Tutor Perini’s W Hotel problem keeps getting more expensive. On July 7, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge James Crumlish III ordered the contractor’s building arm to pay $42.4 million to Ventana DBS, the Chicago subcontractor that designed and installed the exterior and window-wall systems on the 51-story tower.
That lands on top of the $174.6 million Crumlish awarded earlier this year to developer Chestlen Development for 2,797 days of delay. The job now carries better than $217 million in judgments against the builder.
What the court actually found
Tutor Perini brought Ventana on in 2015 under a $14 million contract covering the curtain wall from floors nine to 50. The building had concrete problems. Floor slabs came in out of tolerance, and a facade is the one trade that can’t quietly absorb somebody else’s dimensional errors.
The finding is the part that should worry every general contractor reading this. Crumlish concluded that Tutor Perini knew about the concrete defects, concealed that knowledge in bad faith, and then blamed Ventana for the delays that followed. Ventana, the court wrote, was forced to “navigate numerous obstructions and obstacles” stemming from Tutor Perini’s breaches.
A $14 million subcontract produced a $42.4 million judgment. The multiple is the story.
Why bad faith changes the math
Delay claims get fought and settled every day, usually landing somewhere between the two sides’ spreadsheets. What blows past that range is a finding of concealment. Once a judge decides the GC hid a known defect and pushed the schedule blame downstream, the ordinary defenses stop working and the ordinary ranges stop applying.
Tutor Perini said in April that it disagreed with the delay ruling and intended to appeal. It declined to comment on the Ventana judgment. Appeals against findings of fact are steep climbs, and bad faith is a finding of fact.
The read for contractors
Two things are worth taking off this. Out-of-tolerance structure becomes a facade problem whether or not the facade sub poured any of it, and the cheapest moment to document that jointly is the first week somebody notices. And the instinct to manage a defect quietly, letting the schedule absorb it, is now demonstrably the most expensive option on the board.
Philadelphia’s W Hotel opened years late. The lawyers are still building. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the ruling, and it follows the pattern we saw in the Neutral Edison foreclosure: the money problems surface long after the concrete does.