Wardman Tower Condo Assn. v. JBG Smith Properties ($356M Treble-Damages Construction Defect Judgment)
The Superior Court of the District of Columbia entered judgment on July 31 in Wardman Tower Residential Condominium Unit Owners Association v. JBG Smith Properties, et al., No. 2020 CA 004807 B, awarding the condo association $118,695,171 in compensatory damages and trebling that figure to roughly $356.1 million under the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act. The suit, filed in 2020, alleged that JBG Smith's 2017 conversion of the historic Wardman Tower hotel into a 32-unit luxury condominium building involved construction and design defects in the elevators, electrical systems, and foundation that were misrepresented to buyers as "well-built."
Why it matters
Shows how a consumer-protection statute with mandatory treble damages can multiply an already large construction-defect compensatory award several times over, turning a conventional building-systems defect claim into potential existential litigation exposure for a public REIT. Developers of historic conversions and adaptive-reuse projects should treat sales and marketing representations about renovated building systems as carrying consumer-protection liability, not just contract-warranty risk, particularly in jurisdictions with uncapped or mandatory trebling provisions like D.C.'s CPPA.
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