Water Authority Wins Major Appellate Victory
Rudolph Clarke attorney Peter Amuso recently won a significant victory for the Warwick Township Water and Sewer Authority in front of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, successfully arguing that the Court should reverse a trial judge’s award of damages against the Authority. During a six-day jury trial in 2013, Peter convinced a jury to hold the Authority’s Engineer, and not the Authority, entirely liable for the damages sustained by the general contractor on a significant Authority project. The jury’s verdict was reversed by the trial judge 6 months later. Peter immediately appealed and laid out to the Commonwealth Court the dependency of the Authority’s volunteer board on the expertise of its appointed Engineer. The Commonwealth Court panel voted unanimously to shift liability for the vast bulk of the contractor’s damages back the Engineer, thus saving the Authority and their ratepayers nearly three-quarters of a million dollars.
