Contractor wins suit versus School District

By Emily Richmond

Friday, Aug. 23, 2002 | 11:16 a.m.

A jury has ordered the Clark County School District to pay a Las Vegas contractor $920,000 in back pay for work on seven campuses, company and school officials said Thursday.

A jury ruled Aug. 9 that the district pay Addison Construction for work done between 1997 and 1999. The district is appealing the case which, if upheld, could cost the district more than $1.7 million in attorneys' fees and interest, Addison's lawyer said.

On Thursday Steve Van Meetren, Addison's president, went to the School Board to publicly urge members to settle the case and drop the appeal.

"We could have solved this back in 1997," said Van Meetren, who said he would have settled in 1997 for $300,000. "I'm still willing to solve this now."

In 1997 Van Meetren's company was contracted to do $6 million of work on seven schools. Van Meetren says his company did more than $1 million in work that was denied by School District officials on the basis that the work was shoddy and completed after the contract's deadline.

The company asked the jury for $1.1 million, which included extra work done on the schools at the district's request, Van Meetren said.

Bill Hoffman, counsel for the School District, confirmed the jury award and said the verdict is being appealed.

In the past five years the district, which is the fastest growing in the nation, has faced hundreds of lawsuits and prevailed in the vast majority of them, Hoffman said.

While he declined to discuss the specifics of the Addison case, Hoffman said going to court is a last resort for both sides.

"We do our best to resolve these situations, but there are times when we feel we have to go in and fight," Hoffman said. "This is taxpayers' money we're dealing with here, and we have an obligation to protect that as best we can."

If the district loses the appeal, the judgment will be paid using money from the 1996 bond fund, Hoffman said.

But after hearing Van Meetren's comments, the first he said he had heard of them, School Board member Larry Mason said he planned to call for a full report on why the suit wasn't settled.

"I want to know if we could have saved ourselves some serious money," Mason said.

The School Board must rely on the expertise of the district's legal staff to handle litigation, Mason said. However, board members are sometimes too far "out of the loop" and only hear about cases after the fact, Mason said.

Given the size and scope of the district's construction projects it's not unusual for disputes to crop up, Mason said.

The district, the nation's sixth largest, is heavily involved in construction projects. It breaks ground on a new campus nearly every month and is set to open 10 new schools this year.

There are times when the district has had to sue contractors over inferior work, Mason said.

"What we have to look at is whether (Addison) is a case that was worth the court fight," Mason said.

Addison made several settlement offers, he said, starting with one in August 2001. The company offered to settle for $790,000. The School District countered with a $100,000 offer, he said.

He said he was forced to sue after district officials refused his request for arbitration. Addison made several settlement offers, including one for $600,000 a week before the trial began in District Court earlier this summer, Van Meetren said.

Van Meetren made a plea to settle before the School Board during the public comment period of the meeting. Members did not address Van Meetren.

During the jury trial, School District attorneys made reference several times to the fact that Addison representatives had never come to a School Board meeting to voice their concerns, Van Meetren said.

"I'll talk to you anytime," he told the board, before rattling off his home and cell phone numbers.

An appeal could take several years and will only put more money in the pockets of attorneys -- "Both yours and mine," Van Meetren said.

Last year the School District paid $3.5 million to settle a suit brought by a coalition of construction firms over the management of the $604 million bond fund passed by voters in 1994. The firms originally sought $12 million.

Since that settlement, the School District has added 67 full-time construction oversight positions as well as a bond oversight committee.