Borough lawyers busy battling two lawsuits

PALMER — One way or the other, Superior Court Judge Vanessa White will hear arguments in a lawsuit against the Mat-Su Borough for most of next month.

On Friday, White heard arguments in the case of Steppers v. Matanuska-Susitna Borough. That’s the case that is likely to start Feb. 8 and last until just shy of month’s end. Friday, lawyers were hashing out some of the final pre-trial bits of the case.

The case was filed in March 2008 shortly after Steppers was kicked off of a borough project in which the company had been hired to build a new area at the borough’s landfill to pile garbage into. Steppers promptly sued for breach of contract and the borough, in turn, accused Steppers of fraud, unfair trade practices and breach of contract.

White is set to hear the case next month, but only because another lawsuit against the borough got bumped.

That other case is NPI vs. Matanuska-Susitna Borough that dates back to May 2007 and also had a pre-trial hearing this week. In that case, NPI, one of the few tenants at the borough’s Port MacKenzie, sued claiming it had shut down its business of shipping wood chips out of the port.

NPI claimed that when it leased space on the dock and land above it there was an understanding that it would be able to log timber from nearby. When the borough later shut down logging, the move killed that deal, prompting the lawsuit, which has been in court ever since. The borough says that since neither lease contract mentioned anything about logging, NPI is out of luck.

As for why that case was bumped, the Borough Attorney Nick Spiropoulos said it’s just the way these things go.

“We filed a bunch of motions in (the) October time frame and the judge basically said … there’s not going to be enough time to do all that and have all the arguments and still go to trial in February,” Spiropoulos said.

Though he attended Friday’s hearing in the Steppers case, the actual work of defending the borough was hired out to a private attorney, Paul Davis.

The issue at hand in that hearing was a motion Steppers filed asking that White rule on something that had cropped up since the case was filed. Essentially, Steppers’ attorney Robert Gunther argued that the borough sent Steppers a letter on Nov. 12 of last year saying that if the company bid on a contract to expand Port MacKenzie that bid would be suspended and not considered along with the other bidders. Gunther called the letter a threat.

He said Steppers had already lost one project because of the landfill suit. The company submitted the lowest bid for a project to install outdoor lighting at Houston High School, but was rejected. Gunther said his client wanted White to decide when she issued her final ruling in the lawsuit whether the facts of the case should preclude Steppers from getting borough contracts.

“We are entitled to a resolution of this. We’re being threatened,” Gunther said.

On the other side, Davis said the letter in question wasn’t an official notice that the borough intended to suspend Stepeprs’ bid so much as it was an attempt at a compromise. If Steppers submitted a bid and was rejected for malfeasance, that would be a matter of public record, Davis said. Instead of damaging the company’s reputation that way, the borough decided to send the letter.

He also pointed out that a decision like the one Steppers was asking for would bind the borough in selecting bidders for projects that haven’t even been conceived of yet. He said borough officials have a degree of latitude in deciding such contracts for a reason and urged White not to tie the borough’s hands.

“How is a purchasing officer going to be able to …” he said, before White interjected: “Exercise his or her discretion.”

“Right,” Davis replied.

Eventually, White denied Steppers’ motion, essentially saying she didn’t have the authority to decide such an issue. If Steppers feels it has been unfairly barred from bidding on borough projects, she said the company would have to appeal when its bids were rejected.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.