Under Construction - January 2019

Letter from the Editor

Welcome to the winter edition of our Under Construction newsletter. We hope your holidays brought you some much needed rest and relaxation and that your 2019 is off to a wonderful start for you, your family and your company. 

In this issue, we start off with an article that looks at the importance of reviewing all of the contract documents or templates you may have to evaluate whether they need to be refreshed or overhauled. The beginning of the year is a perfect opportunity to take the time to do so.

Next, we have an article that addresses legal accountability, construction accidents and OSHA. Construction accidents are inevitable, even for clients who implement and enforce a meticulous safety plan on a project. This article offers a few key questions to consider when thinking about the best prevention, response and defense protocol that both demonstrates commitment to safe construction practices and honors due process and other rights you may have associated with matters of civil and criminal liability when a construction accident occurs.

Our final two articles look at a couple of California cases that may bring some clarification to certain aspects of the construction industry in the state. The first article reviews a recent opinion by the California Third District Court of Appeal that continues the trend in California finding that the deference given to planning and zoning decisions does not mean that such decisions are not in and of themselves CEQA determinations. The second article focuses on a case that brings some clarification regarding due process and the sufficiency of evidence necessary to support a subcontractor substitution on a California public works project.

We hope you find these articles informative and enlightening. Please let us know if you want us to address a specific construction issue in a future newsletter. We hope you have a profitable, busy and safe 2019!

Regards,
James J. Sienicki

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