Builders of the railroad overpass at Washington and Clark streets reconfigured in 2012 after a three-year project marked by delays have told the Ninth Circuit Court they’re owed millions by Kansas City Southern Railway for added construction costs.
In a lawsuit filed Sept. 5, Kansas-based Kanza Construction says KCS owes them more than $4.3 million for breach of contract and various forms of negligence. The case is before Warren County Circuit Court. No judge has been assigned.
The case is an offshoot of a similar complaint filed in 2013 by Kanza against KCS in federal court in Missouri, since dismissed.
In January 2009, the bridge at the intersection was closed due to persistent erosion and dangerous stability ratings. For the next three years, north-south traffic at the busy stretch of Washington Street in front of two casinos and several smaller businesses was rerouted around the bridge and east to Army-Navy Drive and North Frontage Road.
In between, the City of Vicksburg, which inherited the bridge from the state after the construction of Interstate 20 through town in the early 1970s, awarded a contract to KCS to replace the structure for no more than $7.9 million. The railroad named Kanza the subcontractor on the job, which involved demolishing the bridge and replacing it with a metal arch tunnel, building retaining walls adjacent to the tunnel ends and rebuilding Washington Street atop the tunnel. Completion dates were changed three times before the bridge reopened Feb. 13, 2012 with a ribbon-cutting and a parade of antique cars.
Kanza’s suit doesn’t cast any aspersions on the eventual design of the tunnel and road or its safety. Rather, lawyers for the company argue the retaining wall had to be redesigned after its own stability experts determined the structure wouldn’t be stable enough using rammed aggregate piers driven into the soil — a change the suit says happened without an agreed change order. Instead, walls were simply extended parallel to the railroad tracks and longer, rigid inclusion foundations were used. The suit states KCS “knew, or with the exercise of reasonable care could have known” the project couldn’t be built using the original design but wrote its bid specifications otherwise to ensure the lowest possible price to hire Kanza.
Also, Kanza says KCS had assured them no trains would run on the track as work continued, a so-called “Dead Track.” When train traffic continued over the track Kanza was working on, the company had to pay to shore up the section, adding to the company’s unexpected costs, according to the suit. Included in the total amount of damages requested, the company cites $793,712.34 in unpaid invoices related to the base contract. The suit says the city has paid KCS that amount.
In April, U.S. District Judge Greg Kays, the chief jurist for the Western District of Missouri, dismissed Kanza’s suit on grounds any squabble over the project’s contractual details need to be filed in Mississippi.
In August 2013, Kanza’s offices in Topeka, Kan. were closed by the Kansas Department of Revenue for owing $1.15 million in state sales and withholding taxes. Documents reinstating the company’s status to do business in Kansas were filed last month, according to the Kansas Secretary of State’s website.
Kanza is represented by Jackson attorney Ron A. Yarbrough and Randall J. Forbes, of Topeka. Case filings through Friday showed no legal representation for KCS.
Financing the overpass involved a mix of federal grants and matching money from the city.
A $4 million chunk of it came from the Federal Railroad Administration, with the city matching it with $1 million and a diversion of $3.7 million from the development of land off Fisher Ferry Road once eyed for a sports complex and from street-paving work.