Tutor Perini is notorious in California and elsewhere for submitting low bids on contracts by reading them in bad faith to identify potential ambiguities, even if the intended meaning is obvious, then demanding payments for expensive “change orders” to do work in the way that the contract authors had obviously intended.

According to a 2014 article in the Seattle Times, while Tutor Perini was building an expensive road tunnel in central Seattle, one lawyer who had litigated against the firm “said that much of Tutor’s business strategy appears to involve spending a lot of time working with attorneys before submitting a project bid, identifying areas where project documents could be considered ambiguous.”

A 2012 article in the Hollywood Reporter repeats the allegations and adds, “Through the years, newspaper stories have suggested that campaign contributions by Tutor and his company have influenced the votes of officials who have approved change orders or new projects for Tutor Perini.”

A Tutor Perini subsidiary has been accused of similar behavior in Pennsylvania.