Contracts are a huge part of construction defect litigation because almost every construction defect case at least that I’ve been involved in involves a significant number of parties. At a construction site there are multiple contractors, multiple subcontractors, sub, sub-contractors of those subcontractors. And so, the contracts are really the first thing that you need to gather in a construction case. The contracts will share the relationship between different parties, who subcontracted work to somebody, whose job was it to do certain work, did a window installer keep the framing as part of their scope of work or was that subcontracted out. And so, understanding the basic relationship between the parties can come from the contracts.

The other important thing in the contracts will be the insurance requirements and did the parties obtain the insurance that they were required to obtain under the contract. Did they name another party as an additional insured under their contract? And so, gathering that information, which comes from the construction contract is very important.

The other parts of the contract will show is there indemnity requirements and if so, are those indemnity requirements valid under the state where your practicing. And so that’s very important to look at because typically you’ll try to shift liability or a party will try to shift liability to a party that has agreed to indemnify it for a loss and you want to know if that provision is valid under your state law.

So there’s a lot to look at in contracts and there’s a lot to gather so it’s very important that you have those contracts when you start a construction defect case.