Contractor rebuts Cal U lawsuit

Unusable garage center of court action in Washington County

A contractor being sued over the partial collapse of a parking garage at California University of Pennsylvania denies any breach of agreed-to work or liability for the failure that has closed the garage for 26 months.

In addition, Manheim Corp. of Pittsburgh accuses Cal U of “failure to inspect, maintain and/or repair the garage” and says any claims from the August lawsuit should be barred in whole or in part as a result.

The company’s response, filed Friday in Washington County Common Pleas Court, challenges major assertions in Cal U’s complaint, including a claim that Manheim lacked necessary approvals to substitute the kind of reinforcement used in the garage.

Manheim’s rebuttal comes as the state-owned university enters its third consecutive fall semester without the garage and millions in parking revenue needed to pay off debt service on the five-story, $12 million structure.

Cal U spokeswoman Christine Kindl said Monday that the university denies Manheim’s claims.

“The University also stands by its claims that a 6-year-old garage, if built properly and to industry standards, should have performed as expected,” she said.

Cal U projects the closure will have cost it $550,00 in lost revenue and nearly $350,000 to date in legal and consulting fees, she said.

Manheim was general contractor on the project to build the garage, which opened in 2010 next to the campus library.

The 650-space structure was intended to provide student and faculty parking, and it also was used by visitors. But on student movein day Aug. 26, 2016, an approximately 20-feet-long, 2-feet wide piece of concrete suddenly broke off and fell from the second floor to the first floor, nearly striking people and cars.

Cal U asserts that the garage, named for the school’s Vulcan mascot, was improperly built.

Its lawsuit, filed Aug. 9 in Washington County, named as defendants Manheim and Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America, headquartered in Hartford, Conn. Travelers was responsible for “any expense incurred through Manheim’s failure to

complete the work as specified,” the suit says.

A focus of Cal U’s complaint was the kind of construction materials used in the garage.

“Rather than using the metal structural concrete reinforcement specified in the [Request for Proposals],” Manheim and subcontractors used “double tee members reinforced with a carbon fiber grid, known as C-Grid.” The lawsuit said Manheim touted C-Grid as “an innovative breakthrough in precast concrete technology” with benefits that include less corrosion and weight, and it would last longer.

Cal U’s lawsuit claims cracks were discovered in the garage and asserted that the C-Grid reinforcement used by Manheim “was not sufficient to support specified loads.”

In their response, Manheim’s lawyers said Cal U failed to provide a copy of the RFP with the lawsuit and thus took issue with any characterizations of its contents, as specified in the complaint.

Nevertheless, Manheim’s lawyers said the company “denies Cal U’s characterization of the quality of the double tee members with the C-Grid carbon fiber reinforcement.”

It further denied that approval had to be obtained to use the double tee members and thus denies it lacked necessary approvals.

The lawyers denied Cal U’s claim that “as a result of Manheim’s failures, the garage and its components are defective and unfit for their intended purpose.”

They also denied Cal U’s assertion that “as a result of Manheim’s breaches of the contract, the project was not adequately designed or constructed to withstand the reasonably anticipated loads of vehicles using the garage.”

Prior to the suit, Cal U was largely silent on the garage failure and potential causes.

However, surveillance video capturing the collapse along with photos and internal correspondence turned over to the Pittsburgh PostGazette last fall after a yearlong public records fight showed a theory emerging early about cause.

The garage was part of a massive building boom across the State System of Higher Education’s 14 universities.

The projects were credited with boosting enrollment a decade ago but also became controversial for the level of debt they placed on those schools.