Practice Areas & Industries: Tharpe & Howell

Practice/Industry Group Overview

For Real Estate and construction professionals, dealing with litigation and the threat of legal action has become an expected and significant cost of doing business. Tharpe & Howell brings you decades of strategic experience, transactional solutions that minimize litigation risks, and access to the best experts and ADR professionals, to ensure that these costs don’t overwhelm your bottom line.

Services Available

At Tharpe & Howell, we serve the distinct needs of a wide variety of clients in both commercial and residential real estate and construction matters, providing the legal services they need to compete and prosper in today’s dynamic market. Our practice is “ground-up,” handling our client’s transactional needs, as well as virtually every type of construction claim, including: construction defects and delays; construction site injuries, earth-movement including floods, landslides, storm and earthquake claims; structural failures and building collapse; water-intrusion; contract disputes; environmental claims including mold and asbestos; insurance claims and insurance coverage disputes; and operations, labor and management claims.

Our approach is goal-oriented and focused on risk-management. Drawing on our extensive real estate and construction litigation experience, we work with our clients to make sure buy-sell, lease or lending transactions and construction contracts are done right, with an eye toward avoiding litigation.

Because Real Estate and construction litigation is often high-exposure, document-intensive and highly technical, strategic focus is critical.

When claims are made, we work closely with you to develop strategies that resolve the matter quickly and cost-effectively. We employ a variety of tools to avoid prolonged litigation whenever possible. Sometimes we use our law and motion department to eliminate improper damage claims and achieve a prompt and favorable settlement prior to trial. Other times it involves Alternative Dispute Resolution techniques, including the use of mediators, arbitrators, special masters and discovery referees. You get the benefit of our years of experience helping clients maximize the value and results of ADR, as well as our professional relationships with the best providers in the field.

Matching you with the right experts for success.

Real estate and construction litigation is particularly amenable to the use of consultants and experts. We’ve been working with the best consultants and experts throughout California, Nevada and Arizona for decades. So we can insure that you are matched with the right expert to obtain the right results, every time. And that they are given the direction and supervision necessary to insure that they perform in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Representative clients

• Property owners
• Lenders
• Developers
• Public entities
• General contractors
• Engineering contractors
• Sub-contractors
• Design professionals
• Real-estate brokers
• Material and product suppliers
• Environmental contractors
• Landlords
• Tenants
• Insurers

We handle a wide-variety of transactional and litigated real estate matters including:

• disputes related to sales and lease transactions
• financing and lending agreements
• trust deeds and foreclosures
• contract disputes
• easement and boundary disputes
• land use issues and entitlements
• inverse condemnation and nuisance claims
• lease evaluations and negotiations
• evaluations related to insurance needs

If you would like more information about Tharpe & Howell's Real Estate and Construction Law Practice Group, please contact Firm Partner Robert ("Bob") Freedman at (818) 205-9955.