On Monday, July 27, 2015, in the case of Tsareff v. ManWeb Services, Inc., the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes Indiana and Illinois) ruled that an engineering and construction company that entered into an agreement to purchase the assets of another contractor (that was a party to a collective bargaining agreement) may be liable...Read More

Last Thursday, the United States Supreme Court voted 6-3 in favor of the defendants in the case of King v. Burwell.  In that case, the petitioners argued that the words, “an exchange established by the state” in the Affordable Care Act meant that only Americans purchasing health care coverage from a State-run exchange (such as...Read More

On March 25, 2014, Indiana Governor Pence signed into law Senate Enrolled Act 420 (“SEA 420”), which became effective on July 1, 2014. SEA 420 instituted several date changes concerning the assessment of tangible property in the State of Indiana. The following is a list of most substantial changes to Indiana’s property tax assessment timeline,...Read More

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this week 5-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. in the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (formerly named Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby). The case was the strongest legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act since 2012. The case concerned the Department of Health and Human Services...Read More

We recently blogged in this space about a pair of Federal Claims decisions that sided with an owner and denied a design/build contractor’s (Metcalf Construction Company) $27,000,000 claim for increased construction costs. The main focus of these cases involved the duty of a design/build contractor to independently investigate soil conditions on a project. The trial...Read More

When parties to a construction project find themselves in a disagreement, there are several options to resolve the dispute. These include: (1) informal settlement discussions (often with “high level” executives); (2) turning the dispute over to an “initial decision maker” (often identified in the contract as the architect, project engineer or construction manager); or (3)...Read More

While typically an owner impliedly warrants the information, plans and specifications it provides to a contractor†, the decisions in two recent United States Court of Federal Claims cases (see Metcalf Constr. Co. v. United States, 102 Fed. Cl. 334 (2011) (Metcalf I), and Metcalf Constr. Co. v. United States, 107 Fed. Cl. 786 (2012) (Metcalf...Read More

On February 10, 2014, the Obama administration announced that it will delay implementation of part of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate for a second consecutive year. The Treasury Department stated it will delay the mandate’s penalty for small businesses who employ between 50 and 99 workers for one additional year, to 2016.  Employers with...Read More

This year, in an important decision for contractors, design professionals and owners, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which includes Indiana, upheld enforcement of a contractual limitation of liability clause, which resulted in the design professional’s liability being capped at $70,000, despite the owner’s claim that its damages were in excess of...Read More

In the context of a construction contract, a “pay-if-paid” clause provides that payment by the owner to the contractor is an express condition to any payment becoming due to the contractor’s subcontractors or suppliers (i.e., the obligation of the contractor to pay its subcontractor does not arise at all until the contractor has been paid...Read More