ARIZONA SUPREME COURT
Flagstaff Affordable Housing v. Design Alliance, Inc., CR-07-0301-AP, filed 02-24-10.
The "economic loss doctrine" bars plaintiffs, in certain circumstances, from recovering economic damages in tort. The Court held that a property owner is limited to its contractual remedies when an architect's negligent design causes economic loss but no physical injury to persons or other property. The architect breached the contractual requirement to design apartments in compliance with the ADA. Years later federal regulators cited the apartments and the owner suffered economic loss, but the claim for breach of contract was barred by the eight year Arizona statute of repose relating to improvements of real property. Under the economic loss statute, the Court held that suit for negligence against the architect would be barred unless the parties' contract provided otherwise: "Thus, the parties can contractually agree to preserve tort remedies for solely economic loss, just as they may otherwise specify remedies that modify common law recovery. . . But if the parties do not provide otherwise in their contract, they will be limited to contractual remedies for any loss of the bargain resulting from construction defects that do not cause personal injury or damage to other property."
ARIZONA COURT OF APPEALS
Gamboa v. Metzler, CV 09-0090, February 2, 2010.
Where plaintiff's counsel agreed to a schedule for the allotment of time during trial, and then failed to schedule witnesses (which caused loss of part of a day and then intruded upon time scheduled for a defense expert), and failed to ask for time to continue on another day when his cross examination of defense expert was stopped at 5:00 p.m., and failed to make an offer of proof showing how stopping the cross examination prejudiced plaintiff's case, the imposition of time limits was affirmed.
Riendeau v. Walmart , CV 09-0202/CV 09-0203, February 25, 2010.
The late filing of a cost bond as part of an appeal to Superior Court from a compulsory arbitration did not deprive the court of authority to hear the appeal. Noteworthy in this case is that plaintiff appealed the arbitration award, was late in filing the bond, lost the case, and then tried to avoid the consequences of the loss by arguing their own appeal was a nullity.
Bennett v. Baxter Group, 2 CA-CV 2009-0046, 02/10/2010.
This is mostly a commercial case dealing with claims arising out of a seller's refusal to return an earnest money deposit, but it also contains an extensive discussion of when a case "arises out of contract" and when fees may be awarded for activity involved in prosecuting or defending related tort claims.
