RFP Staff
♦ On Tuesday the City of Salisbury filed a lawsuit against Atlantic Group of North Carolina, Inc. who originally installed Fibrant’s fiber optic cables on the poles.
According to the lawsuit we looked over at the courthouse the complaint alleges that the Atlantic Group of North Carolina, Inc. breached the Agreement for Fiber Optic Design and Construction Services with the City of Salisbury by failing to complete the construction work by the deadlines specified by the contract and failing to locate fiber optic cable with sufficient ground clearance and sufficient distance from the power lines.
The suit reads that the city of Salisbury is seeking to recover funds to correct the work, estimates to cost well over a million dollars. The lawsuit itself does not specify a dollar amount other than an “amount in excess of $25,000”.
The lawsuit includes claims against Atlantic’s parent company “Atlantic Engineering Group, Inc. and Safeco Insurance Company of America, the insurance group who originally bonded the construction work.
The Fibrant “Run and Gun” Lawsuit Finally Filed.
RFP readers may note and remember that early last year Salisbury RFP contributor Todd Paris forced the City to finally disclose additional multi-million dollar problems with the Fibrant Network in that Atlantic Group (the initial cable installers) had installed much of the network out of compliance with the National Electric Safety Code and that hundreds of thousands of dollars in “do nothing” legal fees had paid out of our water enterprise fund. He publically called upon the city to call in the bond and file suit.
Today the City of Salisbury announced in a press release that it had finally got around to filing suit in an attempt for collect millions of dollars in costs for correcting these violations. Finally, this herd of cattle has been prodded in the correct direction.
Kudos for city hall finally forcing this company to pay damages to our citizen tax-payers. We wonder how this affects Fibrant’s bottom line and why this potential financial issue has not been reflected in financial reports or budgets or if it was, exactly where it was hidden. We also wonder if the bond-rating firms were ever made aware of this. Remember, you read about first on Rowan Free Press, over a year ago.
For a better understanding of the challenges brought up in this lawsuit we suggest you read the following Rowan Free Press articles:
Video: Todd TV–Fibrant’s Dangerous Secret
