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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Ind. Courts - "Jury begins deliberations in Central Library fraud lawsuit"

Updating earlier ILB entries, Jon Murray reports today in the Indianapolis Star in a story that begins:

LEBANON, Ind. -- Attorneys for the Indianapolis library system asked a jury Tuesday to deliver a nearly $50 million wallop to an engineering company accused of fraud on the troubled Central Library project.

The case was placed in the jury's hands after a trial lasting more than five weeks in a Boone County courtroom. The Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library is targeting New York-based Thornton Tomasetti, the final defendant left in a five-year-old web of lawsuits over the Downtown Indianapolis project.

Based on a consultant's allocation of $50 million in cost overruns among the project's players, library attorneys asked the jury to award $24.5 million in damages against Thornton Tomasetti.

And double that, library attorney Paul Kruse requested, by finding equal punitive damages.

"Make them pay so much that they can't afford to do it again," Kruse said during closing arguments. "Their office is in New York. Send a message so loud they can't ignore it."

Thornton Tomasetti has denied the library's narrow claims of fraud and constructive fraud. But the library's attorneys say the company, intending to conceal design flaws, misrepresented the reasons behind changes in 2003 that added reinforcing steel to a new underground garage, contributing to concrete defects. The structure also served as a foundation to a six-story expansion.

The legal war against more than a dozen companies began after gaps and cracks were found in the garage's concrete beams and columns. Library officials halted work on the then-$103 million project in early 2004. A renovated and expanded Central Library reopened in December 2007.

The jury of five women and one man retired from Special Judge Matthew Kincaid's courtroom about 6 p.m. Tuesday to deliberate. They went home before 9 p.m. and will resume deliberations this morning.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 15, 2009 07:45 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts