Topic: Professional liability

Contractor Termination Lawsuits: The Architect’s Risks and How to Manage Them

When the terminator shows up, you must be ready. Termination of the contractor on a project almost always guarantees a lawsuit, and the architect is often among the casualties. The report, Contractor Termination Lawsuits: The Architect’s Risks and How to Manage Them, addresses why the architect is often sued when a project goes wrong, and…

The ABC’s of E-data: A Discussion Related to the Issues Raised by Electronic Information

As the law pertaining to electronic data evolves, architecture firms must understand the issues around it. Firms must be able to identify the electronic data involved in their daily operations and how to properly store and discard it. Importantly, as electronic data grows exponentially, firms must also understand rules of discovery requirements and what one…

A Sustainable Standard Of Care

The “standard of care” is the prevailing benchmark of professional practice in architecture and design and the threshold of protection under professional liability insurance. The design professional’s standard of care is generally based on the performance of others characterized as the “reasonable”, “ordinary”, or “average” design professional, and not on internal or personal capabilities. However,…

Undertaking A “Fiduciary Duty”: Crucial Legal & Professional Considerations For Architects

The typical complaint against an architect starts with the plaintiff laying out his story of what happened, and then listing the laws that the conduct allegedly violated. Architects are familiar with many of them–malpractice, negligence, breach of contract, and the like. But sometimes the complaint alleges that the architect is a “fiduciary” and has breached…

Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Claims Defense Documentation

The compelling report, Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Claims Defense Documentation, addresses documentation by the architect, centering on the presumption, “If it’s not written down, it didn’t happen.” The paper is a guideline for managing your documentation with helpful suggestions for beneficial recordkeeping and documents retention and retrieval for an effective claims response in the event…

If You Build It, They Will Sue: A Report on Condominium Project Risks

Architects are increasingly exposed to potential future claims and lawsuits brought by homeowners and the homeowners’ associations years after a condominium project has been completed. This can occur even when the project developer has overruled the architect’s design decisions or has a limited role in the construction phase of the project. The AIA Trust report…

Bulletproof Contract Administration: Managing Risk during Construction

The report, Bulletproof Contract Administration: Managing Risk during Construction, addresses documentation procedures that can be advantageous in managing risk during the construction phase. Although considered cumbersome in this often complex phase of services, the suggestions put forth can serve as valuable defense documentation in the event a claims bullet is fired. Beginning with the services…

Strangers No More? Trends in the Architect’s No Privity Defense

One of the most important defenses in any professional liability lawsuit is that an architect is not responsible for losses of a person who has no contract with the architect such as a general contractor or sub-contractor on a project. The legal term is that the architect and the third party do not share “privity…

Can Architects Rely on Manufacturer-Provided Information?

Recently, there have been disputes and judicial decisions addressing the responsibility of architecture firms to understand the composition, performance, and availability of specified products, materials, and systems. In most cases, absent an affirmative statement by the architecture firm that it will determine the attributes of components specified for a design, courts have not unreasonably extended…