Tag Archives: comparative fault

PRIVATE STATUTORY CAUSE OF ACTION UNDER FLORIDA’S UNDERGROUND FACILITY DAMAGE PREVENTION AND SAFETY ACT

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Florida’s Underground Facility Damage Prevention and Safety Act is set forth in Florida Statutes Chapter 556.  Any owner or operator of underground infrastructure as well as contractors that perform underground excavation and demolition operations are familiar (or, need to be familiar) with this Act and the requirements it imposes on them.

In a nutshell, this Act requires excavators to notify operators of underground facilities (e.g., pipelines, cables, sewers) through a notification system before excavating or demolishing an underground location.  Then notification system gives the operator of the underground facility two days’ advance notice that an excavation will be taking place.  After receiving this notice, the operator of the underground facility must mark the area where its infrastructure is located which could be affected by the underground excavation or demolition operations.  The Act further imposes duties on excavators to use increased caution, supervise mechanized equipment, perform excavation and demolition operations in a careful an prudent manner, and to re-notify the notification system if the operator’s marking is no longer visible so the location of the operator’s underground facility can be re-marked.

The Florida Supreme Court in Peoples Gas System v. Posen Construction, Inc., 46 Fla.L.Weekly S166b (Fla. 2021) recently analyzed whether the Act creates a private statutory cause of action.  This case dealt with a road contractor that ruptured an underground gas pipeline during an excavation.  The rupture caused an explosion that injured an employee of the road contractor.  A dispute arose between the operator of the underground gas line and the road contractor with the operator of the gas line claiming the excavator’s advance notification was deficient.  The injured employee sued the operator of the underground gas line and the operator settled with the employee.  The operator then sued the road contractor  to recover the amount of the settlement claiming it should be entitled to recover the settlement payment as damages under the Act or for “statutory indemnity.”  The issue was whether the Act provides any such private statutory cause of action.  The Florida Supreme Court held it does create a private statutory cause of action for violations sounding in negligence, but not for “statutory indemnity”:

(1) that the Underground Facility Damage Prevention and Safety Act creates a standalone cause of action; (2) that the cause of action sounds in negligence; (3) that liability under the Act is subject to proof of proximate causation [i.e., the defendant’s negligence needs to be the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury] and to the defense of comparative fault  [i.e., a party is liable for the damages they caused per Florida Statute s. 768.81]; (4) that “losses” recoverable under the Act can include purely economic damages, independent of personal injury or property damage; and (5) that the Act does not create a cause of action for “statutory indemnity.”

Peoples Gas System, supra.

This decision that the Act creates a negligence-based cause of action  is supported by Florida Statute s. 556.106(2)(a) and (b) contained in the Act that discusses liability for violations of the Act.

It is uncertain what doors will be opened by this Florida Supreme Court decision.  However, what is clear is that a negligence-based statutory cause of action can be asserted for violations of the Act and the damages can include economic damages that have nothing to do with personal injury or property damage.

 

Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.

 

COMPARATIVE FAULT APPLIED IN OWNER’S LAWSUIT AGAINST CONTRACTOR AND ENGINEER

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There is nothing like a good old-fashioned dispute between an owner and its general contractor and design professional relating to construction and design defects where both parties have a role in the owner’s damages.  There are arguments that both the general contractor and design professional substantially contributed to the defects and damages.  Are the contractor and design professional jointly and severally liable for the owner’s damages?  Or, does comparative fault apply where the trial of fact allocates the contractor’s and engineer’s percentage of fault for the defects and damage?    A recent case found that comparative fault applied such that the trier of fact, in this case the judge, could allocate damages based the judge’s finding of the parties’ percentage of fault.  (For more information in comparative fault, please check this article.).  Comparative fault is not what an owner ideally wants because joint and several liability would be preferred.  However, this is what the contractor and engineer would want since their liability for damages is predicated on their percentage of responsibility as opposed to being liable for all of the damages.

In Broward County, Florida v. CH2M Hill, Inc., 45 Fla. L. Weekly D1736a (Fla. 4th DCA 2020), a public owner hired an engineer for airport improvements that included a taxiway to be designed and constructed in accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration’s design requirements.   The public owner also hired (i) a program manager to serve as its on-site representative and (ii) a separate engineering firm to provide materials testing and inspection services.  The public owner also hired a contractor to construct the taxiway.

Prior to substantial completion of the taxiway, the public owner discovered indentations in the surface of the taxiway (referred to as rutting).  This discovery prompted the public owner to investigate.  The public owner directed the contractor to mill away two inches of asphalt and install new asphalt.   The contractor achieved substantial completion in September 2008 and final completion in November 2008.  The contractor then submitted its final payment application to the public owner.  The public owner notified the contractor that it would retain money to deal with repairs associated with the indentations in the surface of the taxiway.  The public owner hired a new engineer to design the repairs.  The repair design was more robust (better) than the original engineer’s design because the repair engineer believed the new design was necessary to achieve a 20-year lifespan for the taxiway. A new contractor performed the repairs.

The contractor sued the public owner for nonpayment.  The contractor also sued the engineer for professional negligence in the design of the taxiway.    The pubic owner counter-sued the contractor for breach of contract and sued the engineer for breach of contract and indemnification.  The public owner asserted that the contractor performed defective construction and the engineer committed errors, omissions, and defects in the design and was obligated to indemnify the public owner for liability arising out of the design.  The public owner also sued its program manager (on-site representative) and testing engineer; these two parties settled prior to trial.

At trial, the public owner’s expert testified that both the contractor and engineer contributed to the indentations in the surface of the taxiway.  The expert testified that the engineer’s design deviated from the Federal Aviation Administration’s requirements and was doomed to fail such that if the contractor complied with the design, it would still fail.  The expert further testified that while the contractor contributed to the indentations as it failed to construct subgrade per the engineer’s design, it was to a lesser contributing factor than the engineer.

The engineer’s expert testified that the indentations were caused by undercompaction performed by the contractor.  The expert further testified that the public owner’s program manager violated its standard of care by allowing the contractor to deviate from the engineer’s original design in numerous ways.

The contractor’s expert testified that the indentations were caused by the design and undercompaction.

The trial court found that both the engineer and the contractor’s breaches were the proximate cause of the redesign of the taxiway.  The trial court also found that the public owner’s program manager, which had settled prior to trial, was also liable.  The trial court further found that public owner’s total damages were $6,2703,303 of which $725,000 was paid to the public owner pre-suit by the program manager and testing engineer.  After deducting this amount from the total damages, the trial court allocated damages as follows: (1) 60% was allocated to the non-party program manager (that had settled pre-suit); (2) 25% was allocated to the contractor; and (3) 15% was allocated to the engineer.   The public owner appealed the allocation in the final judgment.  The public owner argued that the trial court should not have apportioned liability at all because comparative fault does not apply in breach of contract cases.  Instead, the public owner contended that the trial court should have found that the engineer and contractor were jointly and severally liable for the damage (indentations) because their separate contractual breaches caused a single, indivisible injury.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal disagreed with the public owner concluding that Florida Statute s. 768.81 dealing with comparative fault authorized the trial court to allocate fault.  While comparative fault under s. 768.81 deals with negligence actions, it defines a negligence action as a “civil action for damages based upon a theory of negligence, strict liability, products liability, professional malpractice whether couched in terms of contract or tort, or breach of warranty and like theories. The substance of an action, not conclusory terms used by a party, determines whether an action is a negligence action.”  Broward County, Florida, supra, quoting Fla. Stat. s. 768.81.

The public owner’s claim against the professional engineer was predicated on the engineer breaching a contractual standard of care that required it to design the taxiway pursuant to the Federal Aviation Administration’s standards.  Although the public owner’s claims against the engineer were couched as a breach of contract, it was based on a theory of professional negligence (violation of a standard of care) warranting the application of comparative fault.

However, the public owner’s claims against the contractor were not based on a professional negligence theory.  Nonetheless, the Fourth District held that comparative fault did apply:

Applying a holistic approach to analyzing the complaint, we conclude that the contract action against [the contractor] fell under the umbrellas of the ‘negligence action’ against [the engineer], so that the circuit court’s allocation of fault was appropriate.  After all, [the contractor] was to perform the contract according to specifications designed by [the engineer], so the causes of action against each were necessarily intertwined.  To prove its case against [the contractor], the public owner was required to prove that [the contractor’s] ‘breach of its contractual responsibilities was a substantial factor in causing the [public owner’s] extensive damages.’   This is compatible with the concept of ‘fault’…and parallels the tort notion of a violation of a duty of care that is the proximate cause of damages.  Based on the evidence, the circuit court properly allocated fault among all actors whose conduct substantially contributed to the [public owner’s] damages.

 

Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.