03/23/2021 – Austin, TX – Texas Legislature
Texas House Representative Matt Krause (R), whose district (93) runs gerrymandered through Fort Worth and Arlington, TX, has introduced HB 2116, which will modify the contractual agreements that Architects and Engineers provide to their clients.
The bill would make any contract for real property improvement that requires an Architect or Engineer to “defend” a party, including a third party, void and unenforceable. But the same provision provides that the agreement, “may provide for the reimbursement of an owner’s reasonable attorney’s fees in proportion to the engineer’s or architect’s liability.”
Additionally, “…an owner that is a party to a contract for engineering or architectural services related to an improvement to real property may require in the contract that the engineer or architect name the owner as an additional insured under the engineer’s or architect’s commercial general liability insurance policy and provide any defense to the owner provided by the policy to a named insured.”
The bill is scheduled for a hearing in the House Committee on Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence on Wednesday, March 24th.
It can be easily predicted that commercial developers will not be happy with such a law. In the coming days, we will discover just how powerful the development lobby is in our Texas Legislature and which Representatives are beholden to them.