A Baltimore County hearing officer has awarded a concrete company $2.3 million for unpaid work it did on the Baltimore County Detention Center — marking the second time in about a month the county has lost a judgment after it refused to pay for a contractor’s services.
In late May, a federal jury awarded an oil contractor about $700,000 for damages incurred after Baltimore County allegedly broke its contract in search of lower oil prices.
The two judgments together mean the county has lost about $3 million in the past month in legal judgments.
In the latest case, Virginia Barnhart, an attorney for Oldcastle Precast Modular Group, said her clients were “pleased” with Tuesday’s ruling from Hearing Officer Michael Mohler, who also rejected a $1.9 million Baltimore County claim in alleged back charges against Oldcastle.
Hearing officers are appointed by the county government on an individual basis to settle disputes as part of a quasi-judicial process. The county initially attempted to appoint County Administrative Officer Fred Homan, one of the main parties involved in the dispute over the contract, as the hearing officer, but Oldcastle objected in Baltimore County Circuit Court, and the county instead appointed Mohler, its deputy director of permits and development management.
Mohler is the brother of the county’s chief spokesman, Don Mohler.
In denying the county’s back charge claim, Michael Mohler was critical of the county’s lack of proof — stating “this claim baffles” and saying that the county’s figures were “conjecture” and “guesswork.”
Mohler said he found that one of the county’s central claims — that Oldcastle mismanaged and delayed the construction of the new jail — was a “tenuous argument, unsupported by testimony and … lacking in merit.”
Mohler wrote that any delays potentially caused by the project’s construction manager, Gilbane Building Co., were not the fault of the concrete company: “None of these delays were in any way attributable to OPMG.”
Ellen Kobler, a Baltimore County spokeswoman, said she could not comment on the matter because it is under litigation.
Oldcastle’s case against Baltimore County had some strong similarities to a federal court case last month in which an oil supply company successfully alleged that the county breached a contract in an attempt to save money.
A federal jury awarded more than $700,000 to Petroleum Traders Corp. of Fort Wayne, Ind., which alleged the county defrauded it and breached its contract after Hurricane Katrina.
In both cases, the county agreed to pay certain amounts for services and then refused payment on various legal grounds.
In the federal case, the county argued all of its contracts entered into between 2004 and 2007 were invalid due to a technicality — neither Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith nor Homan had signed the documents.
The county’s procedures during that four-year period were for a purchasing agent to sign contracts with outside vendors. In 2006 alone, Baltimore County entered into 5,603 contracts signed only by its purchasing agents, court documents show.
The jury, however, rejected that argument.
Baltimore County has filed a motion for a new trial in that case. It could appeal Mohler’s decision in the concrete case in the Baltimore County Circuit Court.
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