Trial Practice

December 1, 2007

Jury Orders Transit Agency to Pay the Firms it Sued

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.

November 27, 2007

Jury Gets MetroLink Extension Suit

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.

November 27, 2007

MetroLink Jurors Begin Deliberations in Shrewsbury Project Case

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.

August 30, 2007

Bennett’s Cross-Exam of Metro Chief Likened to “A Few Good Men”

Not since Jack Nicholson, as Col. Nathan Jessep, took the stand in “A Few Good Men” has a witness self-destructed the way Larry Salci did this week in a Clayton courtroom.

Mr. Salci, the president of the Metro transit agency, admitted that he had never read the contracts that his agency is suing four construction management companies for violating. He also admitted he’d never bothered to read the periodic evaluations that his staff had done of the management companies’ work.

Further, according to the opening statement by a lawyer for the management companies, Mr. Salci said in a sworn pre-trial statement that “The only people I really care about that have an input with me are my 10 commissioners that hired me, and I care what Wall Street thinks about me, and I care what my headhunters care about in the case I have to go somewhere else. And other than that, I just don’t care.”

August 28, 2007

Metro Chief Takes Stand

Metro President Larry Salci met the CEO of a worldwide engineering company at a hotel coffee shop in Salt Lake City in 2003 to complain about failures in its work on an eight-mile MetroLink extension.

That impromptu meeting, Salci told a jury Monday in St. Louis County Circuit Court, failed to stem a series of events that led him to fire the four companies Metro had hired to design and manage construction of the line from Forest Park to Shrewsbury.

The route opened one year ago, $126 million over budget and 15 months late.

December 25, 2006

British Building Material Manuafacturer Wins $36M Verdict in Breach of Contract Case

A British building material manufacturer has won a $36 million verdict in its federal breach of contract case against Zoltek Corporation, a St. Louis-based carbon fiber manufacturer.

In its lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri, Structural Polymer Systems, Ltd. claimed that Zoltek quit supplying its requirements for large filament count carbon fiber in breach of a 10-year supply contract signed in 2000. But Zoltek maintained that the contract covered only an earlier version of the product SP Systems had ordered through 2003, not an improved version launched in 2004.

November 30, 2006

Zoltek to Challenge $36M Jury Verdict

A jury in U.S. District Court in St. Louis awarded $36 million Wednesday to Structural Polymer Group Ltd. in a breach of contract suit against Zoltek Cos. Inc.

In addition, U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson is considering an order that would require Zoltek to provide carbon fiber to Structural Polymer from 2007 to 2010, said Ed Dowd Jr., an attorney with Dowd & Bennett in Clayton.

Dowd and his partner, Jim Bennett, worked with attorneys from Bryan Cave, led by Louis Bonacorsi, in representing Structural Polymer, a British company that is a subsidiary of Gurit Holding AG, which is listed on the Swiss Exchange.

November 29, 2006

$36 Million Verdict for SP Among Top Missouri Business Verdicts & Settlements

Structural Polymer Systems Ltd. (SP Systems) claimed in its lawsuit that Zoltek, a St. Louis-based carbon fiber manufacturer, quit supplying large filament count carbon fiber in breach of a 10-year supply contract signed in 2000. Zoltek maintained that the contract covered only an earlier version of the product SP Systems had ordered through 2003, not an improved version launched in 2004.

The jury found SP Systems had not abandoned or breached the contract, that the contract was still in effect and that it covered both earlier and improved versions of the product. The jury also sided with SP Systems on Zoltek’s counterclaim that SP Systems failed to discharge its obligations of good faith and fair dealing.