Steel Sub That Sued Whiting-Turner Says Payment Deal Is Close
Fabricator United Steel claimed it has waited over a year for final payment
Work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine, where work performed by subcontractor United Steel as a subcontractor to Whiting-Turner ended up in a lawsuit.
Photo by Jim Cleveland/U.S. Navy
United Steel Inc., New England's biggest steel fabricator, says it is close to completing a deal for what it claimed was $757,000 owed to it by construction manager Whiting-Turner Contracting. The payments are for steel supplied in 2022 and 2023 on a U.S. Navy shipyard infrastructure project in Kittery, Maine.
In its breach-of-contract lawsuit filed in federal court in Baltimore, United Steel accused Whiting-Turner of breaching its contract by withholding most of the money owed for a year. The lawsuit, filed in June, also accused Whiting-Turner of violating federal prompt-pay law.
Change orders on the shipyard project had increased the Hartford, Conn.-based fabricator's $7-million contract for structural steel and miscellaneous metals to $11.2 million.
Whiting-Turner, which was working under a firm fixed-price modification to a previously awarded contract, repeatedly failed to pay the fabricator’s requests for the money, United Steel claimed. Most of the unpaid invoices dated to August 2023 or prior. Of the $7 million, $435,000 involved change orders. “Whiting-Turner’s failure to timely process these change orders constitutes a material breach of the subcontract,” United Steel claimed.
In August, United Steel struck a more upbeat note.
The company’s attorney, Gordon S. Woodward, asked the court for a time extension for Whiting-Turner’s required reply to the civil lawsuit charges. Another time extension request, by United Steel for Whiting-Turner, followed in September.
Then last month Woodward said the two sides were still talking.
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“The parties have conferred,” he told Judge Matthew J. Maddox in a letter, and again asked that the court grant Whiting-Turner an extension for its lawsuit reply until Jan. 31, 2025.
The parties, he wrote, “believe they are close to a final resolution” which could end the matter without further litigation.
