September 30, 2026

Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction's breach-of-contract lawsuit filed in July against the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles was not the first or last legal action related to the soaring, spaceship-like museum which opened to the public earlier this month.

After eight years of complex engineering and extensive construction delays, the project team potentially is facing years of work untangling liabilities for schedule and cost overruns and final payments in California Superior Court in Los Angeles.

The museum originally broke ground in 2018 with a 36-month construction timeline scheduled to finish by 2021. But the 300,000-sq-ft structure, designed by architect Ma Yansong, did not reach substantial completion until May 2026.

On Sept. 19, Judge Daniel S. Murphy ruled that six separate lawsuits related to the project should be tried together. J.R. Snyder Electric, subcontractor to Siemens Industry, had argued that its case belonged in a court with Hathaway Dinwiddie's, but that including four others, as the Lucas Museum had argued for, was a stalling tactic that would delay any resolution.

Grouping all the six cases together would create an "unimaginable complex litigation swamp," J.R. Snyder Electric argued.

Siemens had a subcontract to prime contractor Hathaway Dinwiddie to build the building automation and control systems and Snyder was Siemens' fire alarm subcontractor. In its own lawsuit against Hathaway Dinwiddie and the museum, Siemens claimed work that was at first to have been completed over 31 months took 90 months.

Design changes, access limitations and poor coordination all added to Siemens' delays and costs, J.R. Snyder Electric claimed in its own lawsuit against San Francisco-based Hathaway Dinwiddie. Siemens claimed 12,000 requests for information were needed and over 300 changes required. In 2023, Siemens claimed, it received $150,000 from Hathaway Dinwiddie for its Siemenrs' extra costs, a fraction of what it eventually was owed. Then, Siemens claimed, it paid $200,000 to Snyder "out of [its own] pocket."

Attorneys for the Lucas Museum are pushing back. Outside counsel Orin Snyder of law firm Gibson Dunn downplayed the scope of the litigation.

“This is a dispute between an electrical subcontractor and another subcontractor," Orin Snyder stated. "Lawsuits like this happen in nearly every construction project of this magnitude. The Museum disputes these allegations and will answer them in court.”

Representatives for Hathaway Dinwiddie did not respond to requests for comment, and Siemens Industry could not immediately be reached.

An aerial view of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in July. 

Photo: Weston Hancock / SOPA Images/Sipa USA/Sipa via AP Images

Snyder Electric's experience was unexpectedly long, exposing the company to rising material and labor costs, the company said.

"The project was supposed to be a three-year project," said vice president John Snyder. "In reality, we were done five years later."

Union labor rates in 2018 were also substantially lower than those found in 2025 and 2026, when Snyder did the bulk of its work. "What I'm trying to capture is that difference in pay," Snyder says.

As vice president of a certified minority and female-owned business, John Snyder says three-year union contracts renegotiated during the eight-year duration included an immediate $4-an-hour increase that dramatically escalated overhead costs. He adds that extended delays forced the 20-person company to file over 800 certified payroll reports instead of the anticipated 150. Snyder also says the company absorbed a 20% to 30% post-COVID pandemic spike in costs for materials such as wire and steel. 

Normally, an unpaid subcontractor on a private development protects itself by filing a mechanic's lien against the property. "That's the crux of the whole problem—I can't file a lien on the property because it's a public property," Snyder said.

To recoup the money, Snyder's legal team is suing the museum, Hathaway Dinwiddie, Siemens and the state-run California Science Center, which managed the ground lease. The company argues that because the museum secured a 99-year lease on state-owned land for only $30 a year, the development effectively functions as a public works project, which requires statutory payment bonds.

Deputy Editor Richard Korman helps run ENR's business and legal news and investigations, selects ENR's commentary and oversees editorial content on ENR.com. In 2023 the American Society of Business Publication Editors awarded Richard the Stephen Barr Award, the highest honor for a single feature story or investigation, for his story on the aftermath of a terrible auto crash in Kentucky in 2019, and in 2015 the American Business Media awarded him the Timothy White Award for investigations of surety fraud and workplace bullying. A member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Richard has been a fellow on drone safety with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Richard's freelance writing has appeared in the Seattle Times, the New York Times, Business Week and the websites of The Atlantic and Salon.com. He admires construction projects that finish on time and budget, compensate all team members fairly and record zero fatalities or serious injuries.

Greg Aragon is a freelance writer from Los Angeles, who writes about construction around the Golden State.