Wednesday, March 4, 2015

The Village of Elm Grove was awarded more than $315,000, including damages for the delay and additional engineering fees.

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.