are exposed to climate change, commercial tenant sues CoStar, cities see opportunities in emerging sports markets, and more!
- With deferred maintenance growing and capital dollars stretched thin, local governments are using ESPCs to fund energy and infrastructure improvements through future operational savings. (Vicky Uhland, Construction Dive)
- The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is offering up to $3 million in grants for local governments to deploy automated permitting and building code systems. (Ryan Kushner, Construction Dive)
- Luxury hotel deals are set to see a surge in investment activity due to strong fundamentals and strengthening capital markets. (Noor Adatia, Hotel Dive)
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Pillsbury's Construction & Real Estate Law Team
SDV Celebrates 30th Anniversary Press Release
April 08, 2026 —
Saxe Doernberger & Vita, P.C.Trumbull, Connecticut – Saxe Doernberger & Vita, P.C. (SDV) is proud to announce the celebration of its 30th anniversary.
Founded in 1996 by three attorneys in a small New Haven, Connecticut office, SDV was built on a clear and focused mission: representing policyholders in insurance coverage matters. Three decades later, that commitment remains at the core of the firm’s identity and has been instrumental in its continued success and reputation nationwide.
Today, SDV is a nationally recognized boutique firm with 50 attorneys serving policyholders across the United States. Building on its longstanding reputation for excellence and client advocacy, the firm is pleased to announce the opening of its newest office in Massachusetts—an exciting milestone that reflects SDV’s continued growth. The new office is led by Managing Partner Anna Perry.
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Saxe Doernberger & Vita, P.C.
Consider The Limited Warranty from Your Homebuilder
July 06, 2026 —
David Adelstein - Florida Construction Legal UpdatesWhen purchasing a home from a homebuilder, there is an important consideration when it comes to the limited warranty you receive around the time you close on the home. That limited warranty likely includes an arbitration provision requiring you to arbitrate your disputes, such as construction defect claims, against the homebuilder. That arbitration provision will most likely include all claims, including statutory claims (such as a statutory violation of a building code claim), requiring you to arbitrate, as opposed to litigate, your disputes against the homebuilder. This is an important consideration. If the arbitration provision does not allow you to arbitrate all of your claims, and eliminates your rights to legitimate statutory claims, the arbitration provision could be unenforceable.
By way of example, in a residential construction defect dispute, Anderson v. Taylor Morrison of Florida, Inc., 223 So.3d 1088 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017), the appeal turned on whether the arbitration provision in the homebuilder’s limited warranty was valid. The homeowners took possession of their home in 2009. In 2015, the homeowners served a Florida Statutes Chapter 558 notice of construction defects that included a statutory violation of a building code claim under Florida Statute §553.84. The limited warranty included an arbitration provision that specified it was the “exclusive remedy” for all disputes arising out of or related to the warranty or issues with the home and property. When read together with the warranty’s disclaimer that precluded claims not covered by the warranty “whether in contract, tort, or otherwise,” the statutory building code violation claim could not be remedied through arbitration because it fell outside the warranty’s coverage.
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David Adelstein, Kirwin NorrisMr. Adelstein may be contacted at
dma@kirwinnorris.com
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 BlogIn 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
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Presumption of Prejudice Applies to All Affirmative Defenses Regarding Insured’s Failure to Comply with Post-Loss Policy Conditions
June 23, 2026 —
David Adelstein - Florida Construction Legal Updatesn a recent property insurance coverage dispute, an issue on appeal pertained to the “prejudice” jury instruction associated with the insured’s failure to comply with post-loss policy conditions. The trial court found that the prejudice only pertained to prompt notice and not other post-loss policy conditions. This was reversed on appeal as prejudice applied to ALL the post loss policy conditions that the insured failed to comply with, not just the prompt notice requirement. The prejudice presumption applies to all affirmative defenses regarding an insured’s failure to comply with post-loss policy conditions.
Consider this discussion when dealing with an insurer raising prejudice as an affirmative defense to do an insured’s failure to comply with post-loss policy conditions, and the associated burdens of proof:
On appeal, [the insurer] contends the trial court erred by instructing the jury that the presumption of prejudice was inapplicable to all of its post-loss obligation defenses except prompt notice. We agree.
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David Adelstein, Kirwin NorrisMr. Adelstein may be contacted at
dma@kirwinnorris.com
Project Labor Agreements: A New Bid Protest Forum Split
May 14, 2026 —
Dirk D. Haire, David P.J. Timm and Michael J. Brewer - ConsensusDocsAdvertisements often include a disclaimer: “individual results may vary.” Similarly, lawyers are notorious for saying “it depends.” The mandatory Project Labor Agreement (“PLA”) regulations have recently placed into context this adage as it applies to federal contract bid protests, with very different results depending on which forum – the Court of Federal Claims (“COFC”) versus the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) – different contractors have selected to bring PLA bid protests.
Over the last two years, over 30 protesters have successfully achieved removal of mandatory PLAs from large-scale federal construction contracts based on two landmark bid protest decisions issued by the COFC. Similar challenges to PLAs at the GAO, however, have not been successful in removing PLAs, highlighting an emerging trend that the COFC is often a more effective relief forum than GAO for government construction contractors.
Reprinted courtesy of
Dirk D. Haire, Burr & Forman LLP,
David P.J. Timm, Burr & Forman LLP and
Michael J. Brewer, Burr & Forman LLP
Mr. Haire may be contacted at dhaire@burr.com
Mr. Timm may be contacted at dtimm@burr.com
Mr. Brewer may be contacted at mbrewer@burr.com
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Quick Note: Don’t Spoil Evidence!!!!
March 10, 2026 —
David Adelstein - Florida Construction Legal UpdatesThe phrase “spoliation of evidence” is a phrase that gets used, sometimes properly and sometimes improperly. The reason is that if evidence is legitimately spoiled, the opposing party wants an adverse inference jury instruction. There are two potential adverse inference jury instructions dealing with spoliation of evidence, neither of which are good, and one of which you definitely don’t want. A recent case discusses these jury instructions (check
here) in a slip and fall personal injury case. The bottom line is that you need to preserve evidence relevant to a claim. Don’t lose it. Don’t intentionally destroy it. Don’t pretend it does not exist. Don’t do all the things that hinder the preservation and ultimate production of the relevant evidence. An adverse inference jury instruction (or an adverse inference implication in a non-jury trial) could be much, much worse. The facts are what the facts are. The best thing you can do is confront the facts. Confront the bad facts just like the good facts. The nature of any dispute is that there will be both good and bad facts. Bad facts can hopefully be explained recognizing there will be bad facts on the other side too. Sometimes, the bad facts warrant major strategic considerations and shifting the focus of how a dispute will be handled and presented. Whatever you do, don’t put yourself in a position where you are spoiling evidence. Once you get an adverse inference instruction, that’s it, as it’s very tough to overcome.
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David Adelstein, Kirwin NorrisMr. Adelstein may be contacted at
dma@kirwinnorris.com
Insurer Cannot Dispose of Water Leak or Bad Faith Claims on Motion for Summary Judgment
July 20, 2026 —
Tred R. Eyerly - Insurance Law HawaiiThe insurer’s motion for summary judgment seeking to eliminate the insured’s claims for damage from a water leak, bad faith and punitive damages failed. Nargizyan v, State Farm General Ins. Co., 2026 Cal App. LEXIS 302 (Cal. Ct. App. April 15, 2026).
The insured noticed tiles on his kitchen floor were warmer than usual. He found water dripping from the top of the crawl space under the house. He noticed water was “dripping in different places” but not pouring like a faucet. “There were too many places to count where water was dripping and there was water all over the place.”
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Tred R. Eyerly, Damon Key Leong Kupchak HastertMr. Eyerly may be contacted at
te@hawaiilawyer.com
