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Legal Commentary: Implied Warranty on Owners Plans and
Specifications
09/15/2011
Albert B. Wolf
There are two types of warranties: express and implied.
Express warranties are those found in documents such as
contracts, product warranties that come with the products,
or may even be warranties made verbally by one of the
parties to a contract or purchase.
Implied warranties are warranties created by the law, by
legislation or by the courts. For example, Colorado
appellate courts have established that homebuilders
impliedly warrant that their houses be habitable. That
means that they can be conveniently occupied for
residential use.
In the construction industry, one of the most prominent
implied warranties is that owners who provide plans and
specifications to their contractors impliedly warrant the
adequacy of their plans and specifications. That implied
warranty had its beginning in the 1918 U.S. Supreme
Court decision in Spearin v. U.S. and is therefore
popularly now known as the Spearin Doctrine.
Under the Spearin Doctrine if the contractor completes the
work in accordance with the owners plans and
specifications but there is a deficiency or failure, the
owner, not the contractor, is responsible. The architect or engineer involved may likely bear some or all of the
responsibility as well.
What happens if owners breach their implied warranties? In most instances, their contractors would be entitled to
additional compensation for extra work performed, delays experienced and any other additional expense or loss
occasioned by the warranty breach.
The Colorado Court of Appeals has recognized the applicability of the Spearin Doctrine in Colorado with the
observation that . . . the owner, not the contractor is responsible for the consequences of defects in the plans and
specifications.
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Along the same line, case law from other jurisdictions indicates that owners are deemed by law to impliedly warrant that
their plans and specifications are (1) accurate, and (2) suitable for their intended use. An owner breaches the first
warranty when it turns out that the facts are different, and it breaches the second when the contractor is unable to
achieve a satisfactory result within the participated contract time without extraordinary or unanticipated expense.
As in most construction disputes, the real question is whether the contractor met the requirements of the plans and
specifications. If it did and something went wrong, the owner would and should be responsible for the consequences.

Albert B. Wolf is a principal in the Denver law firm of Wolf Slatkin & Madison P.C.
Keywords: Construction Law;Colorado Law;Warranties;Wolf Slatkin & Madison;Owner's Warranties
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