FLINT, MI -- The bulk of the state of Michigan’s $350 million lawsuit against two engineering companies that advised the city of Flint about its water has been dismissed by a Genesee County Circuit Court judge.

In an opinion dated Nov. 8, Chief Judge Richard Yuille dismissed claims of professional negligence, negligence, public nuisance, fraud and a request from the state for exemplary damages -- leaving only a claim of unjust enrichment in the case against Veolia North America and Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam.

Attorney General Dana Nessel had argued that the “incompetence of the city of Flint’s water consultants was a principal cause of the Flint water crisis" in an amended complaint against the two companies in July.

But the firms maintained they warned the city about corrosion issues that caused elevated levels of lead in drinking water and gave other advise that was ignored.

Yuille issued a six-page opinion in granting most of the companies’ motions for summary disposition.

MLive-The Flint Journal could not immediately reach representatives of Veolia or LAN for comment on the ruling.

Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam issued this emailed statement to The Journal Thursday night: “We are pleased with the ruling today dismissing most counts of the state’s lawsuit," With respect to the remaining claims, we are confident of prevailing because a number of investigations determined that actions or inactions by state and local government officials were the cause of the alleged harm asserted by the State in the case.”

Veolia North America issued a statement Friday saying it was gratified by the court’s decision.

“The ongoing efforts by those officials to pervert the facts and shift blame away from themselves are shameful,” the statement from Veolia says. “The Attorney General is clearly trying to create a corporate villain where one does not exist. Ignoring reality, the Attorney General bizarrely claims that VNA is “unjustly enriched” because the State of Michigan provided assistance and services to the citizens of Flint which were needed because of the government’s failures that caused the disaster.”

Dan Olsen, a spokesman for Nessel, issued a statement saying, “Judge Yuille has preserved our ability to continue our unjust enrichment claim and we intend to aggressively do so while analyzing other potential legal actions that might be taken to ensure the engineering defendants are held accountable for their misdeeds.”

It was Nessel who put assistant state attorney generals in charge of the civil complaint against LAN and Veolia in February. In July, they filed responses to requests from the companies to dismiss the complaints against them, claiming that principal responsibility for the Flint water crisis lies with the government entities and officials involved directly in the treatment of water and oversight of the city’s water system.

On the issues of negligence and public nuisance, Yuille wrote in part, “If the People’s damages are premised on injuries to the consumers of the city of Flint water, then consumers of the city of Flint’s water are the individuals that ought to be suing for negligence.

Flint residents have filed their own civil lawsuits, seeking damages they suffered related to the water crisis.

The judge found that the state’s lawsuit failed to meet all of the requirements of fraud including that the companies made representations that were false, that the companies knew the representations were false at the time or that they made it recklessly, and that the people of the state acted in reliance on it and suffered injury.

Court filings by the attorney general’s office sought to recover more than $350 million in damages the state says it suffered as a result of Flint’s water having been contaminated.

The state claimed Flint paid and counted on LAN and Veolia for expert advice about what was happening to the city water system in parts of 2014 and 2015, while the Flint River was used as the city’s water source.

This story was updated Nov. 15, 2019 with a statement from Veolia North America.