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BOOK 95 FACE 760 <br />County has one foot in the door in court and the other one in <br />arbitration. <br />In response to Commissioner Bird's question, Attorney O'Brien <br />gave a chronology of events which led to the mediation and <br />speculated as to what might happen in court. <br />Commissioner Adams asked if we might save time by arbitration, <br />and Commissioner Eggert countered by asking if that was good for <br />the County. Discussion ensued and Attorney O'Brien interjected <br />that if we win in arbitration, fine, but we can't make that <br />assumption. Worst case, if we lose, we have to go into court and <br />sue to get our money back and we will be lined up against everyone <br />in a very tough position to prove product failure. <br />Rick Martin, co-owner of Martin Paving Company, recounted how <br />they had initially made a perfect installation of the infiltrator <br />according to the manufacturer's recommendations. In fact, the <br />manufacturer, who was present during the first installation, made <br />the comment that he wished he had made a video tape of the <br />installation because it was picture perfect. A couple of months <br />after that, a very large rainfall caused some settlement. Some <br />exploratory work was done, and it was discovered that the <br />infiltrators had settled into the aggregate to some degree, and the <br />County ordered that they be entirely removed and replaced with <br />different specifications. His company performed that work and <br />tried to negotiate getting paid for redoing it, because it was <br />quite apparent it was a design problem which caused it to fail, <br />particularly when it was done differently the second time, at the <br />County's direction. They completed the second installation and the <br />County had to choose whether to side with the engineers or side <br />with Martin. The County chose to side with the designers and blame <br />the installation. <br />Mr. Martin went on to say that their only recourse was to <br />follow the -contract, which called for arbitration. Arbitration was <br />scheduled, then Attorney O'Brien wanted to cancel arbitration and <br />put it into the court. His company had not gotten paid and it <br />would take an extended period of time to get the matter resolved in <br />court. <br />Mr. Martin believed they had not acted in bad faith and added <br />that they have done numerous projects for the County, with good <br />results. They rarely make claims and rarely have any conflict <br />resolution required. He reasoned that mediation had failed because <br />they were so far apart it wasn't worth spending the money and <br />wasting everybody's time. <br />N -N <br />July 18, 1995 <br />