ALFA International Publications

This summer the United States Supreme Court issued opinions on socially and politically polarizing issues, including reproductive rights, gun control, climate change, and immigration. In today’s more interconnected and often more demanding society, your customers and the public frequently expect – and many times demand – your business express much more than neutral statements regarding these charg…

Protecting Websites from Copying There are several legal avenues that a company can pursue to protect its website from unlawful copying by competitors.  Federal copyright law protects the content of a website. Statutory protections against trademark infringement prohibit the use of a domain name that is confusingly similar to another company’s trademark.  And the legal doctrine of trade dress exis…

How Tort Claims Can Shape the Narrative of a Commercial Dispute Generally, a tort is a cause of action to recover damages for personal injury or property damage. Under the common law, a person or entity has a property interest in its contracts, its business expectations and its reputation. Thus, where one’s wrongful conduct causes damage to any one of these business interests, the injured party ma…

Multi-party and complex construction claims can be difficult to navigate, particularly through the early stages of litigation. This coursebook submission focuses on past experiences and best practices on how to properly wade through the challenges of complex claims, implementing procedural and substantive strategies that may mitigate issues, and streamlining the "life" of the litigation. As detail…

“The construction industry desperately needs qualified, skilled craft professionals to build America.”[1] - Michael Bellaman, ABC President and CEO. While we (hopefully) leave the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, the labor market for construction continues to follow trends from before the pandemic. As with many industries, construction  continues to face problems associated with the supply chain. As …

The ready availability of construction equipment and the materials used to construct projects is critical to construction-project delivery worldwide. Whether by pandemic, inflation, war, protective tariffs, or increased competition for a finite supply, scarcity of parts and materials, and their price volatility have triggered project delays — and worse still — project cancellations. Constructors a…

Litigation of Construction Defect claims often brings together an admixture of product manufacturers, product sellers/distributors, and product installers.  While these groups may coordinate and work together in the field, the joint-interests and common ground can be challenged in the context of a lawsuit. The divergence of interest among these parties arises from several factors: The s…

“When crews began demolishing the back of the former Grand Central nightclub for a planned eight-story office redevelopment in Mount Vernon, residents of the historic building next door noticed loud construction noise and, then, something more surprising: Large cracks appeared under the windows and at one corner of the ornate Italianate structure dating back to the 1860s. In one of the apartment…

THE HISTORY OF MODULAR CONSTRUCTION What is Modular Construction? Modular construction is a system of building a structure that assembles sections or modules of that structure off-site in a manufacturing plant, and then transports and assembles the sections or modules on site. The modules are often compared to building blocks or legos that “click” together on site to form a cohesive and complete s…

The Current State of Infrastructure In Light of the IIJA  The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (“IIJA”) is a new law that provides much-needed investments aimed at improving America’s transportation infrastructure systems. The IIJA includes the largest increase in federal highway and public transportation investment in more than 50 years.[1] The IIJA, which was signed into law on Novem…