What Is a Commercial Construction Defect Claim Worth?
Free during the beta: describe your own facts, or upload your documents, and get a damages range with the reasoning and the cases behind it.
How damages are usually measured
Defect claims are usually measured by the reasonable cost to repair, sometimes limited by the loss in the property's value. Who ends up paying depends on the contract chain: indemnity clauses (which many states' anti-indemnity statutes limit), which contractor's or subcontractor's work caused the defect, whether the general liability insurer covers it, and statutes of limitation and repose that run from substantial completion.
General background, not legal advice; the rules vary by state and by the documents in your deal.
What the calculator asks about
These are the facts it pulls from your description or documents for a commercial construction defect claim:
- Project state
- Is a defect alleged against the general contractor?
- Estimated repair cost
- Is this a catastrophic/structural/life-safety failure?
- Is a design error alleged against the architect/engineer?
- Are there multiple responsible parties with an indemnity clause?
- does the indemnity clause purport to cover the indemnitee's OWN negligence (sole or concurrent), not just the indemnitor's own fault?
- Is the defect traced to a single, identifiable subcontractor's workmanship (rather than shared among the GC and multiple trades)?
- Has the owner/association already settled with and released the contractor(s) after an insurer already paid out for the defect?
- Has a CGL insurer denied or disputed coverage?
How it did on real cases
In CREdocket's published backtest (v4.3), the calculator's range contained the final outcome in 4 of 6 commercial construction defect claim cases, and in 17 of 32 cases across all categories. Each case below was run through the live calculator on a verbatim excerpt of the court's statement of facts and each side's contentions, with every sentence stating an award, finding or holding removed, then scored against the final result after any appeal.
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Globe Contracting LLC v. Hour Taing Enterprise LLC
Calculator range: $33K – $62K Final outcome: $62K Within the range -
EdgeRock Development, LLC v. C.H. Garmong & Son, Inc.
Calculator range: $-1,099,682 – $1.01M Final outcome: $943K Within the range -
Speedy Maintenance Service, L.L.C. v. Windsor Tower, L.L.C.
Calculator range: $14K – $48K Final outcome: $48K Within the range -
Quantum Concrete, Inc. v. Plaza de Kaza, LLC
Calculator range: $0 – $24K Final outcome: $24K Within the range -
McCarthy Corporation v. Stark Investment Group, LLC
Calculator range: $-40,649 – $8K Final outcome: $86K Outside the range -
Architectural Stainless, Inc. v. TM Partridge Creek Mall, LP
Calculator range: $96K – $213K Final outcome: $0 Outside the range
Full backtest results and method →
Get a range for your own commercial construction defect claim
Describe both sides' positions, or upload the lease, loan documents, pleadings or appraisals. The estimate needs both sides' facts; a one-sided complaint alone is not enough to value a case. Sign-in is email only.
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Estimates are probability-weighted ranges from the facts you provide, not a prediction of any court's ruling and not legal advice.