McBride, Builder’s Bloc Break Ties; Take Contract And Lien Issues to Court
Date Posted: April 29, 2025
Posted In: News, Organizations, People,
From St. Louis Business Journal: The largest homebuilder in the state of Missouri and one of its key contractors have ended their working relationship and are facing off in court, with competing claims of breach of contract and fraud.
McBride Homes, the Chesterfield-based homebuilder that is the largest in both the St. Louis region and the state, on April 11 filed a lawsuit in St. Louis County Circuit Court against its onetime internal construction division, Chesterfield-based Builder’s Bloc, saying that it had terminated the master agreement between the two companies when, McBride alleged, Builder’s Bloc didn’t perform work quickly enough.
McBride is seeking damages of more than $13 million for lost profits and the cost of delays it attributed to Builder’s Bloc, which had become one of its primary construction subcontractors after McBride spun off Builder’s Bloc into its own company in 2015, without any ownership stake from McBride.
Builder’s Bloc said in a court filing that it is owed more than $10 million in payments for work under the contract, which it has tried to recover by pursuing mechanics liens against recently sold McBride houses. In subsequent court filings, Builder’s Bloc responded to McBride’s claims by alleging that McBride was engaged in “fraud of massive proportions” by filing “false” records that misled hundreds of new homeowners across the region who bought houses this year from the builder, while those same houses had outstanding mechanics liens to be filed against them by Builder’s Bloc.