Councils lose bid to sue roads firm

TAYSIDE Contracts has failed in a legal bid against a local quarry merchant.

The action was raised at the Court of Session in Edinburgh following a series of botched road repairs in 2010.

Tayside Contracts is the commercial trading arm of the councils of Angus, Dundee City and Perth and Kinross and carries out roadworks on behalf of the local authorities.

It was claimed that almost nine tonnes of materials purchased from the Geddes Group was in some way the cause of “significant loose chippings” on the roadworks, which then had to be redone.

The roads affected were in Tayside and some sub-contracting work carried out in Falkirk.

The chippings — sourced from the Geddes Group’s Waulkmill Quarry, outside Arbroath — were valued at £176,631.

Lord Doherty’s findings into the case stated: “During January 2011 it became evident the nature and scale of loose chippings reported was very significant indeed.

“By the early spring of 2011 it was apparent the problem was widespread and that most of the surface dressing sites had experienced some degree of failure.”

Tayside Contracts put forward three ways in which it claimed the Geddes Group was in breach of the Sale of Goods Act 1979.

The firm argued there had not been proper adhesion between the material and the bitumen binder.

The second claim stated the Waulkmill’s mineralogy made it “susceptible to stripping of the aggregate from the binder emulsion, particularly in the presence of water”.

The third argument was that if the court was not satisfied that the failures were caused by one or other of the suggested causes, it “should nonetheless be satisfied they were caused by some unknown characteristic of the aggregate which made it of unsatisfactory quality or unfit for the purpose of use in surface dressing on roads in eastern Scotland.”

However, Lord Doherty found in favour of the Geddes Group, having heard evidence from a number of civil engineering experts.

Summing up, he said: “In my opinion, the cause or causes of the failures have simply not been established.”

Tayside Contracts had not responded to a request for comment at the time of going to press.

A spokesman for the Geddes Group declined to comment on the matter.

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