By: J. Kent Holland, Jr.
A recent court decision requiring an engineer to indemnify and defend its client, a project owner, against a routine contractor claim is a wakeup call to further clamp down on indemnification language so that only those damages resulting from tort claims against the indemnitee based on the negligence of the design professional will be indemnified, and that there will be no duty whatsoever to defend such claims. In the case of Penta Corporation v. Town of Newport v. AECOM Technical Services, Inc., No. 212-2015-CV-00-011 (Merrimack, New Hampshire Superior Court, 2016), the trial court held that the engineer owed its client, the town, a defense against a contractor suit that alleged that the plans and specifications prepared by the engineer and provided by the town to the contractor for bidding and construction were defective. It was a routine breach of contract claim by the contractor against the project owner, but the court concluded the indemnification agreement in the engineer’s agreement with the town was broad enough to obligate it to defend the town against the contractor’s claim.
Read Entire Article in my Guest Essay on the aeProNet website, here.
This article is published in ConstructionRisk.com Report, Vol. 19, No. 7 (July 2017).
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