Florida’s 18th Judicial Circuit Court recently granted a motion for summary judgment in favor of a homeowner’s association, concluding that a general contractor who constructed 314 town homes was liable for the building code violations of its subcontractors on the project and could not delegate responsibility directly to them.
Grande Oaks at Heathrow Association, Inc v. Kolter Signature Homes, LLC, arose from the construction of several hundred townhomes in central Florida. While the trial court order underlying this article does not give a lot of detail on the background of the case, one of the clear issues in the case was whether the general contractor was responsible for ensuring the project complied with the Florida Building Code, or whether it could delegate that responsibility and the ensuing liability to its subcontractors. Ultimately, the trial court concluded that (1) the general contractor who pulled the permits for the project had a non-delegable duty to supervise, direct, manage, and control the work, including the work of subcontractors, and (2) that this non-delegable duty also made the general contractor liable for the actions or omissions of its subcontractors on the project.
The court grounded its decision in the permitting documents and the Florida Building code. Specifically, the trial court found that the permit application signed by the general contractor contained the following certification:
I hereby certify that I have read an examined this application and know the same to be true and correct. All provisions of all laws and ordinances governing this type of work will be complied with whether specified herein or not.
The court then held that the Florida Building code is a law regulating construction where the project was built, and that by submitting the permit applications, the general contractor certified to the local building department that the Florida Building Code would be complied with for the construction of the project. The court concluded that “[b]y submitting the permit applications for the construction of the project, the general contractor had a non-delegable duty to ensure the Florida Building Code was complied with.
Notably though, while the court reached this conclusion, it also expressly stated that the general contractor was not precluded from pursuing claims against the other parties to the lawsuit, which presumably included some of subcontractors that had committed building code violations.
The key takeaway from this trial is clear. Both general contractors and subcontractors can be responsible for the subcontractors’ building code violations. This is true even if the subcontract agreement attempts to push all of that responsibility onto the subcontractor. So even where a general contractor engages another subcontractor perform some or all of the work on a project, the general contractor must ensure the work is completed in accordance with the Florida Building Code.