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Lawsuit alleges breach of contract for County Line Road project
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A lawsuit accuses the engineering company MS Consultants of Youngstown and Columbus of breach of contract for its design and supervision of a paving project on County Line Road in Weathersfield Township.
The suit, filed in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court by the Weathersfield Township trustees, says the work failed to take into account the absence of concrete on the edges of the road, which resulted in that part of the road failing after less than a year. It was supposed to last 30 years, the suit says.
The project involved 1.5 miles of the road from Four Mile Run Road to state Route 46, which had become unsafe with severe disintegration of 18 inches to 2 feet on the edges of the road, the suit said.
MS Consultants, which was paid $50,000 to engineer the project and $50,000 to supervise construction, “was aware of the severe disintegration,” the suit said. The township and MS Consultants entered into a contract for the project in March 2010, the suit says.
The road is 21 feet wide and heavily used by truck traffic, the suit says.
Thomas E. Mosure, president and CEO of MS Consultants, said of the lawsuit: “Obviously, we have a disagreement there. There were some unforeseen site conditions. You can’t measure what’s under the pavement. We’re hopeful we can get this worked out.”
The lawsuit says, “If MS Consultants Inc. would have performed the detailed field surveys MS Consultants stated in the County Line contract were necessary prior to designing the County Line Road Safety Upgrade Project, MS Consultants would have determined that the concrete under County Line Road was not 21 feet wide, but rather 18 feet wide,” the suit says.
“The deterioration of the asphalt along the edges of County Line Road was so extensive that a person with a trowel, or even by poking with a pencil, could have easily determined that there was no concrete under the outer 11/2 feet of the road surface,” says the suit, filed by attorneys Daniel Daniluk and Cherry Poteet.
Trumbull County Engineer’s records also showed that the road had been only 18 feet wide at an earlier point, the suit says.
The suit seeks damages of more than $100,000 against MS Consultants.