Montgomery County Gearing Up For Legal Battle Over Troubled Silver Spring Transit Center

County Council could vote Tuesday to appoint 'Big Dig' law firm to advise county attorney

By Aaron Kraut

The Silver Spring Transit Center Via Flickr user Rich Renomeron

No lawsuits have been filed yet, but Montgomery County is gearing up for an expected legal battle over the behind-schedule and over-budget Silver Spring Transit Center project.

The County Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday to appoint the law firm Saul Ewing, which worked on litigation involving Boston’s “Big Dig” project, to help the county attorney with “anticipated litigation” concerning the Transit Center.

The $140 million facility at the Silver Spring Metro station is $50 million over budget and four years behind schedule. The county is expected to turn the building over to Metro later this year.

An engineering consultant hired by the county found the bus and train station was poorly constructed and posed a safety risk because of weak concrete and cracks in supporting beams .

County Executive Ike Leggett has said the county plans to recover cost overruns by pursuing legal penalties from the project’s general contractor, Foulger-Pratt, and possibly others involved.

Foulger-Pratt and others involved in the project have maintained they followed the county’s design and inspection process and did nothing wrong.

“Saul Ewing would work under the direction of the Office of the County Attorney in order to assist the Office in pursuing and defending potential claims and litigation associated with the [Transit Center] project,” county attorney Marc Hansen wrote in a memo to Council President George Leventhal .

The memo didn’t say how much hiring the firm would cost, but did note that Saul Ewing “has agreed to provide the County with its legal services at preferred blended rates which represent, on average, a discount at which Saul Ewing ordinarily bills its clients.”

The firm’s lead attorney, Garry Boehlert, will be directly involved in any potential litigation.

Lawyers from the firm worked on cases involving a cracked structural floor slab in a Brooklyn, New York, building, the collapse of a highway tunnel ceiling in Boston’s “Big Dig” project and the collapse of a high-rise building in Guam.