Arizona follows the law across the country that an owner providing plans to a general contractor warrants that the plans will be constructible. This rule is often called the Spearin Doctrine, named after a 1918 decision by the United States Supreme Court addressing the federal government’s relationship with contractors.
While we are unaware of any way for an owner to shun this liability, this potential liability historically has not been much of a factor because of the way improvements have historically been designed and built. Arizona owners typically have hired professionals to design improvements, for example, using a design-bid-build approach. Not only does this practice mean that the designer is responsible to the owner for problems with the design, but Arizona courts actually hold that the designer can be liable directly to the contractor. Thus, in construction disputes, the project designer is typically named in a lawsuit either directly by the contractor or indirectly by the owner.
Recently, however, we have seen that several owners have taken the responsibility for project design in-house. While this practice may result in lower design costs, it has a more far- reaching implication too: if the contractor is able to demonstrate a design error, the owner no longer has another to whom he or she can offload associated costs to correct or work around the problem. Owners should consider the risk of design errors when deciding what work to do in-house or whether to take in any design work at all.
