St. Mary’s Hospital being sued for $1M
Contractor says it is owed money after ‘requested changes’ resulted in delays
A Laval general contractor says St. Mary’s Hospital entangled the company in roughly a year of changed plans and delays, then failed to pay them about half a million dollars.
In its lawsuit, filed on Monday, Les Constructions Berka Inc. says that provincial health-care reforms left it “at the mercy of certain negligent officials” who were in charge of paying the firm. The plaintiff was “literally held hostage by the administrative mess” the reforms spurred, the lawsuit says.
In 2013, the company and the hospital signed a contract outlining construction work to an emergency room in the hospital, the document filed in Montreal civil court says. Berka completed the work in 2015, and St. Mary’s in turn paid the contractor close to $2.8 million as agreed, the document says.
But the lawsuit alleges that the hospital’s “very large amount of requested changes” delayed the project by about a year and cost Berka roughly an extra $500,000. That money has yet to be paid, according to the lawsuit.
Now the company is suing the hospital for more than a million dollars. That sum includes costs the firm says it incurred as a result of the delayed payment, and $100,000 in damages resulting from the hospital’s “gross negligence,” the lawsuit says.
In their lawsuit, the contractor describes a construction site full of challenges — such as hospital staff failing to clear out offices affected by construction, and asking the contractor to demolish a wall that was essential to the building ’s stability.
The lawsuit goes on to detail more than two years of waiting for the hospital to pay them for the extra work.
The company links their problems with the hospital to healthcare reforms, saying in its lawsuit that a St. Mary’s staff member retired and was replaced by managers “as part of the reorganization of the health system” in 2016. Berka had been satisfied with its relationship to the retired official, they said in their lawsuit.
“The defendant has remained silent and given no sign of life to the plaintiff since November 27, 2017,” the lawsuit reads.
St. Mary’s Hospital did not respond on Friday to a request for comment from the Montreal Gazette.