CONSTRUCTION LITIGATION

McLarty Wolf’s practice includes disputes relating to the construction of commercial and residential buildings.  These disputes usually involve claims based on allegations of breach of contract or negligence directed at land owners, general contractors, subcontractors or professional consultants such as architects, structural engineers and geotechnical engineers. 

Our experience in this area includes acting for clients involved in socalled “leaky condos” litigation.  There has been a flurry of such litigation in the Vancouver area over the past ten years involving both large and small residential and commercial developments.  Typically claims are brought against the developers, architects, general contractors, consultants, subcontractors and suppliers of such developments alleging defects in the design of, the construction of, the inspection of and the materials used in the ‘building envelope’ of the project.  An envelope includes the roof, exterior walls and windows of a building.  The municipality in which the development is located is also sometimes named as a defendant for its role in the design and/or approval of the project.

These cases often involve claims of millions of dollars for remediation (repair) costs and are complex because they can involve many different parties and large numbers (usually thousands) of documents.  Document collection and analysis, interviewing of witnesses and instruction of experts are important components of building our clients’ cases.  We employ our technological capabilities in electronically organizing documents and facts and our long experience in working with experts to build persuasive cases for our clients.

We also have considerable experience representing clients who have claims relating to the faulty construction of single family homes.  These claims often involve houses that have been built on unstable soils resulting in the sinking, differential settling or sliding of the building.  In such situations, the general contractor, soils engineer and municipality may be liable for the damage.  For examples of cases where we have successfully represented our clients with such claims see: Dhow v. Ogdoba, 1990 B.C.J. No. 768 and Burnett v. Took Engineering 2000 BCSC 1630