Mid-American Elevator Company, Inc. v. Gemco Elevator Company, Inc., 183 Ga. App. 88, 357 S.E.2d 838 (1987)
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Summary
Judgment reversed. Birdsong, C. J., and Pope, J., concur.
Summary
Judgment reversed. Birdsong, C. J., and Pope, J., concur.
Text
On August 17, 1982, the appellant, Mid-American Elevator Company, Inc., and the appellee, Gemco Elevator Company, Inc., entered into a joint venture agreement for the furnishing, installation, and maintenance of escalators in certain MARTA stations. Mid-American was to furnish the escalators and Gemco was to install and maintain them for a base contract price of $332,000. Performance plans and problems proliferated and escalated to such an extent that in late 1984, Mid-American claimed Gemco owed it $146,965.78, and Gemco claimed that Mid-American owed it an additional $536,069.94 for extra work and materials. The dispute was submitted to an arbitrator, who awarded Gemco $216,273.71. The superior court denied Mid-American's application to vacate or modify the arbitration award, and this appeal followed. Held:
Under OCGA
The documentary evidence before the arbitrator included twenty-three invoices for extra work and materials submitted by Gemco, and a spread sheet that delineated necessary extra work at a cost of $45,706. In making his award, the arbitrator disallowed invoices eighteen through twenty-three, on the basis that the charges were duplicative of the approved charges on the spread sheet. The arbitrator vehemently denied that any charges contained in any other invoices also were reflected on this spread sheet, and the superior court accepted the denial. However, the president and owner of Gemco himself acknowledged that the first fifteen invoices approved by the arbitrator in fact included charges that also appeared on the spread sheet. In short, contrary to the trial court's finding that there was no evidence of any miscalculation, the conclusion is inescapable that some miscalculation did result in the form of a double credit for some of the charges, although not the entire $45,706 as contended by Mid-American.
Gemco stated that the entire project required 20,523 man hours, 10,843 more than originally estimated. The arbitrator concluded that part of the declared extra work, i.e., assembly of the escalators, had to be considered part of the original contract performance, and thus was not compensable as extra work. The arbitrator then applied a perplexing equation to determine the number of hours to disallow. Because the counted invoices reflected a total of 16,310.5 man hours, the arbitrator subtracted the actual extra hours (10,843) from 16,310.5, and then subtracted the difference (5,467.5) from 16,310.5 to obtain the total of 10,843 countable extra hours. In other words, by use of the above inexplicable formula, the arbitrator actually compensated Gemco for all the extra hours claimed, despite holding that not all of the extra hours were compensable.
"The function of the trial court in proceedings to confirm or vacate an arbitration award should be severely limited in order not to frustrate the purpose of avoiding litigation by resorting to arbitration." Cotton States Mut. Ins. Co. v. Nunnally Lumber Co.,
R. Daniel McGinnis, for appellee.
1987
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