March 2011
Things could not have gone much better for Corm Construction Sewer and Watermain Limited (Corm) when they pursued multiple claims against the City of Barrie on a municipal watermain project. A double award by the arbitrator, plus interest and costs, was an outstanding resolution for Corm. Following the arbitration loss, the City of Barrie quickly settled the remaining two claims that were headed for a second round of arbitration.
Corm came to UCI during the construction for advice and to review the claims and their validity. In UCI’s opinion, the claims were indeed valid and worth pursuing. Almost equally important, UCI determined that the City of Barrie had erred in their Supplementary General Conditions and had not deleted the binding arbitration provisions of Ontario Provincial Standards that they had intended to. UCI recommended that Corm use the arbitration procedures to avoid the possibility of the claims requiring years of expensive litigation to resolve.
UCI guided Corm through the arbitration process that took one year to complete due to some procedural issues and the arbitrator requesting submissions on two technical issues. The arbitrator was both an engineer and a lawyer which greatly assisted the process in this case.
By agreement between the parties, the arbitration was based on documents only and there was no hearing. The quantum of the claims was also agreed to by the parties so the arbitrator only had to rule on the liability of the City of Barrie on the two issues.
Following their loss, the City of Barrie amended their standard contract to remove binding arbitration provisions.