The Morgan Hill School District filed a lawsuit against Jacobs
Facilities, the construction firm that build Barrett Elementary and
completed part of the Live Oak High renovations.
The Morgan Hill School District filed a lawsuit against Jacobs Facilities, the construction firm that build Barrett Elementary and completed part of the Live Oak High renovations.
The complaint seeks “declaratory relief, relief based on rescission, breach of contract and conversion.” According to Superintendent Carolyn McKennan, the main concern for the district and Board of Education trustees is the computer-aided design, or CAD, drawings for the new Sobrato High.
“Our particular concern is receiving all of the design drawings and related drawings,” McKennan said Tuesday. “We have a set of drawings, but when we actually start the construction process, you don’t draw on the drawings, you use the CAD drawings if you need to make an adjustment, like moving a door or something.”
Filing the court action, which was approved by board members Mike Hickey, Jan Masuda, Shellé Thomas and Board President Tom Kinoshita during a special closed session board meeting on Aug. 4, is not a major step, McKennan said.
“It’s not news,” she said Monday. “The papers were filed, but not served, Aug. 7. The hope is that this does not need to go (forward) to court.”
On April 10, the district reached a settlement agreement with Jacobs, who had been replaced as the construction management firm when the board selected Turner Construction in February to build Sobrato. The district paid Jacobs $2 million.
McKennan said the district and Jacobs also agreed to dispute resolution.
The complaint was filed, McKennan said, because the district did not want to “settle a piece of the case, we wanted to settle the case.”
Trustees recently selected the law firm of Miller, Brown and Dannis to represent them.
“We wanted to move forward in a bit of a different direction as we moved from dispute resolution,” McKennan said.
