S2:E53 Gabe D. Pinilla and Ryan K. Markham - Get to Know the Colorado Cotney Office

By Colin Sheehan, RCS Reporter. 

Learn about Cotney Construction Law’s plans for COVID-19 waivers and their predictions for the changes the vaccine will bring.  

On this episode of Roofing Road Trips, RoofersCoffeeShop® partner, Heidi J. Ellsworth visits with Gabe Pinilla and Ryan Markham from Cotney Construction Law in Denver. The three discuss the Colorado Cotney Denver Office as well as how contractors can develop proactive legal plans for 2021. This podcast is sponsored by Cotney Construction Law and is one of the first podcasts for the new Cotney Around the Globe podcast series. 

Gabe recently joined Cotney Construction Law and has a background in business and commercial law litigation. He has been working with contractors in a variety of areas in the construction industry for over five years now; however, since joining Cotney he’s been working with more roofing professionals than ever before. 

“My practice is become more diverse because I'm seeing 360 degrees of construction law, whereas before I was dealing more with the litigation side of things. Now I'm more into the regulatory stuff and the legislative side of things, which is really exciting,” said Gabe. 

Ryan is also new to Cotney Law, joining the team earlier last year. Before that he worked in Hawaii as a construction attorney and was fortunate enough to be a part of Hawaii’s construction boom that’s been going on for the last six years. This growth gave him lots of opportunities to work with roofing contractors which helped developed his passion for helping those in the roofing industry. 

“I just absolutely adore all my roofing contractor clients,” said Ryan. “I feel like it is a very special trade and so many of the companies are family owned, but just the community itself gives off a great family feel.”. 

The three also discussed how the coronavirus has impacted business and created new demands for legal services, like developing COVID-19 liability waivers. A lot of Cotney Law clients have had to learn how to adopt new technologies and make other business changes to better protect their employees and help control the spread of the virus in the workforce. 

“To help our clients, we developed a waiver that we use here in the Denver office, which our clients can provide to customers and let them know COVID-19 is an issue. We're going to do everything we can to protect you and our workers, but should there be some exposure, there's not the liability there,” said Ryan. 

COVID-19 is the dominating feature of 2020 and has impacted people and businesses in ways nobody could have predicted. Through it all, Cotney Construction Law has been at the forefront by staying informed and keeping others educated through free information available on their website as well as more in-depth information available to Cotney clients. Now they are looking forward to the oncoming vaccine and predicting how that will impact businesses. 

“The vaccine is going to create a whole host of new ground-shifting questions to think about and issues that are going to have to be addressed by employers, roofers and contractors alike,” said Gabe. “Eventually we're going to hear questions like ‘can your employer force you to take a vaccine so that you can come to work?’”  

Gabe continued, “On the flip side, customers walking into a store can't be expected by an owner to automatically be required to disclose their personal health information, including whether or not they've been vaccinated. So there's a little bit of a double-edged sword going on there, but if employers want to be proactive about this, one of the ways to do that is by updating their safety manuals, particularly contractors updating their employee manuals and definitely staying tuned to this conversation as it plays out. We will be, as we have been the whole time, on the cutting edge of these discussions and anybody who wants to bounce ideas off or get some advice, our phone lines are always open.” 

Listen to the entire podcast to learn more about Cotney Construction Law in Denver and what they are doing to stay on top of the latest COVID-19 changes.