Kallie Cox//October 24, 2024//
Concrete wall panels installed for a Caterpillar Distribution Center in 2011 and the cracks that appeared in the panels for years to come led to multiple repairs and an arbitration demand that was decided in favor of the defense.
Steven M. Cockriel, of Cockriel & Christofferson, represented the defendant, Alper Audi. Alper Audi was tapped to perform the structural engineering design, including the design of the panels, for the Caterpillar project.
Clayco, Inc. was the design-build contractor for the Ohio-based distribution center and hired its wholly owned subsidiary, Forum Studio, Inc., to design the project. Forum Studio then hired Alper Audi to perform the structural engineering design, Cockriel told Missouri Lawyers Media.
The project was completed in 2011 and Alper Audi had designed over 200 concrete, tilt-up wall panels. In 2014, cracking was discovered in some of these panels and a complete review of their design was performed.
“Eventually 26 wall panels were repaired in 2017,” according to Cockriel. “In 2020, additional cracking was discovered in the wall panels.”
Forum Studios sued for the cost of these repairs and Steadfast Insurance Company was added as a plaintiff because they had reimbursed Clayco for the costs of the repairs, he said. The defendant denied the panels were defective and argued that most of the damage to the panels was caused by thermal expansion in the summers putting pressure on the panels.
“So particularly where the concrete paving was abutting the wall panels and you were having thermal expansion in the summers — making that concrete expand and create pressure on the walls — it was causing the wall panel to, in a simplified manner, bend around the section that was supported by the concrete floor slab inside the building, because the walls extended down past the wall slab,” Cockriel said. “And so you get this push at the bottom of the wall slab and it can’t move around that concrete floor slab so it was starting to crack at that location.”
When the company continued to see cracks, particularly at those locations, it performed another inspection.
“Caterpillar is obviously upset that these panels continue to crack and they brought in different engineers from the group that reviewed them earlier,” Cockriel said. “These different engineers agreed that the situation with exterior concrete paving needed to be addressed, so they cut and installed large expansion joints so when that pavement expanded, it didn’t hit the wall.”
Because there had been a code change between 2010 and the 2020 inspection, the company elected to look at the wall panels under the 2020 building code, Cockriel said. They concluded that some of the panels need to be reinforced leading to 75 panel repairs.
“Those were the repairs done in 2022 and that’s what Forum was suing Alper Audi to collect for,” Cockriel said.
Forum Studio asked for $1,800,000 to pay back these repairs.
“To increase the chances that defendant/respondent would be the prevailing party and be entitled to recover its attorney’s fees, defendant/respondent offered to pay $100,000 in settlement six weeks before the hearings started,” Cockriel said.
The arbitrator sided with Alper Audi and had Forum Studio pay the defendant $244,844.18 in legal fees.
“We established without question that the design complied with the building code applicable at the time we did the design and that Forum Studios proof did not attack our design using the correct criteria,” Cockriel said.
RELATED: Click to search for and submit your Verdicts & Settlements
- Amount of verdict, judgment or settlement: $244,844.18
- Type of action: Real Estate & Construction
- Breakdown: Amount of attorney’s fees, expert witness fees, costs and expenses awarded to Defendant/Respondent. The Plaintiff/Claimant received nothing on its claim for $1,817,304.13, plus interest, attorney’s fees, expert witness fees, costs and expenses.
- Case Number/Date: 01-22-0005-2067 / 8/30/2024
- Judge: N/A arbitration
- Insurance: Steadfast Insurance Company for Forum Studio.
- Plaintiffs’ Experts: Matthew L. Wagner, Principal/Managing Director Walter P. Moore and Associates, Inc. (engineering)
- Defendant’s Experts: Andre Audi president of engineering Alper Audi, Donald R. Scott, engineering Don Scott ConsultingLast Pretrial Demand: $1,800,000.00
- Last Pretrial Offer: $100,000
- Caption: Forum Studio, Inc., Steadfast Insurance Company v. Alper Audi, Inc.
- Plaintiffs’ Attorneys: Thomas Avery & Zachary R. McMichael of Capes, Sokol, Goodman & Sarachan
- Defendant’s Attorneys: Steven M. Cockriel of Cockriel & Christofferson
This article credit to MOLawyersMedia