{"id":903748,"date":"2024-12-26T14:57:03","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T21:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/?p=903748"},"modified":"2024-12-26T14:57:06","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T21:57:06","slug":"commercial-general-liability-policy-construction-defects-massachusetts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/commercial-general-liability-policy-construction-defects-massachusetts\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts Appellate Court Confirms Construction Defects are Not Covered Under Commercial General Liability Policies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Bill Wilson | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.constructionlawzone.com\/2024\/12\/massachusetts-appellate-court-confirms-construction-defects-are-not-covered-under-commercial-general-liability-policies\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Construction Law Zone<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a case of first impression in Massachusetts,\u00a0<em>Lessard v. R.C. Havens &amp; Sons, Inc<\/em>., 104 Mass. App. Ct. 572 (2024), the Appellate Court confirmed that construction defects, without more, do not constitute property damage within the meaning of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/faulty-workmanship-is-an-occurrence-and-property-damage-under-plain-language-of-standard-form-commercial-general-liability-policy\/\">commercial general liability policy<\/a> (CGL).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In&nbsp;<em>Lessard,<\/em>&nbsp;the homeowners filed suit against an insured homebuilder for construction defects in their home. After the homeowners won a jury verdict, the homebuilder\u2019s insurer intervened and sought a declaratory judgment that it owed no duty to indemnify the homebuilder under its CGL policy. The superior court entered a declaratory judgment in favor of the insurer, and the homeowners appealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Appeals Court determined that it needed only to address whether the homeowners\u2019 losses constituted&nbsp;<a><\/a>\u201cproperty damage\u201d within the meaning of the CGL policy to reach its decision. The CGL policy required the insurer to \u201cpay those sums that the insured becomes legally obligated to pay as damages because of \u2026 \u2018property damage\u2019 \u2026 to which this insurance applies.\u201d<a><\/a>&nbsp;The policy defined \u201cproperty damage\u201d to mean \u201cphysical injury to tangible property, including all resulting loss of use of that property\u201d or \u201closs of use of tangible property that is not physically injured.\u201d The court acknowledged and accepted the reasoning from other jurisdictions that CGL policies \u201cdefine \u2018property damage\u2019 as \u2018physical injury,\u2019 which suggests the property was not defective at the outset, but rather was initially proper and injured thereafter\u201d as well as the common distinction \u201cbetween claims for the costs of repairing or removing construction defects, which are not claims for property damage, and claims for the costs of repairing damage caused by construction defects, which are claims for property damage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The declaratory judgment was affirmed since the homeowners did not provide any evidence of their repair costs at trial, and the underlying jury verdict only awarded damages for the costs of repairing or removing construction defects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>When one of your cases is in need of a construction expert, estimates, insurance appraisal or umpire services in defect or insurance disputes &#8211; please call Advise &amp; Consult, Inc. at 888.684.8305, or email <a href=\"mailto:experts@adviseandconsult.net\">experts@adviseandconsult.net<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Wilson | Construction Law Zone In a case of first impression in Massachusetts,\u00a0Lessard v. R.C. Havens &amp; Sons, Inc., 104 Mass. App. Ct. 572 (2024), the Appellate Court confirmed that construction defects, without more, do not constitute property damage within the meaning of a commercial general liability policy (CGL). In&nbsp;Lessard,&nbsp;the homeowners filed suit against&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/commercial-general-liability-policy-construction-defects-massachusetts\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Massachusetts Appellate Court Confirms Construction Defects are Not Covered Under Commercial General Liability Policies<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10791,4,30],"tags":[9895,4739,19],"class_list":["post-903748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commercial-general-liability-policy","category-construction-defects","category-general-liability-policy","tag-advise-consult","tag-commercial-general-liability-policy","tag-construction-defects-2","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Massachusetts Appellate Court Confirms Construction Defects are Not Covered Under Commercial General Liability Policies - Advise &amp; 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