Three generations of California builders

Ted F. Merrill

Ted F. Merrill was born in Dayton, Ohio, and began his career in the construction business there. At seventeen he moved to California, and he spent the rest of his working life building in this state.

The company he built, Ted F. Merrill & Sons, grew to employ more than fifty regular employees, ran its own fleet of trucks, and carried the full complement of equipment needed to take on major repair and reconstruction work without waiting on anyone else. It specialized in insurance claims across the eleven western states, at a time when very few contractors understood how an insurance loss actually differed from ordinary construction.

His standing extended past the job site. He served on the County Grand Jury in 1944, and he authored a construction reference book first published in 1940, revised in 1964 and again in 1968, with a further revision planned for 1971. Writing down what he knew, so that other builders and adjusters could use it, was characteristic of him.

Warren T. Merrill and Ted S. Merrill

Warren T. Merrill and Ted S. Merrill came up inside the family operation, which in that era meant starting at the bottom and staying there until the work was learned properly. Ted S. Merrill moved from laborer to apprentice carpenter, to journeyman carpenter, to superintendent, to estimator, and finally to licensed general contractor.

Ted S. Merrill & Sons, Inc. carried that discipline forward into a narrower and more technical field. As California construction defect litigation expanded through the 1980s and 1990s, courts and counsel needed people who could do something rare: take apart a failing building, determine the true cause and extent of the problem, price the correct repair, and then explain all of it to a jury in plain language. That became the core of the practice.

Daniel H. Merrill

Daniel H. Merrill represents the third generation of the family in the business, continuing a line of California builders that now spans the better part of a century and has adapted through every major shift in how this state builds, insures and litigates construction.

Where that leaves us today

Ted S. Merrill & Sons, Inc. operates from La Mesa in San Diego County and takes assignments throughout Southern California. The work divides roughly into three parts: licensed construction and reconstruction, forensic investigation and cost estimating, and expert witness testimony.

The clients have changed over the decades. The insurance carriers are larger, the litigation is more technical, and the building codes are far more demanding than they were in 1940. What has not changed is the belief that the person giving the opinion should be someone who has actually done the work.