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Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Ind. Courts - More on: Greene County Courthouse lawsuit tops $1 million in legal fees and counting

Updating this ILB entry from July 28, 2009, Nick Schneider, Assistant Editor of the Greene County Daily World, reports today:

The funding and authority to re-finance a $4 million portion of the courthouse building and renovation project Bond Anticipation Notes (BANS) is now in place.

On Monday morning, the Greene County Commissioners approved by a 3-0 vote the plan and included an extra $1 million in bonding that may be used for legal fees during the appeals process of the courthouse construction lawsuit, if needed, commissioner's attorney Marilyn Hartman said.

On Feb. 22, the county council provided the funding authorization to roll over $2.5 million in Bond Anticipation Notes (BANS) with MainSource Bank due in June and another $1.5 million that will come due in 2012. They also made available the additional $1 million in bonding for legal fees anticipated by Indianapolis law office of Drewry Simmons Pitts & Vornehmand, which has been hired by the county.

"It's kind of a good time to refinance," Hartman commented.

Greene County has been engaged in a complicated civil lawsuit to collect up to $6.5 million in unexpected costs related to the original $10.5 million courthouse remodeling/renovation project that turned into a $17 million nightmare.

The construction project has been substantially complete since mid-2008, but the lawsuit, which originated in 2004, is still an active case.

The seven-count, 25-page lawsuit was originally filed Dec. 30, 2004 in Greene Circuit Court on behalf of the county commissioners and building corporation against United Consulting Engineers, Inc., Indianapolis; architects DLZ Indiana, LLC, Indianapolis; Alt & Witzig Engineering, Inc. Carmel (structural engineers) and general contractors Weddle Brothers Construction, Co. of Bloomington.

The county is seeking two parts of damages in the case.

The county is asking for relief in the initial damages that relates to the movement of the soil and the cracking on the south end of the building. This is directly related to drilling down and removing sand out of the foundation area of the building, Hartman said.

Then, after the soil stabilized, the county had a concrete wall pumped underneath the ground and around the south edges (of the building) so there would no longer be any ability for the foundation of the original building to move. Then the other building was constructed. After the steel was up and the frame was in, there was drift on the walls. The plans were looked at by two separate engineering firms with attention paid to calculations for the amount of steel that was going to be required for the building.

That led to the determination that the original design by DLZ in that the structural steel for the strength of the building did not meet building code. At that point, the county had to re-engineer the steel strength -- putting extra steel inside the walls and there had to be a re-design.

More than $1 million has already been spent on legal costs involved in the county's civil lawsuit against a host of contractors and subcontractors involved in the courthouse construction/renovation project that spanned more than five years in the midst of several alleged engineering flaws, according Hartman.

The case remains in Owen Circuit Court and could go to court later this year, if pre-trial negotiations are unsuccessful.

Hartman explained that the civil suit is now before the Indiana Court of Appeals.

Greene County is appealing the summary judgment ruling from Owen Circuit Judge Frank M. Nardi involving a $2 million payment dispute with Weddle Brothers Construction Company of Bloomington, the project's general contractor. Weddle, in turn, questions the validity of the county's claim -- contending the payment for the work in question was done by sub-contractors who had signed a waiver.

"It's really one of the difficult issues (in the case)," Hartman told the Greene County Daily World. "You have a very complicated contractual structure here when all of these people are going around and trying to settle this, everybody starts pointing their fingers."

Hartman said she has no firm idea when the Court of Appeals will make a ruling on the case.

"I hope it is in the next three or four months we'll get a ruling on that (appeal). If that goes, it (the appeal ruling) makes the possibility of (out of court) settlement an awful lot different," she said. "No one wants to spend any money if we get rid of this $2 million claim of Weddle's. It will make it a lot easier to look at this (settlement) because you have this (claim) totally out of the picture," Hartman stressed. "We are just waiting for that (court of appeals) decision."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 2, 2010 09:53 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts