On the afternoon before the next scheduled court hearing for the accused killer of City Hall consultant Paul Bilodeau at the construction site of Fire Station No. 3, Public Works Director Charles Herbertson announced an arbitration settlement in a long-running dispute with the original builder.
Mr. Herbertson described as “a qualified success” an arbitrator’s ruling that awarded City Hall a significantly larger proportion of the outcome than he ordered for FEI Enterprises.
The builder was fired from the job when the company ran well beyond its contracted one-year finish date.
The arbitrator declared that “the city prevailed.”
So saying, he denied more than 80 percent of FEI’s claim of over $1 million in unpaid charges.
In response, City Hall had sought $300,000 in liquid damages. It was directed to pay $100,000 to the construction company owned by Gabriel Fedida.
The case, brought by the builder, went to mediation first, failed, and it has been in arbitration for months.
The denouement is not yet at hand, however.
After the arbitrator rejected FEI’s bid to have its attorneys’ fees covered, the company said it would challenge that portion of the verdict.
The case gained extraordinary notoriety because on Jan. 2, 2009, well after the original $4 million project was to have been completed by FEI, the 45-year-old consultant Mr. Bilodeau was murdered at the construction site.
He was working into a post-New Year’s Friday evening in his trailer office, and his lifeless body was found in the doorway the following morning.
Myron DeShun Grant, a young convicted felon, has been charged with the homicide. The case is expected to go to trial before the end of the calendar year. Loosely, the motivation has been characterized as a random, out-of-the-way robbery rather than a deliberate hit.
(To be continued)
