COLUMBUS — When the City of Logan first sued two companies over alleged design and construction flaws in its four-year-old water treatment plant, it didn’t provide a dollar figure for damages it claims to have suffered.
A new amended version of the lawsuit, however — while still not giving an exact number — says that repeated breakdowns at the plant since it was completed in 2020 have required “millions of dollars in repairs, remedial design, and remedial construction.”
The city originally filed suit in Hocking County Common Pleas Court in late May, naming as defendants Stantec Consulting Services, Inc., which engineered the water plant, and Fluidra, USA LLC, which produced the six fiberglass filters that were installed in the plant, and that the city claims have been prone to chronic and expensive failure.
The defendants removed the case to U.S. District Court in Columbus, based on the fact that the parties are from different states and countries, and on the assumption that the amount of money in dispute is at least $75,000, the minimum required for a federal lawsuit. The original suit had cited only a standard minimum figure of $25,000 in damages per claim.
Subsequently Stantec filed a response to the complaint, as well as a cross-claim against Fluidra, essentially arguing that any damages for which Stantec might be found liable should be passed on to the other company.
Fluidra, meanwhile, has filed a motion asking that the claims against it be dismissed, because although it manufactured the allegedly faulty filters, it never had any direct contractual agreement with Logan. Instead, it says, it provided the filters directly to Stantec, based on specifications provided by the engineering firm.
In the amended version of the lawsuit, filed Thursday, the city clarifies why it considers Fluidra an appropriate defendant.
It notes that Fluidra did not specially produce the filters in question to meet specs provided by Stantec, but instead supplied Stantec a pre-existing design it was already manufacturing.
Though acknowledging that Logan did not buy the filters directly from Fluidra, the city says this is “per customary practice in the municipal water plant construction industry.” Instead, Fluidra sold the filters to Wigen Water Technologies, Inc., which aggregated them into a single system, which it then sold to Kokosing Industrial, the contractor that built the plant. This makes Logan “the ultimate owner” of the filters, according to the amended complaint.
The complaint goes on to allege that between the opening of the plant and the original lawsuit filing, there were around 25 failures of the six filters, “sometimes taking two filters off-line at the same time.” Each filter failure, it adds, means that the filter “must be repaired at significant expense, which takes several weeks and prevents the water treatment plant from being able to process water at its design capacity.”
And each time a filter fails, the city alleges, it impacts the treatment processes downstream from it in the plant, reducing the service life of the equipment. At this point, according to the city, it has realized that continuing to make repairs on Fluidra’s filters would be futile, and is in the process of procuring six new filters to replace them.
The suit lodges claims of breach of contract against Stantec, and breach of express warranty against Fluidra.
Email at jphillips@logandaily.com
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