McLaughlin, a business man, had hundreds of thousands of dollars embezzled from his business by an employee. The employee would remove checks made payable to the business from the office and deposited ...them directly to his own personal account. The plaintiff instituted suit against the bank for its negligence in allowing the embezzler to deposit to his own personal account checks made payable to the company. Following extensive discovery into the practices of U. S. Bank, through the use of an impartial, third-party mediator, the case was settled with the Plaintiff recovering most of the money that had been embezzled. Given the facts of this case, with negligence on both the Plaintiff and Defendant, this was an extremely successful outcome for our client.
Construction and development
Berschauer Phillips Construction v. Matson Family Partnership
N/A
OUTCOME: Negotiated settlement after extended litigation
Matson Family Partnership owned real property in Auburn, Washington on which a Dodge Automobile dealership had been established for many years. Matson contracted with Berschauer to remove existing deal...ership buildings and erect a new, state-of-the-art dealership building. This was intended to be a "turn key" contract. Prior to the contract being entered into, the architect called for certain subsoil testing to be done to ascertain the presence of underground water, and this test disclosed the existence of water from approximately 3 feet to 14 feet, varying depending on where on the site the test holes were drilled. The testing engineer warned of the existence of the water, and warned that the water could be expected to be encountered at most any level and at any place on the site. During construction, extremely heavy rains were encountered at the time that a large underground water-retention vault was to be installed, and the rain caused the pit in which the vault was to be installed to be filled with water, necessitating the use of extensive de-watering procedures. The contractor argued that the water that was encountered by it was "unexpected" and demanded that Matson pay for the costs of dewatering the pit. Matson claimed that the contractor knew or should have known of the existence of the underground water from the test holes that had been drilled prior to the letting of the contract, which test results had been given to the contractor and made a part of the contract plans and specifications. This case involved extremely complicated issues of commercial litigation, including the need to retain a variety of experts and extensive discovery.
