The trial court found that Pitt received the revised drawing, failed to timely review and incorporate the changes into its scope, and committed the first material breach of the subcontract.
Every contractor has seen it. A revised drawing hits your inbox. You open the sheet, look for the clouds, figure out what changed, and move on. But what if something changed outside the cloud?
That seemingly simple question became a very expensive problem in Young Contracting/SE, Inc. v. Pitt Excavating, LLC, (Oct. 30, 2026), a recent Tennessee Court of Appeals decision involving a general contractor and its excavation subcontractor. The subcontract required Pitt to perform its work in accordance with the project drawings and specifications, “as amended from time to time.”
During the project, Young sent Pitt a revised drawing. Pitt’s owner testified that his practice was to look at the clouded areas because he understood those areas to identify what had changed. He explained that he presumed the rest of the drawing remained the same. Guess what? That assumption did not work out well.
Mr. Devries may be contacted at mdevries@buchalter.com