Building Firm Sues City for $11 Million

A Van Nuys construction company has filed an $11-million lawsuit against the city of Thousand Oaks, contending it breached a contract when it fired the firm from its parks job.

City officials said they dismissed the firm after it failed to complete its work on time, even after being given two extensions.

City Atty. Mark Sellers said Alpha began a 100-day contract to do park construction Nov. 17 and received two extensions of five days each. The city terminated the contract March 5.

“When you get to a point that a contractor is so far behind, you’re going to say, ‘Bring this job back up to where it should be,’ ” Sellers said. “Everything was past due.”

But according to Gerald Hart, senior vice president of Alpha Construction, the city made demands it knew the firm would not be able to meet and requested numerous extras that were not part of the original contract.

“In spite of the fact that we were pursuing the job and completed the job well past 75%, the city chose to terminate our contract,” Hart said.

“They sent us a notice, with a list of items that they said needed to be completed in the next 10 days in order for them to not terminate us. [But] many of those items could not be completed because of the city’s own inadequacies. They were putting us in an impossible situation.”

The city eventually hired many of the same firms that Alpha had subcontracted with to complete the job, Hart said, which he said showed that the city had sought to cut Alpha’s fee out of the project.