Post Beacon California Appellate Case Finds No Duty for Designer

In State Ready Mix Concrete v Moffatt and Nichols, 2d Civil No. B253421, the California Court of Appeals found that an engineer did not owe a supplier a duty of care and therefore dismissed the supplier’s cross-complaint.  The course followed the lead of Beacon[1] by applying the Biakanja [2] factors to determine whether a duty existed.

Certainly, the ruling would seem to provide protection to engineers from direct actions brought by contractors and suppliers.  However, as with Beacon itself, the application of the Biakanja factors make it difficult to develop hard fast rules.  While designers would like to argue that they do not owe contractors a duty of care when producing their design, this case will not be particularly helpful.

In State Ready Mix, Moffatt & Nichols did not develop the concrete mix design but only reviewed it for the benefit of the project manager.  More importantly, State Ready Mix produced a non-conforming concrete and failed to test the concrete to make sure it met the specification.  These two factors weighed heavily in the courts analysis.  This decision will be of little value in an instance where the contractor attempts to sue a design professional alleging that the designer’s work caused the contractor increased costs.  The application of Beacon to this scenario and other common situations will be looked at in depth during a panel discussion at West Coast Casualty’s Construction Defect Seminar in Anaheim, California, May 14 & 15, 2015.

[1] Beacon Residential Community Assn. v. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (2014) 59 Cal.4^th 568
[2] Biakanja v. Irving (1958) 49 Cal.2d 647