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Dive Brief:
- A Philadelphia court has awarded Chestle Development approximately $174.6 million in damages from contractor Tutor Perini for breach of contract during the construction of the dual-branded W Hotel and Element Hotel complex in the city, according to court documents.
- The Court of Common Pleas for Philadelphia County issued judgment April 10 in a yearslong dispute over construction issues at the 51-story, 755-room dual-branded hotel. At issue was defective concrete work from the third floor to the top of the building, according to court documents.
- Los Angeles-based Tutor Perini was awarded a $239 million contract for the hotel in 2015, according to a company news release. The hotel opened in 2021 after the developer sued the contractor over construction issues that it claimed led to more than 890 days of delays, according to a release from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based Chestlen.
Dive Insight:
Tutor Perini did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Attorneys for Chestlen said the award shows that contractors are responsible for the work performed on their projects, according to a news release regarding the judgment.
“This award confirms what Chestlen has maintained from the start: accountability matters, regardless of the size of the contractor,” said Peter Sheridan, chair of the Construction Litigation practice at Los-Angeles based law firm Glaser Weil. The firm represented Chestlen along with co-counsel from Blank Rome and Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld, according to the release.
In recent years, Tutor Perini has worked to resolve litigation on a number of high-profile disputes. On its most recent earnings call in February, executives said they had whittled down the number of cases from about 50 to a dozen.
The resolution of those lawsuits helped the contractor swing back to profitability in 2025.
“We spent a lot of money over the last several years on litigation expense,” said Gary Smalley, the firm’s CEO and president, on the earnings call. “Legal expenses are something that, of course, are necessary in business and certainly in this industry. But I think you’ll see less and less legal expenses from us, and that’s only going to drive profit improvement too.”
