In a lawsuit involving the Village of Elm Grove in Wisconsin, the case
recently concluded with the municipality winning its breach-of-contract
lawsuit against the construction contractor that it retained to fix a
recurring flooding problem.
The lawsuit alleged that Michels Pipeline
Construction Inc. walked off the job and created a nine-month delay in a
$4.6 million tunneling project in downtown Elm Grove. The project
called for installing an underground tunnel through the downtown area to
divert floodwater.
A Waukesha County Circuit Court jury recently found in favor of Elm
Grove after a seven-day jury trial.
It concluded that the village should
be awarded more than $315,000, including damages for the delay and
additional engineering fees.
Michels denied that its workers mishandled
and walked off of the job, arguing that tunneling work was halted
temporarily because of poor soil conditions that created a risk of
tunnel collapse.
The company also said that it encountered soil
conditions that Elm Grove did not reference in its bidding documents,
including boulders as large as six feet by three feet, and the soil
conditions cost it at least $2.8 million more for extra labor, equipment
and materials.