Originally published by Matthew DeVries on Best Practices Construction Law blog.
In construction, there should be a written contract to transfer the risk when you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Understand that an indemnity clause in a construction contract is merely a written agreement to transfer some type of risk on the project to one or more of the parties.
In an article in the Journal of the Canadian College of Construction Lawyers (2017 J. Can. C. Construction Law 1), Andrew Wallace and Victoria Merritt give a contractor’s perspective to contractual indemnity provisions in construction contracts. While the authors recognize that indemnification provisions are standard for many construction contracts, certain indemnification provisions “raise serious concerns for parties involved in the construction project in so far as they reflect inefficient risk transfer between contracting partners.”
(more on the use of indemnification in construction contracts...)
