Attorney Profiles

Although having attended Boston University School of Law and passing the Massachusetts Bar Exam in 1969, John Davagian spent the first twenty-eight years of his professional career as a contractor.

As vice president and then president of Sutton Corporation, a heavy construction company, Mr. Davagian managed the closely held family business. Sutton specialized in building bridges, piers, and wharfs as a general contractor for public awarding authorities in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, as well as for the General Services Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Department of the Navy. The company also acted as a subcontractor to numerous general contractors for the installation of all types of deep foundations, earth support systems, and pile foundations for both public and private owners across New England.

Although not actively practicing law over those three decades, Mr. Davagian gained valuable hands-on experience interacting and negotiating with owners, general contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, engineers, architects, and labor unions. He secured and refined skills in problem solving in a practical business context. That experience is reflected in his practice where he represents not only contractors, but also suppliers, owners, sureties, and engineers.

Whether it be a corporation, partnership, or limited liability entity, Mr. Davagian is able to provide the counsel and technical skill to aid his clients in establishing their own businesses or entering into joint venture agreements. That expertise extends to counseling management as to effective professional business practices to establish and maintain good relationships with financial institutions and sureties. He also provides advice and representation on employment issues or organized labor. He has represented the Foundation & Marine Contractors Association of New England, Inc., in its negotiations with organized labor for over thirty-five years. He currently acts as General Counsel to the organization.

A significant portion of Mr. Davagian's practice involves negotiating and drafting contracts for his clients. He counsels them that a well-drafted and complete contract document will militate against serious and costly disagreements and disputes once construction is underway. In other words, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

When his clients have encountered difficult project situations, Mr. Davagian has mediated, arbitrated, and litigated cases involving differing subsurface conditions, construction defects, and contractual issues such as delays, acceleration, and cardinal changes. He understands that resolving construction disputes can involve the review of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and the presentation of very complex technical issues in terms that a lay person can absorb and appreciate. He is not only familiar with those issues but has faced many of them first-hand during his career as a contractor.

Mr. Davagian's practical experience, coupled with his expertise in the law, provides him with the unique ability to present the evidence and issues to the triers of fact simply and succinctly in order to obtain a favorable outcome. He is equally facile and comfortable before a judge or jury in a trial court, an appellate tribunal, or an arbitration panel or mediator. Yet, he understands that litigation can be costly in terms of both time and money for his clients and believes in taking the practical business approach of negotiating settlements to such disputes whenever a reasonable and practical solution is achievable.

In the arena of public construction law, Mr. Davagian has wide experience in both presenting and defending surety claims and initiating direct payment claims against public owners on behalf of subcontractors and suppliers. He has also represented his clients before administrative tribunals in contractual disputes. He has also filed, perfected, and foreclosed on mechanic's liens against private owners.

In the area of residential construction, Mr. Davagian has represented both contractors and homeowners. He has successfully mediated, arbitrated, and litigated cases involving the Massachusetts Home Improvement Law.

Mr. Davagian has also represented clients in the realm of commercial and residential real estate development and land use. In his position as General Counsel to the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association, Mr. Davagian represented this major non-profit organization in its development of a 283-acre parcel of land from land purchase, financing, design, permitting, through construction of a sixteen-field, state-of-the-art soccer complex in Lancaster, Massachusetts, to the benefit of its 185,000 children.