Reginella Construction Co. v. Travelers Casualty & Surety Co. of America

949 F. Supp. 2d 599, 2013 WL 2404140, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76353
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedMay 31, 2013
DocketCivil Action No. 12-1047
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 949 F. Supp. 2d 599 (Reginella Construction Co. v. Travelers Casualty & Surety Co. of America) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Reginella Construction Co. v. Travelers Casualty & Surety Co. of America, 949 F. Supp. 2d 599, 2013 WL 2404140, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76353 (W.D. Pa. 2013).

Opinion

OPINION

MARK R. HORNAK, District Judge.

This is an action in tort. Plaintiff Reginella Construction Company (“Reginella”) asserts claims of breach of fiduciary duty, intentional interference with contractual relations, and tortious bad faith against defendant Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America (“Travelers”) in connection with surety bonds issued for two multi-million dollar construction projects. [ECF No. 1.] Reginella seeks compensatory and punitive damages, interest, attorneys’ fees, and costs. Travelers argues that Reginella’s fiduciary duty and bad faith claims are not cognizable and that any alleged interference with Reginella’s contractual relations was privileged as a matter of law. [ECF No. 7.] This Court’s jurisdiction rests on 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a), as Reginella is a Pennsylvania corporation with its principal place of business in Pittsburgh, Travelers is a Connecticut corporation with its principal place of business in New York, and the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000, exclusive of costs and interest.

Before the Court is Travelers’s motion to dismiss all six (6) counts of Reginella’s Complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). For the reasons set forth below, Travelers’s Motion to Dismiss will be granted with prejudice.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The facts set forth below are derived from Reginella’s Complaint and the undisputedly authentic documents attached to Travelers’s Motion to Dismiss. Reginella is a Pittsburgh-based construction company whose primary business is public construction. Over the past 25 years, Reginella has completed numerous multimillion dollar construction projects for school districts, state universities and agencies, municipalities, and other public owners. Travelers is one of the nation’s largest underwriters of insurance and surety contracts.

By way of background, it is common practice in the construction industry for general contractors to purchase surety bonds which guarantee the general contractor’s performance of the work and its payment of subcontractors and suppliers. This arrangement is designed to minimize the “enormous business risks” inherent in large-scale and logistically complicated construction projects, “any one of which could seriously impact the successful completion of the contract and financial solvency of all involved.” Philip L. Bruner and Patrick J. O’Connor, Jr., 3 Bruner & O’Connor on Construction Law § 12:1 (2012). Even though the principal (in this case, Reginella) obtains and pays the premium due on the bond, it is typically only the project owners (here, the MASD and the OTC), subcontractors, and suppliers who are entitled to make claims and receive payment. The surety company (in [604]*604this case, Travelers) receives fees and premium in exchange for underwriting the bond and assuming the risk that claims might be filed.

From June 2009 to June 2011, Travelers was Reginella’s surety. This cause of action arises out of Travelers’s provision of three surety bonds for two separate multimillion dollar construction projects. The first two surety bonds were for Reginella’s contract with the Moon Area School District (“the MASD”) in Moon, Pennsylvania for the conversion of the district’s high school into a middle school. The third surety bond was for Reginella’s contract with the Ohio Turnpike Commission (“the OTC”) for the re-construction of two service plazas along the Ohio Turnpike. According to Reginella, Travelers’s conduct has cost it $15,607,000 in lost business, goodwill, future earnings, and residual value of its enterprise.

A. The Moon Area School District Project

On August 10, 2010, Reginella contracted with the MASD to convert its high school into a middle school. The contract price for the project was $19,297,000. The construction contract required Reginella to obtain surety bonds guaranteeing Reginella’s performance of the work and the payment of its subcontractors and suppliers.

1. Course of Performance of the MASD Project

Between August 2010 and April 2012, Reginella alleges that it performed its contractual obligations without incident. However, sometime in mid-April 2012, relations between the parties began breaking down. On April 26, Travelers sent a letter to the MASD demanding payment on the project for “the entire amount of the contract funds remaining in the custody of [the MASD], including any and all estimates earned by [Reginella] but unpaid at this time.” [EOF No. 1, ¶ 44.] Reginella alleges that this demand was unfounded.

In response to Travelers’s letter, the MASD informed Reginella that it would not make any further payments to Reginella “until such time that an agreement is reached among the School District, Travelers and your company regarding distribution of future earned contract funds.” [Id. at ¶46.] While the MASD approved a $554,702 invoice that Reginella sent immediately following Travelers’s April 26 letter, the MASD declined to pay it. On May 24, 2012, Reginella informed the MASD that without payment, the project would come to a halt. Reginella then proposed payment procedures designed to assure its subcontractors that they would be paid in order to keep the project from shutting down. The MASD advised Travelers of Reginella’s offer, ostensibly to persuade Travelers to release payment to the subcontractors. Despite these efforts, neither the MASD nor Travelers released payment to either the subcontractors or Reginella.

By mid-June, approximately two weeks after Reginella’s warning that the project was in jeopardy, neither the MASD nor Travelers had released payment to Reginella or its subcontractors. Around this time, Reginella alleges that Travelers met privately with the subcontractors and informed them that the MASD was going to terminate the project, which Reginella alleges induced the subcontractors to slow down, stop working, and submit inflated and premature claims against Reginella. These events culminated in the shutdown of the MASD project on June 11, 2012.

2. The MASD Bond Agreements

Travelers issued two surety bonds for the MASD project, a performance bond and a payment bond, together in the full contract price of $19,297,000. Under the performance bond agreement, Travelers [605]*605would be required to step in and guarantee Reginella’s performance only in the event that Reginella defaulted. [ECF No. 7, Ex. 2, § 2.] Conversely, if the MASD were to be in default of its obligation under the construction contract to pay Reginella for the work, Travelers would not be obligated to guarantee Reginella’s performance.

Travelers’s obligations under the performance bond would arise if: (1) the MASD notified Reginella and Travelers of its intention to declare Reginella to be in default and Reginella is given an opportunity to cure, but does not do so; (2) the MASD declared Reginella to be in default and terminated the construction contract; and (3) the MASD agreed to pay the balance of the contract to Travelers in accordance with the construction contract, or to another contractor selected to finish the project. [Id.

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Bluebook (online)
949 F. Supp. 2d 599, 2013 WL 2404140, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76353, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/reginella-construction-co-v-travelers-casualty-surety-co-of-america-pawd-2013.