Construction Payment Dispute

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The owner of a multi-billion dollar, mixed-use commercial project including hotels, residential high-rise buildings, retail space, and a casino faced lien litigation and large discrepancies between its own billing data and that of the general contractor.

The owner of a multi-billion dollar, mixed-use commercial project including hotels, residential high-rise buildings, retail space, and a casino faced lien litigation and large discrepancies between its own billing data and that of the general contractor. The property owner retained Cornerstone Research to reconcile nearly five years of billing information maintained by the owner to the amounts claimed by the general contractor, which involved data contained in more than two dozen different systems. This reconciliation involved a determination of the total costs incurred, billed, and paid between the owner, the primary general contractor, and several hundred major subcontractors. The resulting analysis was used to explain the outstanding lien amounts and assess the owner’s potential exposure.

As the project owner directly settled disputed amounts with each subcontractor, Cornerstone Research monitored and tracked the settlements, highlighting how much each one differed from the general contractor’s original claims. Cornerstone Research reported on its progress to corporate executives and counsel on a weekly basis. This process enabled executive management to gauge how well the settlement process progressed.