ABLE DEMOLITION, Inc., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. City of PONTIAC, Defendant-Appellee
On July 1, 2004, ABLE Demolition entered a contract with the City of PONTIAC for the demolition of certain abandoned homes. According to this contract, it was necessary for ABLE Demolition to obtain proper approvals and have a "Letter to Proceed" before the demolition of any house in order to receive payment for their services. Later on May 17, 2007 the Court of Appeals in Michigan affirmed the trial courts ruling that the City of Pontiac was not liable for payment of $42,299 to ABLE Demolition for the demolition of 11 homes (ABLE DEMOLITION, Inc., v. City of PONTIAC, 2007). Per the contract, it explicitly stated that if prior approval with proof of a "Letter to Proceed" was not obtained then work performed would be unauthorized and ABLE Demolition would therefore forfeit any payment for work completed. Sukys states in our readings that a written contract needs to be as clear and unambiguous as possible for these exact reasons (Sukys, 2020).In my opinion, the result reached by both the trail court and the appeals court was a fair assessment and I would have ruled the same way if I were in their shoes. Reviewing the evidence presented in the case the contract was explicit on the terms in which ABLE Demolition needed to abide by in order to fulfill the contract and receive payment for work completed.
Due to the actions of ABLE Demolition and the course of events in regard to their complaint against the City of PONTIAC, I would come to the conclusion that it is possible that someone in the company messed up not gathering the proper approvals and/or that communication between the different departments of the company was misconstrued. This being said, when there are complexities involved in projects such as these, proper assessments and check points need to take place so this sort of situation does not occur. ABLE Demolition likely knew that they had made a mistake after the fact but chose to see if they could still receive payment for the work done.
This unfortunately was a hard lesson for ABLE Demolition to learn. When it comes to contracts, it is imperative to ensure you have hit every single requirement or be subject to breaching a contract. As mentioned in the proceedings, this was not just a services contract, but a "legal protocol" which was put into place by the City of PONTIAC to protect itself from legal liability in regard to the citizen's property rights (ABLE DEMOLITION, Inc., v. City of PONTIAC, 2007). This poses a final question, how horrible would it have been had a home been demolished but the owners had been able to fix their wrongdoings in the background?
References
ABLE DEMOLITION, Inc., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. City of PONTIAC, Defendant-Appellee. (Court of Appeals of Michigan 2007).Sukys, Paul. (2020). Business Law with UCC Applications, Fifteenth Edition. New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Education.
Loni,
ReplyDeleteI too came to the conclusion that both the trial and appellate courts were correct in there judgments regarding this case. The contract verbiage was clear and concise. Furthermore I exact your sentiment regarding the complex nature of the project, and so too came up with a similar conclusion regarding the reasoning for Able Demolition's misfire.
Playing "devils's advocate" though, I do understand where Able Demolition may have an argument against the amount of which the judgment is for. Understanding the trades industry from personal experience, I also understand that upon the demolition of a building there will be individuals from both parties at job-site, especially when it's government funded. Pontiac would without a doubt have a representative present to oversee, and do one final check of paperwork before giving the green-light to begin the demo of a building. Considering Pontiac is requesting work of such magnitude, its baffling to me that a representative wasn't present at each building demo. If one had been, this mishap could've been caught and prevented with the first building in question. Furthermore, I'm sure someone in the city's office was aware that buildings were being torn down without the proper paperwork being filed leading me to ask the question, why weren't questions raised earlier, before the demolition of another 9 or 10 buildings? It's not like kicking over a sand castle on the beach, these are concrete inner city structures we're talking about. Why were there not more checks and balances in place to prevent something like this. What if I was to make the argument that both parties are clearly at fault regardless of contract verbiage. Would it then be fair to say that the judgement should've been split down the middle? Should the judgment have been for $21,148 instead of the full amount, thus equally distributing the blame across both parties? Or is that not an option strictly because of the black and white verbiage agreed upon in the contract?
I would have to take into consideration that we're talking about the City of Pontiac . They are not known for "having it all together" or even having enough man power to carry out all aspects of city operations. The City of Pontiac has had emergency managers and stat oversight from 2009 until 2016 (Gross, 2016). In 2011, the City of Pontiac police department was shut down and the Oakland County Sheriff's Department took over patrol (Oosting, 2019). I would agree with you that it is likely that the city is also to be blamed for the demolition to have occurred without a "letter to proceed" but because of how the contract was written they were able to get away with no fault because they had covered themselves with clear and concise language.
DeleteForgot my references:
DeleteGross, Allie. (March 31, 2016). "State relaxes oversight of Pontiac, returns control to mayor and council". Retrieved from https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2016/03/31/pontiac-officials-could-see-some-of-their-powers-restored-today
Oosting, Jonathan. (January 21, 2019). "So long: Pontiac Police Department closes doors under emergency manager Michael Stampfler". Retrieved from https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/2011/08/so_long_pontiac_police_departm.html