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Pinellas is spending millions on private lawyers and expert witnesses, even bringing in jury consultants, in a high-stakes construction work case.
By LISA GREENE, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 14, 2002
O.J. Simpson did it. So did Valessa Robinson.
Last week, so did Pinellas County.
Commissioners agreed to spend up to $100,000 on jury consultants.
It's only the second time the county has ever made such a move, which is more linked in the public mind to high-profile criminal and celebrity trials than to local government.
But that money is pocket change compared with what Pinellas already has spent on a case that is set for trial in April.
Some $2.2-million on private lawyers. More than $1.2-million on a platoon of expert witnesses. That's not even counting the cost of the time spent by the county's own lawyers and engineers on the case, which fills 61 legal files already taking up several feet of shelf space in the clerk's office.
But then, even those millions are just a fraction of what's at stake:
More than $20-million.
The county could lose that much if a jury rules that Pinellas officials fired Great Monument Construction Co. unfairly in 1994.
"It's a lot of money, and we need to approach it in a very businesslike manner," said Commissioner Karen Seel.
Seel said she thinks the county has a "pretty solid case." But with so much money on the line, the county can't take chances. That makes spending for jury consultants the right choice, she said.
"We need to protect our assets and protect the rights of the citizens of Pinellas County," she said. "If we approach this like a company, this is what we have to do."
While the county risks losing millions, county staffers hope to win big.
Pinellas has countersued, trying to gain $10-million to $15-million in damages from Great Monument and its insurer, Reliance Insurance Co. (Great Monument's lawyer, Tampa attorney William Frye, said that the chances of Pinellas getting that money are small. Even if the county wins, the companies are no longer doing business.)
In August 1993, the county hired the Tampa firm for $23.5-million to expand its wastewater treatment plant at South Cross Bayou. But in December 1994, county officials said the company's work was so sloppy that they had no choice but to fire it.
Great Monument filed suit before the year was out.
The lawsuit seeks more than almost any other lawsuit ever filed against Pinellas.
For all the millions already spent, the heart of Pinellas' defense rests in a slim manila folder that's crumpled around the edges.
Pick Talley, the county's utilities director, flipped open the folder last week with the air of a man who is sure he's right.
Inside was a sheaf of photos taken by engineers hired to watch over the project. Picture after picture shows flaws in the work Great Monument was doing.
Gaping holes in concrete walls, pilings and pillars. Pipes that were supposed to meet but didn't. Flooring that was unevenly poured, leaving scarred concrete and exposed rebar.
"You would never pour a floor like that," Talley said.
But Larry Harris, the company's chief operating officer, said those pictures are misleading. The problems they showed were minor, he said, and the company could easily have fixed them.
"We don't claim to be perfect by any means," Harris said. But "if you were ever wanting to take a stroll around a construction site, I could show you photographs that look just like the ones you saw."
Talley argued the problems went beyond minor. Patching holes would still leave walls and floors structurally weaker, he said.
When Great Monument took the job, the 10-year-old company already had worked on wastewater plants in Tampa and Naples.
"Great Monument was my baby," Harris said. "I started it, and I built it -- along with a lot of very good people -- from no contracts to doing $40- to $50-million a year in environmental work."
The company specialized in working on water and wastewater plants, which meant Harris fielded a lot of smelly questions.
"I liked to joke to people and tell them it all smells like money," he said. "But that's certainly a joke . . . especially in this case."
The company had 350 employees when it began working at the South Cross Bayou plant, just north of 54th Avenue North on the banks of Joe's Creek.
But when Pinellas pulled the plug, it devastated the company.
Today, Great Monument lives only to fight Pinellas. Its sole employees are Harris and an assistant, and they don't build anything. They're foot soldiers in the legal fight.
"It tears my heart out," Harris said.
Harris admits the company ran into problems on the site. But those were caused, he said, by the county's deception.
The company says the county failed to tell them enough about its controversial practices at South Cross Bayou. For years, the county injected millions of gallons of partly treated wastewater into the ground at the plant. The state has ordered the county to stop the practice because of contamination fears.
The company says the pressurized water made the site unstable and difficult to build on. Pinellas also knew the site contained bad soil and old building trash but didn't tell Great Monument, the company says.
In essence, the company says, county staff and the county's engineering company, Parsons Engineering Science Inc., knew they were in trouble. The project was riddled with mistakes, and they needed a scapegoat.
"The company and Parsons Engineering Science were more interested in shifting blame to Great Monument for problems that occurred than seeing the job was successfully completed," said William Frye, the company's Tampa lawyer.
Talley and Pinellas lawyers dismiss such claims. Parsons, a co-defendant, also denies wrongdoing. The company knew about the county's injection wells, and it was supposed to inspect the site itself, Talley said.
For Talley, most telling was the difference between Great Monument's work and that of the company that came in to finish the job. He put a set of pictures of pilings side-by-side. The first showed pocked concrete and skewed wires.
The next, neat columns lined up with military precision.
"Here's what it's supposed to look like," Talley said.
Florida law protects its governments from many lawsuits. The state caps the limit that governments must pay out at $200,000. In those cases, which include personal injury and wrongful death cases, even if a jury awards millions of dollars to a plaintiff, Pinellas doesn't have to pay unless lawmakers pass a special bill.
But the county has no such protection in a contract dispute. If the county loses, it will have to pay the money out of its utility reserve funds or raise water rates, said Joe Morrissey, senior assistant county attorney.
The county and the company have met with a mediator to try to settle the case. But so far, those efforts have failed.
Neither side will say how far apart the talks are in dollar terms, but lawyers on both sides say they think the case will head to trial.
"It sort of speaks for itself that we haven't been able to find a settlement number," said county Attorney Susan Churuti. "We don't really get a choice."
Pinellas lost its biggest case in 1993, when a jury ordered the county to pay $7-million to the father of two young women killed during a high-speed chase. The man running from sheriff's deputies on U.S. 19 plowed into their car, killing Susan and Judith Brown. The claim was settled for $1.6-million in 1995.
Pinellas won its biggest case in a lawsuit it filed against an engineering company, when a jury awarded the county more than $11-million in 1994 over a faulty pipeline that brings water to Pinellas from Pasco. The trial judge added on $16-million in interest, but appeals courts overturned that part of the award.