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Recent Case Developments: Contractor Entitled to be Paid For Extra Work Not Part of Original Contract

On September 12, 2013, the Town of Kent (Putnam County) entered into a contract with a contractor to build a sewer. 

During construction, certain "conditions that were unexpected and unanticipated" arose, requiring the contractor to do "extra" work--things beyond the scope of work of the original contract. (The appeals court doesn't detail what this extra work was.)

The contractor performed the extra work, totaling around $380,000 in additional costs. For reasons not stated by the appeals court, the Town refused to pay for this extra work, and the contractor eventually sued the Town in May, 2015. 

The contractor moved for summary judgment in the lower court (a kind of mini-trial on paper), and the court awarded judgment in favor of the contractor for the $380,000. 

The Town appealed, but the appeals court sided with the contractor, saying that even though this "extra" work was not within the scope of work of the original contract, the contract gave the Town's engineer the authority to approve whatever unanticipated work needed to be done to get the sewer built. The contractor showed the court change orders, signed by the Town's engineer, approving the extra work the contractor had done and was seeking payment for. 

The only defense by the Town discussed in the decision was that the Town argued it was too early in the case to be granting summary judgment--more facts needed to be gathered. But the appeals court wasn't having it:
A party contending that a motion for summary judgment is premature is required to demonstrate that additional discovery might lead to relevant evidence or that the facts essential to oppose the motion are exclusively within the knowledge and control of the movant [here, the contractor] ... "The mere hope or speculation that evidence sufficient to defeat a motion for summary judgment may be uncovered during the discovery process is insufficient to deny the motion" ... Here, the Town failed to show that discovery would lead to relevant evidence.

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