Part of what started this: a NYC architect and NYC construction contractor came to SF for the first time in their corporate and professional experiences and decided to build a building, cutting corners on standard local construction standards, regulations and laws because they found loopholes in all three and they thought it would save a lot of money.
So they did NOT do any of the standard "ground work" (sic) to prepare the foundation as every other skyscraper in SF and California normally does.
The normal process is to drive piles down to bedrock. They didn't do this. They put piles into sand. SF is primarily all sand sitting atop of deeper rocks but some of that rock is very deep below the surface. In that particular area, the rock is quite deep (all the hills you see like Nob Hill, Coit Tower, etc. are the rocky high spots surrounded by deep valleys covered with sand from ancient water inlets).
Local construction companies know all about this geophysical reality. Apparently these NYC companies did not and had zero engineering/professional intuition about the nature of earthquakes and construction in California.
Because of this the building started to both sink and tilt. And honestly, ANYTHING short of tearing the building down and starting again is at best a bandaid fix that may or may not work for long. This is a legendary FU.
And you are seeing these New Yorkers trying to lawyer their way out of the liability they will inevitably face by doing things on-the-cheap and half-assed. Here they got caught doing just that!
My late father was a big name in construction in the SF Bay Area. He was involved with most skyscrapers built in SF from 1970-1985 which includes the WF tower, Hyatt-Regency, Embarcadero Center building complex, etc. At that time I was a kid and he'd "take me to work" at these sites while under construction and I got to talk to construction workers, structural engineers, etc. about how it was done. It fascinated me enough to go into engineering professionally though the later PC and semiconductor revolution of the 1970s drove me to an EE degree instead of ME/CivE.