Federal Court Enters Judgment Against Wasatch (K&T 14 Case)

BSFSRYFAN · **Joined:** Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:56 pm **Posts:** 92

Rick Rowlands wrote:

etalcos wrote:

They ran him off. Didn't appreciate his matter of fact tone. Yet allowed said contractor in this thread to continue to post. That should tell you a great deal.

BSFSRYFAN wrote:

Didn't there used to be a lawyer that posted on here? I really wish he was back, as I keep having to ask my neighbor questions about the case. What happened to him?

The person in question violated forum rules and was disciplined accordingly.
The contractor in question has not.

Performance in the real world does not have any bearing on qualifications for membership in RYPN. That is the only "great deal" to be taken away from this.

I understand, from private messages and offline messages from other forum members that Wasatch has a friend in Moderator Randy Hees. Hees has apparently, in the past, deleted content not favorable to Wasatch on this forum. So I guess like a lot of things in life it's who you know.

I am glad that real world qualifications do not apply here! A lot of us would not be allowed to comment! Ha!

BSFSRYFAN · **Joined:** Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:56 pm **Posts:** 92

Back to the topic, one statement that Mr. Hees did not scrub with regard to wasatch was this statement, contained in this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=42278&p=280188&hilit=+zero+loss+#p280188

Quote:

WRC Contracts: Our contracts are as "iron clad" as they can be. Our contract template, about 11-15 pages was written by a team of lawyers who, have litigated and won a number of "service provider" cases. I would remind all those who care that WRC has a "zero loss run record." That means, we have never litigated a case (kept any/all disputes out of court) and we have lost no cases nor do we have any pay outs on any case/project. We bond and protect every project and we insure our projects (something not many, if any other contractors in our industry do.). The fact that we bond our projects makes us more of a target for litigation. Some customers, seeing that we have insurance, are actually going after some kind of "insurance" claim, rather than any form of tangible damage claim. So far, we have not lost any dispute. We have never had to pay out on a performance bond either.

If you are in business long enough, you will get sued. If you get sued enough, you probably will lose a case. Best not to brag about it.

etalcos · **Posted:** Thu Dec 03, 2020 12:29 pm

I am glad that real world qualifications do not apply here! A lot of us would not be allowed to comment! Ha

Apparently.

"Rules" can and often are written to exclude people/facts the authors of the rules don't care for. Although I'm reminded that if you threaten to sue, you get re-instated and can more or less say what you want.

I also seem to recall Wasatch telling us how he was going to dominate the Industry in 5 years or less and how dynamic their business growth was or some such. If they can do that good for them. Growth is good and success is to be applauded. I think most folks would prefer to let their growth and success speak for itself rather than bragging or doing self promotion to tell the world how great they are.

Kelly Anderson · **Joined:** Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:52 am **Posts:** 2477

BSFSRYFAN wrote:

If you are in business long enough, you will get sued. If you get sued enough, you probably will lose a case. Best not to brag about it.

Then I guess that we haven't been in business long enough.

Chris Webster · **Joined:** Sat Aug 25, 2007 12:45 am **Posts:** 1087

etalcos wrote:

"Rules" can and often are written to exclude people/facts the authors of the rules don't care for.

Their server, their rules.

bigjim4life · **Posted:** Thu Dec 03, 2020 1:09 pm

Kelly Anderson wrote:

BSFSRYFAN wrote:

If you are in business long enough, you will get sued. If you get sued enough, you probably will lose a case. Best not to brag about it.

Then I guess that we haven't been in business long enough.

Perhaps it should be “in business long enough and have anything less than excellent quality of work, you will get sued.”

Utah Josh · **Posted:** Fri Dec 04, 2020 8:18 pm

And another organization comes forward.

From the Hawaiian Railway Society's facebook page today (December 4th):

Quote:

One of our more recent projects was the refurbishment of our ex-Navy Locomotive, No. 302. In this album we have re-uploaded all the photos in chronological order so that you can see the process in its entirety.
A majority of the work was handled by an outside contract and upon the locomotive’s return to the society we were disappointed to find that a number of the items on the contract were not fulfilled and the overall quality of the work was subpar. Needless to say we were frustrated that this project came in over on time and budget too.

Wasatch was the "outside contract" and publicized their work on this locomotive regularly on their own Facebook page.

M Austin · **Joined:** Sat Feb 05, 2005 1:05 am **Posts:** 488

Case 01-19-0002-2727, Exhibit 21 Sobczynski's Evaluation

Full file - 35 Pages - 5Mb

Crescent-Zephyr · **Joined:** Wed Jan 20, 2016 1:15 pm **Posts:** 1799

Wow. That’s beyond scary.

Glad the operation in Hawaii is speaking up as well. This operation needs to be shut down ASAP. Doesn’t matter if they are part of the good ole boys club or not.

Now I know why they locked up the engine house and threatened websites with lawsuits.

parktrains · **Joined:** Sun Mar 05, 2017 3:05 pm **Posts:** 89

M Austin wrote:

Case 01-19-0002-2727, Exhibit 21 Sobczynski's Evaluation

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.

Kelly Anderson · **Joined:** Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:52 am **Posts:** 2477

Thanks Matt.

If I ever write a book on the heritage railroad industry, perhaps I should title it Bad Actors Building Bombs.

For crying out loud John, from now on, please confine yourself to painting freight cars.

PMC · **Joined:** Sat Oct 17, 2015 5:55 pm **Posts:** 2875

I would love to have a photo of the FRA men when they first saw all of this, jaws all on the floor.

Robert Opal · **Posted:** Fri Dec 04, 2020 11:11 pm

BSFSRYFAN wrote:

From what I understand the loosing party could file an appeal with the court of appeals. Apple also courts need a final order and the working just alerts the parties that the clock is ticking.

Appeals courts, my lawyer neighbor tells me, only look at legal
Errors and not fact errors. She tells me that there likely wouldn’t be a successful appeal in a case like this.

Your "lawyer neighbor" is essentially correct. A reviewing court won't look at alleged factual errors unless they are so gross that it's obvious the arbitrator was hopelessly biased and didn't pay any attention to the record. Any claim like this would need to be raised in response to the prevailing party's request for a court to confirm the award. According to the court decision, none of the defendants (Wasatch, et. al.) responded to Heritage's motion to confirm the award. So that should be the end of the matter, as far as "who's right" and "who's wrong" in any future legal proceedings.

Tom F · **Joined:** Mon Jul 02, 2018 8:04 pm **Posts:** 314

Wow just wow. Some one could probably write a book on this fiasco. It's really hard to comprehend how this went on for so long. It looks like the work of a bunch of drunk hillbillies! It must have been something when they put the water in the boiler and it was running out just as fast as they were putting it in. Hopefully someone has a video. The welds on top of the steam dome studs??? You guys are going to be pumping air into that boiler for days and the gauge will still read zero even if you fix everything else. I am sure Wasatch would fix the leaks with some bubble gum and bath tub sealant. If that doesn't work you might have to bring out the big guns with a tube of JB weld!

I know it's not a good thing to speak negative of the people who are restoring locomotives and cars in the railroad industry. But the gross incompetence is so overwhelming that this company should be dissolved. It would be prudent that any previous steam locomotives worked on by this company, should be thoroughly inspected. I would say 90% of the work they did was probably for nothing. Worse yet time consuming, and expensive re-work just to get back to the point before Wasatch took over. Really is the worst case scenario with 3/4 of a million dollars literally going up in smoke. Probably best just to have this locomotive as a static display. It's a cursed money pit with no end in site.

Zach Lybrand · **Joined:** Tue Mar 03, 2020 5:36 pm **Posts:** 120

I thought the carriage bolts that they hit with an air hammer so that the bolts would actually appear to be rivets were a cute touch. How did they expect to get away with any of this? Did they really think that the FRA MP&E inspectors would just walk in, say "yeah, it looks kinda better than the last time I was here" and then walk out?!