Out with Lonergan, In with Spearin: Texas Legislature Provides Contractors with Limited Protection for Defective Plans and Designs
Source: https://www.natlawreview.com/, November 12, 2021
As of September 1, 2021, in a change to Texas case law that had been in place for over a century, Texas contractors now have protection in certain circumstances from liability for defective plans and specifications provided to the contractor by someone else. In the 1907 Texas Supreme Court case Lonergan v. San Antonio Loan & Trust, the court held that it was the contractor’s responsibility to reconstruct a collapsed building even though the collapse was due to a defect in the design plans and specifications prepared by the architect hired by the project owner and provided to the contractor by the project owner. In 2012, in El Paso Field Services v. Mastec, the Texas Supreme Court reaffirmed its decision in Lonergan. Read more.
