The continuing battle over how Gov. Matt Blunt’s office has handled government e-mails is going to be costly for Missouri taxpayers.
This week, the governor hired three members of a St. Louis law firm — at $210 to $370 per hour — to defend him against a lawsuit filed by a fired state lawyer, Scott Eckersley.
Public money also is paying for private lawyers hired by four current or former aides to Blunt who are defendants in the lawsuit, state records show.
Metro agreed in a settlement with the fired builders of its light-rail extension to Shrewsbury to pay just $6 million in attorneys’ fees. The Cross County Collaborative, which in November won a case filed by the transit agency, had sought $27 million in attorneys’ fees. “This is it. They’re paying us $6 million,” said Ed Dowd, a Dowd Bennett attorney who represented STV Inc., one of the four contractors Metro sued in 2002 on claims of fraud and mismanagement. “We hope [the settlement] helps Metro to continue to expand its light rail service for the people of St. Louis,” he said.
The Metro transit agency and the MetroLink designers it unsuccessfully blamed for cost overruns and delays on the Shrewsbury extension have reached the end of the line in their long-running legal battle.
Metro and the four design and construction management firms declared Tuesday that they had reached a $6 million settlement that includes the $2.56 million judgment a St. Louis County jury awarded the firms in November.
The settlement appears to save Metro from reimbursing tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and costs amassed by the defendant, the Cross County Collaborative, as well as its own additional costs if it appealed the verdicts. Metro told the Post-Dispatch onTuesday that its costs for pressing the lawsuit were $21.4 million through Dec. 31.
Jim Bennett was an integral part of two of the biggest jury trials in St. Louis over a 12-month span ending in November.
In the first case, Bennett co-represented Structural Polymer Systems, Ltd., a British building material manufacturer. After a five-week jury trial in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, his client won a $36 million verdict in its breach of contract case against Zoltek Corp., a St. Louis-based carbon fiber manufacturer.
Thirty-seven lawyers who defeated the Metro public transportation agency’s efforts to hold their clients responsible for light rail construction woes have submitted claims for $27.3 million in fees and expenses against the transit agency.
If St. Louis County Presiding Judge Carolyn C. Whittington approves the bills at a hearing Wednesday, it would bring the liability for taxpayers or transit riders to almost $30.7 million. The figure includes a $2.6 million judgment and almost $770,000 in interest.
But that’s without counting Metro’s own legal expenses in the failed suit against the Cross County Collaborative. Metro attorneys say its costs have not been calculated yet.
On Friday, lawyers for the winning defendants in that lawsuit filed documents in St. Louis County Circuit Court seeking more than $28 million from Metro to cover attorney fees, expert witness costs and other costs. That’s on top of $2.56 million that a jury awarded to the defendants.
After spending millions of dollars on lawyers, accountants and expert witnesses, the Metro public transportation agency got nothing Friday for its investment in its $81 million civil damage suit against four design and construction management companies.
Instead of verdicts in favor of Metro – which alleged negligence, breach of contract and fraud by the four companies in the delays and cost overruns of the eight-mile light-rail extension to Clayton and Shrewsbury – the jury found in favor of the joint venture.
Jurors in St. Louis County Circuit Court awarded $2.56 million to the Cross County Collaborative consisting of Parsons Brinckerhoff, STV Inc., Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. and Kwame Building Group.
A jury began deliberations Monday after lawyers made their closing arguments in the Metro transit agency’s damage suit against four companies over MetroLink construction delays and cost overruns.
Now entering its 15th week, it’s described as the longest civil trial in St. Louis County history.
Metro, known formally as the Bi-State Development Agency, alleges breach of contract and fraud. It seeks almost $82 million in actual damages from the Cross County Collaborative, a joint venture of Parsons Brinckerhoff, STV Inc., Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. and Kwame Building Group Inc.
Jurors began deliberating on Monday in the three-month-long fraud trial against Cross County Collaborative, the builders of the eight-mile MetroLink extension to Shrewsbury. The fraud lawsuit, filed by Metro, the light-rail train’s operator, centered on a cost overrun of more than $125 million and a 15-month delay in the project. During six hours of closing arguments, attorneys for the defendant engineering companies that make up the CCC blamed the delays and cost overrun on changes the agency ordered. But instead of acknowledging the extra costs created by the changes, Metro decided the collaborative would be the perfect scapegoat, the defense attorneys told the jury.
The Missouri Court of Appeals has turned down Deanna Daughhetee Vinson’s appeal to the end of her subprime marriage to fellow mortgage dynamo Ray Vinson.
A three-judge panel of Roy Richter, Glenn Norton and Clifford Ahrens said St. Louis County Circuit Judge Michael Burton got it right the first time.