{"id":45,"date":"2014-07-11T15:27:22","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T19:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/?p=45"},"modified":"2014-07-26T20:07:45","modified_gmt":"2014-07-27T00:07:45","slug":"california-supreme-court-addresses-architects-duty-of-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/2014\/07\/11\/california-supreme-court-addresses-architects-duty-of-care\/","title":{"rendered":"California Supreme Court Addresses Architect’s Duty of Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

The California Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Beacon Residential Community Association v. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill<\/em>, S208173, on July 3, upholding a homeowners association’s right to pursue a common law negligence claim against the project architects of a 595-unit condominium project in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Building on substantial case law and the common law principles on which it is based, we hold that an architect owes a duty of care to future homeowners in the design of a residential building where, as here, the architect is a principal architect on the project \u2014 that is, the architect, in providing professional design services, is not subordinate to other design professionals. The duty of care extends to such architects even when they do not actually build the project or exercise ultimate control over construction.<\/p>\n

Finding a common law basis for the imposition of duty, the Supreme Court did not reach the plaintiff’s argument and the Court of Appeal’s ruling that the California Right to Repair Act (Civil Code \u00a7896 et seq.) was “dispositive of the scope of duty.”<\/p>\n

Bottom line, the case holds that the principal architect(s) on a residential project face negligence exposure for design issues to foreseeable future homeowners. Although the holding is limited to principal architects, the reasoning would seem to apply to the architect\u2019s principal consultants (mechanical, structural, etc.) as well. The court went to great lengths to distinguish its reasoning in this case as protecting unsophisticated homeowners purchasing residential properties, from one of its prior rulings which found that auditors owed no duty to their client’s investors (Bily v. Arthur Young & Co.<\/em> (1992) 3 Cal.4th 370). Thus, it is probable that the Beacon ruling would not be extended to “commercial” plaintiffs. Click here<\/a> for the full text of the opinion.<\/p>\n

Robert C. Hendrickson is a partner in the San Francisco office of Duane Morris LLP, where he practices in the areas of construction law, business litigation and alternative dispute resolution. You can read his professional biography here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On April 17, 2014, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued a decision in Bricklayers of Western Pennsylvania Combined Funds, Inc. v. Scott’s Development Company, et al., that held that union workers (employees of the primary contractor) were not “subcontractors” as that term is defined in the Pennsylvania’s Mechanics’ Lien Law of 1963, and that trustees of the union’s employee benefits trust funds were not entitled to file mechanic’s lien claims on the employees’ behalf for unpaid contributions to the trust funds.<\/p>\n

Following this ruling, Rep. William Keller, D-Philadelphia, introduced HB 2319 to the General Assembly which would amend the Mechanic\u2019s Lien Law to classify union benefit fund trustees as subcontractors allowed to pursue claims for non-payment against employers and property owners under the Mechanic\u2019s Lien Law. <\/p>\n

Duane Morris will continue to monitor the progress of this legislation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14,17,19,15,18,16],"ppma_author":[696],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-architect","tag-california","tag-duty-of-care","tag-negligence","tag-privity","tag-rob-hendrickson"],"authors":[{"term_id":696,"user_id":6,"is_guest":0,"slug":"duanemorris3","display_name":"Duane Morris","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/843ff6e7a8fe5fc92109b47a45f34b6cf0ea499e6e788db23456c838b0ae6747?s=96&d=blank&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/constructionlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}