It is always good practice to have construction counsel assist you with your construction contract. This may mean drafting your contract. This may mean negotiating your contract. This may mean advising you as to provisions in your contract that shift risk to you. This may mean providing red-lined suggestions to the contract. Or, this may mean all of the above, or a combination. The point is having construction counsel work with you will allow you to appreciate risk you are assuming and risk you are allocating to the other party. It will also allow you to consider provisions or language to provisions you should consider. I cannot emphasize the importance of working with construction counsel when it comes to your construction contracts. This is a value-added service.
One consideration is the forum selection provision. This is the provision in the construction contract that may dictate the exclusive venue for disputes. The forum selection provision is not a provision that should be cast aside because if there is a dispute it will be one of the first provisions your attorney will want to review. Dismissing this provision could result in you being required to litigate your dispute or portions thereof in a non-preferred destination, as seen in this non-construction case, that may be more costly or disadvantageous to you for a variety of reasons. A forum selection provision and the provisions in your contract dealing with dispute resolution are important provisions as these provisions advise you how to navigate disputes that may occur during the performance of the construction contract.
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.