Business With a Friend: Lessons from a Liftboat Contract
Charles Sartain, a partner in Gray Reed, uses a recent 5th Circuit ruling on a liftboat construction contract to illustrate his advice on how to administer and perform a contract, especially one with a friend.
Writing in the firm’s Energy & the Law blog, he discusses Semco, LLC v. The Grand, LTD. The case involves a $15.9 million contract between long-time friends to construct a liftboat, a construction project that involved numerous change orders.
“At some point, the parties ‘got away from the change order program’ and informal requests were approved by email or orally,” Sartain explains. Then allegations of fraud were raised.