Dive Brief:
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The general contractor that built the Berkeley apartment building whose fifth-floor balcony killed six students when it collapsed on June 16 has requested a restraining order against the district attorney in charge of a criminal investigation into the accident.
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In a written statement on Tuesday, Segue Construction said it wants to stop the Alameda County district attorney’s office from conducting inspections or collecting evidence unless officials from the company are present. The company claimed it made the request to the office but did not receive a response. A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office told local media it had not received “that specific request.”
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The Segue statement reiterated that the company will cooperate with the criminal investigation. An initial city investigation determined that the laminated wood supports under the eight-year-old balcony had rotted from exposure to moisture.
Dive Insight:
The embattled construction company isn’t guaranteed a court order granting its request. In fact, a Stanford Law School professor called the demand “weird.”
Professor Robert Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, told the Chico Enterprise-Record the district attorney is obligated only to get search warrants for the investigation because the incident happened on private property.
Segue has paid $26.5 million over the past three years to settle construction defect lawsuits, and has been accused in a number of other cases over the past decade.
But the San Francisco Chronicle has reported that the Contractors State License Board apparently was unaware of any of those claims. The newspaper quoted the board’s enforcement chief as saying the agency might have investigated the company or pulled its contractor’s license if regulators had known.