Workforce
Lawsuit Alleges DBE Fraud on $3.6B Brent Spence Bridge Project
A Kentucky civil rights attorney has filed a lawsuit against Walsh-Kokosing JV, the Ohio Dept. of Transportation alleging that he was unfairly shut out of a DBE position on the $3.6-billion project.
Photo courtesy of the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor
A Kentucky civil rights attorney has filed a false claims lawsuit against Walsh-Kokosing JV, the Ohio Dept. of Transportation and others involved in the $3.6-billion Brent Spence Bridge Corridor between Ohio and Kentucky, alleging that he was shut out of a disadvantaged business enterprise compliance position, in what he asserts is an effort to skirt DBE requirements on the project.
The lawsuit was filed in June in the Southern District of Ohio, Cincinnati Division, by Jamir Davis who previously served as executive director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.
It alleges that Walsh-Kokosing hired Cincinnati-based WEB Ventures and an individual, Icy Williams, who was project manager for the job, even though neither had the ten years of DBE experience on federally-funded projects that was required for a successful bid.
The experience gap led WEB to recruit Davis’s firm, J. Davis Law Firm of Covington, Ky., to provide the expertise needed to win the contract only to then “quickly cut the firm out afterward.”
Davis’s law firm entered into an agreement with WEB Ventures which, along with Icy Williams, is named as a defendant in the suit, to pursue the diversity and inclusion manager position in February 2023. WEB Ventures signed a contract with Walsh-Kokosing in October 2023. Davis claims that WEB then misrepresented his firm's rate as $90 per hour rather than $252 per hour as they'd negotiated and refused to offer any resolution beyond that amount. Davis tried and failed to negotiate successfully with Walsh-Kokosing directly. He then filed a complaint with ODOT, which he says investigated and found in his favor.
He claims he was never paid for any work he did to prepare WEB to win the contract.
Davis alleges that he was caused “significant financial and professional harm” and that ODOT, even though “it found DBE fraud, took no action."
“The scheme was designed to exclude qualified Black-owned businesses—especially Jamir—while enriching the contractor and avoiding meaningful oversight,” the lawsuit states.
The DBE goal for the project in the preconstruction and initial phases is 9% of contract price; the target goal for phase 2 is at least 7%.
The lawsuit alleges that Walsh later terminated WEB and Williams from the project and allowed Walsh to take a self-perform approach where a general contractor performs a significant portion of the work on a project with their own in-house workforce rather than subcontracting out all tasks to specialty contractors.
Later, a position of Project DBE/EEO Compliance consultant was posted with a listed pay range of $100,000 to $500,000. Davis claims that he was shut out by Walsh from securing that position and that Walsh selected Cincinnati-based Make It Plain Consulting, which, like WEB Ventures, “had never performed a federal project of this nature before," the lawsuit alleges.
Davis is seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
Walsh-Kokosing and ODOT declined to comment on the lawsuit. WEB Ventures and Make It Plain did not respond to requests for comment. The Brent Spence Bridge project is progressing, and recently announced the selection of a cable-stayed design.
