Berkley Surety is seeking $10 million from the owners of Davila Construction Inc., a longtime San Antonio general contractor and construction manager that was terminated by a Texas school district for which it was constructing two buildings under contracts for value of 30 million dollars.
The surety filed a lawsuit in May in federal court in San Antonio against the contractor, its owners and others who secured the surety bond. Berkley says he has had to spend money on several of the 10 Davila Construction projects for which he had provided bonds. The work includes three contracts worth $9 million for the city of San Antonio, another $2.7 million for San Juan, Texas, a $5.6 million apartment building project and a $9 million renovation project for the US Army Corps of Engineers.
The biggest contracts were for an aquatics center for the San Benito, Texas school district, which Davila terminated and claimed under its performance bond.
Both Davila Construction and a related partnership that indemnified the guarantor, ATC-Davila, “have defaulted on several of the projects,” Berkley claims in his lawsuit.
The phone number for Davila Construction in San Antonio was not in service, and an attorney for the company and one of its owners, Antonio Davila, did not respond to messages seeking comment. A call and email to the city of San Antonio about the status of Davila’s contracts also went unanswered.
In an initial response to Berkley’s lawsuit in June, Davila Construction claims the surety does not state a claim or meet the conditions precedent to recovering funds. The indemnification agreement limits Antonio Davila’s liability and individual exhibition to $1 million, says Davila’s response.
While Davila Construction’s current status is unclear, its problems with the San Benito School District project could have been costly. The school district had issued $40 million in bonds to finance construction of the aquatic center, performing arts center and other related work. In late 2019, he hired Davila as a project manager at risk to build the aquatics and performing arts center. A third structure, a football stadium, was completed by another contractor.
According to the San Benito News, an architect employed by the district discovered that the misaligned “geopier rock columns” for one or both of Davilla’s projects were “out of alignment” and the school district halted work in March 2023 and subsequently issued a default warning. in Dávila
Last month, Berkley settled the district’s claim under its performance bond, agreeing to pay $13.3 million so the aquatic center and performing arts center could be completed. In a Facebook post, the district said it now has $29.3 million left to complete planned school construction projects.
Asked about the status of construction projects at the school where Davila had withdrawn, the school district said its trustees and superintendent are “currently working on the next steps to move forward with the bond construction projects.” .
