Please join everyone at Kitchen Law Group in congratulating Jonathan Saville Kitchen, recipient of the Edward P. Meyerson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Construction Lawyers Society of America (CLSA).

The award recognizes career-long excellence in construction law, distinguished advocacy, and leadership that has helped advance the profession.

For those who know Jonathan, the recognition reflects qualities they have seen for decades: intellectual curiosity, meticulous preparation, and a deep commitment to fairness. He wants to understand how something was designed, how it was built, and what the evidence actually proves. He brings that same scrutiny to expert testimony – and makes complicated construction disputes understandable to judges and juries.

Jonathan also values the relationships built along the way. Lawyers who first worked with him when he joined their cases as outside trial counsel have become trusted colleagues and close friends.

He is especially grateful to the lawyers and team at Taylor Morrison for their longstanding trust, collaboration, and support. Working alongside them on challenging matters has been among the most rewarding experiences of his career.

We’re sharing a photo of Jonathan accepting the award, along with the full text of CLSA Senior Fellow Ross Fishman’s introduction, which offers a fuller picture of his remarkable life and career. Watch the induction speech here.

Congratulations, Jonathan, and thank you to CLSA for this meaningful recognition!

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The text of the introduction speech (video here):

Tonight, we present CLSA’s Edward P. Meyerson Lifetime Achievement Award.

Named for a pioneer in construction law, this award recognizes sustained excellence and commitment throughout a career. It honors lawyers whose advocacy, leadership, and influence have strengthened our specialty, brought others together, and served their clients at the highest level.

Jonathan Kitchen exemplifies that commitment through decades of demanding construction litigation, a practice reaching across the country and around the world, and an enduring desire to understand how things work.

Jonathan has always wanted to understand what happened, how it happened, and why. That curiosity has taken him from construction sites to factory floors, from a small Pacific island to courtrooms across the country.

His understanding of construction also comes from personal experience. Jonathan is a builder. He has built houses and apartments, hired architects and engineers, and worked through the decisions that turn drawings into buildings. He understands how the pieces fit together—and what can happen when they don’t.

Early in his legal career, he handled roofing cases for the Bird roofing company. That experience eventually took him to the Republic of Nauru, where he represented the island nation in litigation over its leaking civic center.

How badly did it leak? Jonathan attended a movie in the center’s cinema. When a tropical downpour began, the audience opened umbrellas.

Inside the theater.

They had come prepared.

Jonathan took that dispute to trial in federal court in San Francisco. His construction practice would eventually encompass problems ranging from hotel delays in Mammoth to inadequate soil testing beneath a Colorado subdivision.

In Mammoth, his team used sophisticated visual models to explain how construction should have proceeded, how it actually proceeded, and where delays occurred. In Colorado, graphics helped reveal the consequences of inadequate testing beneath homes requiring extensive foundation stabilization.

Much of his most consequential work has been for Taylor Morrison, whose trust has given Jonathan opportunities to contribute to difficult cases across the country.

In San Diego, he helped secure a favorable result in sprawling litigation seeking to connect reports of blue water in individual homes to the design of a reservoir. His approach reflected a question central to his work: Does the evidence actually establish the cause being alleged?

In Texas, he worked alongside local counsel and building scientists to explain the relationship among airflow, moisture, maintenance, and alleged construction defects.

Those assignments also reveal how he brings lawyers together. He joins existing teams, contributes another perspective, and develops relationships that endure beyond the case. Lawyers who first met him as outside counsel brought in to help became trusted colleagues and close friends.

That spirit of collaboration reflects an important part of the Meyerson Award: strengthening the profession through the people with whom we practice.

That same spirit has animated his career: learn the work, examine the evidence, and make the complicated understandable.

For Jonathan, decades of experience have supplied more reasons to keep asking questions. His clients have benefited from that curiosity, his colleagues have benefited from his collaboration, and our profession has benefited from his example.

Please join me in congratulating Jonathan Kitchen, recipient of CLSA’s Edward P. Meyerson Lifetime Achievement Award.