Liton General Engineering Contractor, Inc. v. United Pacific Insurance

PETERSON, J.*

I respectfully dissent.

This case presents important issues of first impression in this state which affect all public (and ultimately private) works of improvement. It concerns the liability of a surety, issuing a public works payment bond, for a subcontractor’s attorney fees and costs incurred in recovering an award from the *595surety’s principal in a private and voluntary contractual arbitration, in which each party agreed, and was ordered, to pay its own such expenses, and to which the surety was not a party. It raises the issue of whether such private arbitration is an action “on…