Complex & Commercial Litigation

Reading Between the Lines: An Avoidable Insurance Coverage Issue Revealed in Skanska USA Building v. M.A.P. Mechanical

Insurance coverage is an integral part of the construction process. The contract documents rely on insurance to facilitate the risk allocation and risk transfer needs of the project. These contractual specifications lay out the types of coverage, policy limits, and...

Construction Defect Coverage: the Michigan Supreme Court revisits the question of whether coverage exists for construction defects under standard commercial general liability policies

An important case for contractors and subcontractors has surfaced at the Michigan Supreme Court. Skanska USA Building, Inc. v. M.A.P. Mechanical Contractors, Inc. raises the question: is property damage coverage under a standard commercial general liability policy...

Construction Disputes: Arbitration or Litigation?

This is Part 1 in a 20-part series of articles dealing with issues of arbitration in the construction industry.

The question of whether to arbitrate or litigate disputes comes up fairly frequently in the construction industry. From my humble perspective, with respect to construction disputes, there are very few circumstances where I would choose litigation over arbitration. Why?

Choice of Decision Maker
With arbitration, in general, you pick the decision maker(s) as opposed to being assigned a judge through a blind draw in the court system. That level of arbitrator selection may range from picking from a list under the American Arbitration Association Rules to hand picking a blue-ribbon panel of arbitrators or even a single arbitrator through private arbitration. If you are assigned a judge through the courts, you may end up with a judge who does criminal proceedings in the morning, divorce proceedings before lunch, and then handles your complex construction law dispute in the afternoon, in 15-minute increments, along with multiple other disputes in what looks to an outsider like a giant cattle call. Unless your contract provides otherwise, you may also be in the unlucky position to try your complex construction disputes to a jury.