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Shop Drawing Liability

Timothy R. Hughes, Esq.
Hughes & Associates, P.L.L.C. 

Architects and other design professionals are able to contractually limit exposure to liability for shop drawing review.  The key factor is to ensure that you have the proper contract language.  Secondarily, you want your review documentation to be consistent with your contract.  Finally, you need to be careful to avoid injecting yourself into review and action over and above your contract obligations as this may trigger liability.

D.C. McClain v. Arlington County

Design professional liability for review and action on shop drawings is actually an issue that the Supreme Court of Virginia has ruled upon.  In the case of D.C. McClain v. Arlington County, the Supreme Court held that an engineer was not liable for the allegedly negligent approval of a shop drawing.

In D.C. McClain, a contractor entered into a contract with Arlington County for construction of a post-tensioned concrete bridge.  The owner/contractor agreement provided that the contractor was solely responsible for means and methods.  The contract provided further that the contractor would not be relieved of compliance with the contract documents by virtue of approval of a shop drawing unless the deviation was specifically noted on the shop drawing submittal.

The contractor submitted a shop drawing showing a method of post-tensioning the bridge that was later deemed dangerous.  The engineer approved the shop drawing including a stamp indicating the shop drawing was reviewed for general conformance with design intent only and not for verification of dimensions or approval of means and methods.  The contractor later claimed that the engineer had approved their defective method of construction the bridge.

On appeal, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled that the engineer was not contractually responsible for means and methods of construction.  The court ruled further that the engineer’s approval of the shop drawing was not an approval of the proposed method of construction because that issue was wholly within the discretion of the contractor.  Finally, the court noted with approval that the engineer’s shop drawing stamp matched the contract language and similarly disclaimed responsibility for means and methods style issues.  Based on these arguments, the Supreme Court held that the engineer could not be legally responsible and ruled in favor of the engineer.

Practical Impact

Shop drawing review is one of the few areas involving claims of malpractice against architects where there is clear court guidance.  Unlike almost all other areas of malpractice claims, there is at least some potential for using this decision to argue that the architect cannot, as a matter of law, be liable.  This creates the potential for ending claims quickly, efficiently, and with far less legal expense.

There are limits to the scope of the decision.  While the architect generally is not contractually responsible for means and methods, architects need to be careful to avoid injecting themselves into review and approval of means and methods.  An architect may be able to expose themselves to liability for voluntarily injecting themselves into an issue for which they were not contractually responsible.

Similarly, architects need to be very careful in reviewing the enclosure documents.  For example, if the architect approves a shop drawing but does not notice the contractor requested a deviation from the contract documents, the architect may have unwittingly permitted the contractor to greatly decrease the project value to the owner.  This type of neglect may still permit a claim by the owner.  Despite these limitations, the D.C. McClain decision does offer a great deal of protection to architects against shop drawing liability.