The Dunn case strikes me as one where perhaps the trial judge got swept up into the case a bit. As I was reading the case, it appeared pretty clear that the Richmond v. McDevitt Street case was directly on point and barred the fraud claims. For folks not into the inside baseball, pun intended, the Richmond case involved construction of the minor league stadium in Richmond. The contractor was alleged to have purposefully misrepresented the quality of its work, including signing a much of payment applications and substantial completion affidavits, when it knew that it had intentionally cut corners.

This is another case where the lay understanding of being “defrauded” does not necessarily match up with the law, at least in Virginia!
.-= Tim Hughes´s last blog post ..The Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor in Arlington Makes the NY Times =-.