BATON ROUGE –– Barriere Construction Company lost an appeal to stop a planned road project.
On Sept. 24, the First Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court's ruling denying Barriere Construction's request for an injunction against Tangipahoa parish and Beverley Construction Company.
Beverly Construction won a bid for the road project, but later submitted a letter identifying a clerical error that increased the amount of the bid. Barriere Construction objected to the change. After receiving advice from an assistant attorney general and an engineer, the parish gave the job to Beverly for the original bid amount of $6.23 million.
Barriere Construction subsequently filed a lawsuit. Barriere Construction argued Beverly Construction withdrew and re-submitted a bid, violating state statutes regarding public works projects.
The trial court granted a temporary restraining order, but declined to issue the requested injunction.
In its opinion, the three-judge panel found Beverly Construction merely corrected a bid, which is allowed.
In addition, the appeals court found Beverly Construction did correctly list "individual extended unit prices" during the original bid. These prices formed the basis for the later correction. As a result, the judges wrote, allowing such clarificiation does not allow a bidder to "rig the system."