The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. has settled the complaint for non-payment of services filed by Vanderpool Pipeline Engineers Inc., a company that served as the pipeline designer and third party construction manager for the CUC pipeline project.<\/p>\n
CUC legal counsel James S. Sirok and Vanderpool Pipeline counsel Robert J. O\u2019Connor informed the U.S. District Court for the NMI on Monday about their settlement.<\/p>\n
Because of the settlement, Sirok and O\u2019Connor filed a stipulation, requesting the District Court to dismiss with prejudice CUC\u2019s court action.<\/p>\n
Dismissal with prejudice means CUC cannot re-open the case anymore.<\/p>\n
The parties did not indicate the settlement amount.<\/p>\n
Sirok and O\u2019Connor said their stipulation is based on the settlement and payment of all claims of Vanderpool Pipeline against CUC.<\/p>\n
The lawyers said the parties agreed with the dismissal of the arbitration proceedings brought by Vanderpool Pipeline against CUC within the American Arbitration Association in Hawaii.<\/p>\n
In the federal court action, CUC asked the court to stop the arbitration case filed by Vanderpool Pipeline against CUC before the American Arbitration Association.<\/p>\n
Vanderpool Pipeline sought a $527,000 payment from CUC over its stalled oil pipeline project.<\/p>\n
Sirok requested the court to declare that there is no contractual obligation for CUC to arbitrate disputes with Vanderpool.<\/p>\n
Sirok asserted that CUC never agreed or consented to arbitration.<\/p>\n
Sirok said Vanderpool inserted an arbitration clause into a proposal for additional work to be added to the original contract via two change orders.<\/p>\n
CUC\u2019s contract with Vanderpool expired on Dec. 31, 2014, and that to date, the pipeline project that CUC sought Vanderpool\u2019s assistance to build has not been completed.<\/p>\n
Vanderpool filed the arbitration case against CUC last Feb. 14.<\/p>\n
In its opposition, Vanderpool Pipeline asked the court to deny CUC\u2019s request to stop the arbitration.<\/p>\n
Vanderpool Pipeline counsel O\u2019Connor said CUC has no reasonable or legitimate prospect of prevailing on<\/p>\n
the merits in this case, as the facts clearly show the utilities agency to have agreed to arbitration with Vanderpool in the event of a dispute between them.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor said CUC is bound by contract to arbitrate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. has settled the complaint for non-payment of services filed by Vanderpool…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4328,49,93,257],"class_list":["post-205538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-american-arbitration-association","tag-cuc","tag-district-court","tag-nmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}