Property Damage Claims

The Firm has in depth experience in the investigation, defense and prosecution of property losses, including subrogation actions, as well as the defense of first-party property and construction defect claims. These claims often involve catastrophic building fires, explosions, construction activities damaging adjacent properties, full and partial collapse of buildings, equipment and machinery malfunction, construction defects, water damage, underground piping and cable damage, hillside subsidence, water main breaks, floods, natural disasters, mold, property contamination and other pollution-related matters. The Firm maintains close relationships with nationally-renowned forensic, engineering and fire experts, which allows for a unique and intimate understanding of various building codes, ANSI, OSHA, NFPA and other industry standards as well as best practices for excavation, adjacent property underpinning, vibration monitoring and geotechnical engineering.

The Firm’s representative clients include construction managers, design/builders, commercial and residential building owners, municipal entities, subcontractors, engineers and architects. The Firm’s attorneys have lectured on the unique complexities of the assessment and calculation of damages stemming from property losses. These complexities include assessment and calculation of business interruption and other “soft cost” claims; determination whether the diminution in value of the subject real property is greater than or less than the cost to return to the property to its pre-loss condition; and the appropriate application of prejudgment interest to components of a property loss claim. The Firm has been involved in many high profile property losses and multi-party litigations, including losses involving damages exceeding $100 Million Dollars. Because of the frequent significance of consequential economic damages in these cases; the Firm’s experience in evaluating and deconstructing economic damages claims and highlighting the failure to mitigate such damages is of considerable value.

Representative Matters:

• Obtained extremely favorable settlement of major fire loss subrogation action seeking over $100 million in damages and interest, involving famous Manhattan mixed use real estate project by using discovery to convincingly undermine soft cost loss payments made by plaintiffs as being legally unrecoverable, and by aggressively defending fire loss causation claims.

Construction Agreements and Corporate Representation:

• Obtained voluntary dismissal of $550,000 property damage subrogation action by uncovering prior lawsuit against claimant’s own roofing company and successfully impeaching claimant’s deposition testimony attesting to no prior roof damage.

• Represented major construction management firm in multi-million dollar property damage subrogation action brought by Hospital and successfully negotiated reimbursement of fees on behalf of client after case settled for $750,000, with client contributing no money towards settlement.

• Obtained favorable settlement on behalf of Municipal client, developer and contractors on contentious property damage lawsuit involving alleged fraud and failure to underpin adjacent property.