Once upon a time, there was scarcely a fairer place than Pennsylvania in which to be an owner of a construction project. While owners were responsible to the general contractors with whom they contracted directly, in the absence of unusual circumstances, owners were not responsible for the sins of those with whom they contracted, and could not, generally speaking, be liable to those subcontractors, including suppliers, with whom they had no privity of contract.
With one notable exception, unless an owner specifically identified a subcontractor as a third-party beneficiary of its contract with the general contractor, or misled a subcontractor by, for example, falsely promising to make good on missed payments, an owner — like the parties to any other type of contract — was liable only for its own misdeeds and not the misdeeds of those with whom it contracted.
