Johnson & Bell, Ltd.

Johnson and Bell, Ltd.
33 West Monroe Street
Suite 2700
Chicago, IL 60603-5404
(312) 372-0770
www.johnsonandbell.com

Johnson & Bell's Construction group employs innovative and creative methods to represent private, public, local, and international clients. Our cases involve architect and engineering malpractice, construction site accidents, construction defects, contract disputes, contract drafting, insurance coverage disputes, OSHA investigations and citation proceedings, property damage claims, publicly-bid project disputes, mechanics lien disputes, risk management, and litigation related to roads and bridges.

Our clients include owners, developers, architects, engineers, general contractors, construction managers, and subcontractors in both commercial and residential construction projects. We realize the best option for our clients is often not to be involved in litigation at all. Therefore, our risk management practice focuses on evaluating safety programs and operations procedures to identify potential areas of liability. We also perform on-site seminars to educate risk and operations managers, as well as workers themselves, on a variety of safety and liability topics. These forums help our clients to accurately assess both existing risks and potential areas of liability. Our contract-drafting practice aims to protect our clients, both contractually and in terms of insurance coverage, in the event that litigation arises. In such cases, we also assist clients in tendering the defense based upon the contractual risk transfer program established.

Construction Negligence in Illinois - A Primer

Construction Negligence in Illinois—A Primer provides concepts used in the defense of construction negligence related lawsuits in Illinois. This paper highlights current and past favorable and unfavorable Sections 414 and 343 Illinois Opinions. Specifically, the first section of this paper focuses on Section 414 of the Restatement Second of Torts including the current law under 414, how a construction defendant can be found liable either vicariously or directly under 414 and an analysis of how construction defendants can avoid being liable under Section 414. The paper also addresses jury instructions to tender under Section 414 of the Restatement as an alternative to the Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions, as courts are finding that the IPI instructions do not adequately reflect the current law under 414. The second section of the paper focuses on Section 343 of the Restatement, current law under 343, and an analysis of how construction defendants can avoid being liable under Section 343. Finally, the paper addresses how the multi-employer worksite doctrine under OSHA has been negated by the Summit v. Secretary of Labor case OSHRC 03-1622. The Summit decision is important for construction defendants because an expert can no longer criticize a defendant based on the multi-employer worksite doctrine and the case limits the use of the term “employer”. Although this is not an exhaustive paper, hopefully this will alert risk managers, superintendents and other supervisory personnel to assist companies in their operations to be better positioned when the inevitable accident occurs. To request the complete Primer, please contact Mr. Spitzzeri at or 312.984.0683.