Mehrdad Farivar and Chris Menjou secure summary judgment ruling related to construction site incident

Mehrdad Farivar and Chris Menjou recently secured a pair of summary judgment wins in a $45 million personal injury claim by an ironworker against a project owner and design and construction teams after a 60-foot-tall steel structure, a part of a marine fire station in the Port of Long Beach, suddenly collapsed while it was being erected.

Winning these motions resulted in a complete win for the construction manager represented by Farivar and Menjou.

“We’re pleased with the court’s ruling to close the case in favor of our client,” Farivar said. “While the claim was substantial, we persuaded the court on critical points to refute arguments against our client.”

Following targeted discovery designed to narrow down the nature of the claim, Farivar and Menjou filed two separate summary judgment motions, one aimed at the plaintiff’s claims of negligence and premises liability, and the other aimed at a co-defendant’s cross-claim for indemnity.

Just prior to the plaintiff’s opposition due date, plaintiff’s counsel filed a Notice of Non-Opposition, which led to judgment in the construction manager’s favor on the plaintiff’s complaint.

This raised “a discrete issue” in the words of the Court: “Where summary judgment has been granted in defendant’s favor on a negligence claim, finding that there was no duty owed to plaintiff by the moving party as a matter of law, was a cross-defendant legally precluded from pursuing a claim of equitable indemnity against the defendant?”

Following supplemental briefing in which the cross-complaining structural engineer argued that the underlying summary judgment motion could not form the basis of res judicata or collateral estoppel against it because the court granted the motion based on non-opposition by the plaintiff, the court ruled in the construction manager’s favor. The court determined that the engineer knew or should have known that a ruling in the construction manager’s favor on the issue of duty would preclude an equitable indemnity claim, that the engineer was on notice of the motion but failed to file any opposition, and that it should not have solely relied on the plaintiff to make the case for duty (or not).

The Court also confirmed that, notwithstanding the plaintiff’s non-opposition to the summary judgment motion, the motion was deemed a “judgment on the merits.”