BJ Thompson Associates, Inc. leased an office from Jubilee Investment Corp. The lease included the following language: Guaranty of Performance In consideration of the making of the above Lease by LANDLORD with TENANT at the request of the undersigned Guarantor, and in reliance by LANDLORD on this guaranty the Guarantor…
Suppose that eight years ago, you hired a construction contractor to build an addition to your house in Indiana. Shortly after the construction was finished, you noticed that the roof shingles on the addition weren’t quite the same color as those on the rest of the house. You checked the…
Consider these two relatively recent cases, one from Massachusetts and one from Indiana, both involving allegations of breach of contract through the use of social media: A vice president of a recruiting firm leaves her job and goes to work for another recruiting firm. She has a covenant not to…
Indiana has a relatively little known statute, the Home Improvement Contracts statute located in Title 24, Article 25, Chapter 11 of the Indiana Code, that protects the customers of home improvement contractors by establishing certain minimum contract requirements. Home improvement contractors are well advised to ensure that their contracts comply…
In a previous post we discussed a few basic principles of confidentiality agreements (also known as non-disclosure agreements or NDAs). That post discussed the basic of these agreements and the important principles of restrictive covenants and trade secrets. Left unanswered was the critical question: How long can, or should, a…
Confidentiality agreements (also known as non-disclosure agreements or NDAs) are common in today’s business world. They are sometimes in the form of stand-alone agreements, often used when two businesses are discussing a potential deal and at least one of them needs to disclose to the other information that is not…
July 17, 2014. Update. Today the Indiana Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals. Check back soon on the Indiana Business Law Blog for a discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision. A ruling in a recent case, Fischer v. Heymann, illustrates the pitfalls one can encounter when…
I explained in my last two posts how construction managers can be subject to liability when a construction contractor’s employee is injured. Ordinarily, the construction manager has no duty to provide a safe workplace for the employees of a construction contractor and, therefore, is generally not liable for injuries to…
As discussed in my last post, general contractors and construction managers have very different roles in a construction project. General contractors are sometimes sued when their subcontractor’s employees are injured on the job, but that’s not as often the case for construction managers. In addition, the liability analysis is quite…
When it comes to occupational injuries, the construction industry is among the most dangerous. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010 there were more fatal occupational injuries in construction than in any other private industry sector. And when a worker is injured, it sometimes leads to a lawsuit.…