Schools to pay firm $115,000 in settlement
5/14/2008Maumee City Schools have settled a lawsuit filed by a company claimed it lost more than $300,000 because the district failed to provide a work schedule for Gateway Middle School's renovation.
The settlement calls for Brint Electric Inc. to be paid $115,000, an amount that includes $61,426.08 owed for work but kept by the school district, a standard practice in construction projects.
In its lawsuit filed in July in Lucas County Common Pleas Court, the electrical contractor asked for $300,000 and legal costs.
In the complaint, Brint stated it had a $1.92 million contract with the school district to perform electrical and technological work at Gateway.
It began the work June 8,
2004, the lawsuit alleged, but the district failed to live up to its contract, which stipulated the project's architect or construction consultant would provide a schedule for the work.
Consequently, Brint's tradesmen were forced to work with no schedule or from schedules that only extended for two weeks, causing delays and extra costs, according to the lawsuit.
Brint was forced "to perform work out of sequence and in a compressed and accelerated time frame," the lawsuit stated. That forced Brint to pay for additional labor and project management.
By failing to provide a schedule, the school district "effectively lost control over the coordination of the project," the complaint said.
Besides Gateway, the district also renovated Fairfield, Wayne Trail, and Union elementaries, and the high school.
A new Fort Miami Elementary was built.
The $11 million Gateway renovation included the replacement of electrical and heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems and installation of an emergency generator.
The Gateway building dates to 1938. It was Maumee's high school until 1961.