Spearin doctrine

The Spearin Doctrine: Why Owners Implicitly Warrant Their Own Design

Under the Spearin doctrine, when an owner provides the design, they implicitly warrant it's adequate. If the design is defective and the contractor builds it as shown but the result fails, the owner bears the cost — not the contractor. The doctrine is a century old, widely followed in US construction law, and one of the most important protections contractors have on traditional design-bid-build projects.