Real Estate & Construction News Roundup (7/8/26) – Data Centers Negotiate Flexibility for Speed, Hotel Deal Activities Focus on Luxury, and DC Sues Apartment Owners
July 20, 2026 —
Pillsbury's Construction & Real Estate Law Team - Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law BlogIn our latest roundup, rail projects gain steam across the U.S., AI optimizes building operations, a modular approach speeds data center construction, and more!
- Hyperscalers want their data centers online, and utilities want to provide interconnections, but both are still looking for common operating guidelines. (Herman K. Trabish, Construction Dive)
- Contractors are taking advantage of multibillion-dollar train and transit contracts, even as funding challenges create hurdles for project execution. (Matthew Thibault, Construction Dive)
- Although hospitality and leisure M&A deal volume was down 2.5% in the first half of 2026 compared to the prior six months, investors are concentrating on the upper end of the market, including luxury hotels, wellness resorts and gaming, or “data-rich,” platforms. (Noor Adatia, Hotel Dive)
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Pillsbury's Construction & Real Estate Law Team
Insurer Dispenses with Bad Faith Claim on Summary Judgment
June 22, 2026 —
Tred R. Eyerly - Insurance Law HawaiiThe court granted the insurer’s motion for partial summary judgment because the insured failed to present evidence that the insurer failed to conduct a reasonable investigation. PSY Burger, LLC v. State Farm General Insurance Company, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 66991(C.D. Cal. March 20, 2026).
The insured’s commercial property suffered heavy damage from tropical storm Hilary. State Farm denied coverage to repair the damage. The insured sued State Farm alleging breach of contract and bad faith due to an inadequate investigation. Apparently, the insured did not retain an expert to opine on claims handling.
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Tred R. Eyerly, Damon Key Leong Kupchak HastertMr. Eyerly may be contacted at
te@hawaiilawyer.com
AI in AEC 2026: Doing AI Right and Rethinking Your Business Model
April 08, 2026 —
Aarni Heiskanen - AEC BusinessThe sixth AI at the AEC 2026 conference showcased the evolution of AI discussions. There were, naturally, many talks about software and technologies. But more than before, there were conversations about realizing AI’s business value.
Two themes appeared in nearly every session I attended. First, many companies struggle with AI adoption, not because they lack tools, but because their thinking isn’t right. Second, when AI works, it disrupts the business model that brought them there.
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Aarni Heiskanen, AEC BusinessMr. Heiskanen may be contacted at
aec-business@aepartners.fi
Ninth Circuit Holds That Policies Covering Environmental Claims Do Not Have Aggregate Limits
May 12, 2026 —
Lorelie S. Masters & Joseph T. Niczky - Hunton Insurance Recovery BlogIn the case of
County of San Bernardino v. Insurance Company of the State of Pennsylvania, the Ninth Circuit recently addressed the issue of whether general liability policies issued in the 1960s and 1970s included aggregate limits for claims arising under the premises-operations coverage in CGL policies. The difference between the policyholder’s interpretation of the policies’ limits clauses and the insurer’s interpretation was worth hundreds of millions of dollars in exposure for the insurer. The Court closely examined the policy language and extrinsic evidence from both the insurance industry’s drafting history and the parties before concluding that the policies were ambiguous. The Court construed that ambiguity in favor of the policyholder and ruled that aggregate limits did not apply to the claims at issue. The Court’s decision underscores the importance of carefully examining a policy’s limits, especially for older policies written before 1986 when the insurance industry revised the standard-form CGL policy to state the aggregate limits apply not only to products liability claims but to premises-operations claims as well. Decades of insurance industry drafting history confirms, as the policyholder’s submissions in this case indicate, that the industry well understood that operations claims like the environmental waste-disposal claims at issue here typically were not subject to aggregate limits.
Reprinted courtesy of
Lorelie S. Masters, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP and
Joseph T. Niczky, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP
Ms. Masters may be contacted at lmasters@hunton.com
Mr. Niczky may be contacted at jniczky@hunton.com
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It’s More Than a Feeling: Proving Construction Damages and When You Should Hire an Expert to Help Do It
July 27, 2026 —
Bradley E. Sands & Katie McCracken - ConsensusDocsWhen you win a bid, you might be singing that everything is going your way. Then something goes wrong. The owner hands you defective plans, sits on RFI responses or other critical information, or otherwise upends the work. The costs pile up through no fault of your own. You feel wronged, and you want to be made whole. But a feeling that you got burned is not enough. To recover, that feeling has to become something the law recognizes as damages. So, what are damages, and how do you prove them?
At bottom, contract damages are the money that puts the non-breaching party (i.e., the party that doesn’t breach the contract) in the position it would have occupied had the contract been performed.
Reprinted courtesy of
Bradley E. Sands, Jones Walker LLP and Katie McCracken, Summer Associate, University of Georgia School of Law
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bsands@joneswalker.com
Quick Note: Don’t Spoil Evidence!!!!
March 10, 2026 —
David Adelstein - Florida Construction Legal UpdatesThe phrase “spoliation of evidence” is a phrase that gets used, sometimes properly and sometimes improperly. The reason is that if evidence is legitimately spoiled, the opposing party wants an adverse inference jury instruction. There are two potential adverse inference jury instructions dealing with spoliation of evidence, neither of which are good, and one of which you definitely don’t want. A recent case discusses these jury instructions (check
here) in a slip and fall personal injury case. The bottom line is that you need to preserve evidence relevant to a claim. Don’t lose it. Don’t intentionally destroy it. Don’t pretend it does not exist. Don’t do all the things that hinder the preservation and ultimate production of the relevant evidence. An adverse inference jury instruction (or an adverse inference implication in a non-jury trial) could be much, much worse. The facts are what the facts are. The best thing you can do is confront the facts. Confront the bad facts just like the good facts. The nature of any dispute is that there will be both good and bad facts. Bad facts can hopefully be explained recognizing there will be bad facts on the other side too. Sometimes, the bad facts warrant major strategic considerations and shifting the focus of how a dispute will be handled and presented. Whatever you do, don’t put yourself in a position where you are spoiling evidence. Once you get an adverse inference instruction, that’s it, as it’s very tough to overcome.
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David Adelstein, Kirwin NorrisMr. Adelstein may be contacted at
dma@kirwinnorris.com
Fourth Circuit Extends Coverage to Contractor
May 14, 2026 —
Hunton Insurance Recovery BlogThe Fourth Circuit in APAC-Atlantic, Inc. v. Owners Insurance Co., No. 24-1969, 2026 WL 458402 (4th Cir. Feb. 18, 2026) recently endorsed broad coverage for additional insureds, interpreting “arising out of” broadly under North Carolina law to extend coverage to a repaving company under its subcontractor’s liability insurance policy. The court held that an additional insured’s liability “arising out of” a named insured’s work in an additional-insured endorsement means liability “relating to” or “causally connected to” the named insured’s operations, rather than liability defined more narrowly as “caused by” or “the fault of” the named insured.
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Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP
GRSM Secures Illinois Appellate Victory for Architectural Firm in Implied Warranty Dispute
May 14, 2026 —
Gordon Rees Scully MansukhaniGordon Rees Scully Mansukhani Partner Jonathan Federman, Partner Thomas Cronin, and Senior Counsel Garrett Lee recently secured a victory in the Illinois Appellate Court, Fifth District, on behalf of the firm’s client, an architectural firm, in a liability dispute.
The case arose following an entity’s purchase of a 111-unit building for use as an investment or rental property. The plaintiff made claims against the architect of the building, alleging that there were design defects that breached an implied warranty, as well as a negligence claim.
GRSM argued that an architect could not be liable for implied warranties, particularly for an implied warranty which no Illinois court has ever recognized. GRSM further argued that Illinois law bars an architect from liability for negligence arising from a duty pursuant to contract under the economic loss doctrine.
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Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani
