CDC San Francisco v. Critchfield Mechanical CA1/2

BACKGROUND

CDC owns the InterContinental San Francisco Hotel, a 33-story, high- rise hotel located in San Francisco, California. Critchfield is a heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) contractor that installed the hotel’s HVAC system. The hotel’s HVAC system “consists of several different systems,” including a four-pipe fan coil system for heating and cooling guestrooms. The

1 guestrooms are equipped with a visible “fan coil unit” that controls the temperature using water from chillers and boilers at the roof level. The water is transported through a vertically oriented system of piping called “risers” that connect the fan coil units in the guestrooms with the chillers and boilers on the roof. At some point after installation, CDC discovered a water leak in the hot water supply risers on the 21st floor of the hotel, which CDC later found impacted the 21st and 22nd floors of the hotel, causing several guestrooms to be removed from service. CDC operations personnel subsequently learned the water leak was “considerable and extensive, spanning multiple floors and damaging other aspects” of the hotel’s infrastructure. Thus, on January 30, 2018, CDC sued Critchfield for…