There has been a law on the books for a number of years that is intended to keep architects, engineers and land surveyors from being included in "shotgun" lawsuits where everybody that had anything to do with a project is included as a party to the litigation. The law, known as The "Certificate of Merit Law," provides that an attorney must file a certificate in every action, including a cross-complaint for damages or indemnity, arising out of the professional negligence of a professional engineer, architect or land surveyor declaring that there is reasonable and meritorious cause for the filing of the lawsuit.

In these days of wide-spread traffic congestion and six-figure traffic volumes, few people realize the huge extent to which California’s motor vehicle traffic has grown in less than 75 years.

In a prior article, it was pointed out that a lawsuit for foreclosure of a mechanics‚ lien had to be filed within 90 days of the date of recording of the lien and that failure to meet that time limit could result in loss of the ability to sue to enforce the mechanics‚ lien. Several alternate strategies were also noted whereby the lien could be kept alive until the lawsuit to foreclose could be filed at a later date. One of the options mentioned was to file another mechanics‚ lien to replace the old one. This required that the lien filing period had not yet lapsed when the replacement lien was recorded. It also required that the old lien be released. Another option was to record a “Notice of Credit” which could extend the period for filing the foreclosure action to one year.

A contractor had built a new home and was fully paid for the work. Before the final payment, there were three punch lists. Eight months after the final payment, the owners had an additional 22 item punch list. The contractor repaired some of the items and refused to deal with others.

 

The early years of highway development featured intensive promotion, selling the ideas of national and state systems and increased funding to create them. Many of the earliest work was by private groups, which both publicized and installed signs on routes such as the Lincoln Highway and the National Park-to-Park Highway. These and other routes passed through or terminated in California. Beginning between 1910 and 1920, many states began organizing highway departments and presenting bond issues to the voters for the first major improvements.

 

Reinforced concrete technology, so widely used in all types of construction today, received many of its earliest and most significant advancements here in Northern California. The Fall 1984 issue of “California History” (California Historical Society) has a fascinating article on the role of San Francisco civil engineer John Leonard in the history of concrete-based structural advancements.

 

Today’s engineers have tremendous advantage in the modern, technologically amazing, construction equipment available to build their projects. But it has been less than 100 years since manpower and horsepower dominated the construction process, and separately powered mechanical devices were just undergoing early, largely experimental, development.