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Court freezes $1.77M fund for Tinian airport project
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Posted on Jan 03 2005
The Superior Court yesterday froze some $1.77 million to prevent its possible disbursement by the Commonwealth Ports Authority, in connection with the multi-million-dollar West Tinian airport improvement project.
Associate Judge David Wiseman granted Telesource’s request for preliminary injunction, saying the company would suffer irreparable harm if the court does not prohibit the CPA from using the money for purposes other than payment to the contractor.
The retained fund represents about 10 percent of the total amount paid to Telesource in connection with the project, which covered the construction of an 8,600-linear foot asphalt concrete runway, the conversion of the 6,000-linear foot runway into a parallel taxiway, and the construction of related crossover, parallel and partial taxiways at the Tinian airport.
Telesource has been claiming the retained fund after completing the project, saying that the facility has been in use for more than a year and a half already.
“The issue in this case is not whether Telesource has earned the money in the retention fund, but rather whether the 10 percent retention amount is inappropriately being withheld from Telesource,” Wiseman said.
The judge ruled to preserve the status quo of leaving the retained fund untouched by both parties, pending the outcome of Telesource’s lawsuit.
“The threatened use of the funds includes CPA’s stated intention to use the funds to pay a third party to do a new survey,” Wiseman said.
Wiseman’s ruling favored to protect this potential harm, rather than that to CPA, which would be compelled to use money other than the retention fund pending the lawsuit’s determination.
Besides CPA’s refusal to release the retained fund to Telesource, the authority’s solicitation of services for a “complete as-built survey” of the airport, which was estimated to cost some $186,000, prompted the company to file the lawsuit.
CPA, however, accused Telesource of breaching their contract by failing to maintain as-built drawings, filing a counterclaim that seeks monetary damages against the company. The CPA claimed that Telesource failed to turn over to it the as-built drawings as required by the contract.
