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A settlement agreement has received preliminary approval in a class action lawsuit over an Interstate 12 median wall that may have worsened flooding in East Baton Rouge and Livingston parishes during the historic 2016 flood.
The lawsuit was filed in January 2017 by a group of plaintiffs that includes the cities of Denham Springs and Walker. The defendants named in the lawsuit include the Department of Transportation and Development and a handful of construction and engineering firms.
The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants failed to perform hydrologic testing and modeling prior to designing and installing the 5-foot concrete median crash barrier along a 19-mile stretch of I-12 as part of a larger interstate widening project. Those failures allegedly caused floodwaters to back up, increasing the amount of water that flooded nearby homes and businesses.
The plaintiffs alleged that tens of thousands of people were harmed by the defendants’ negligence, while the defendants contended that the 2016 flood was an “act of God” that could not have been prepared for and that the median wall complied with applicable standards.
After spending more than five years in discovery, the parties have now concluded that an injunctive relief settlement is the “most practical and efficient solution for class relief,” according to documents filed in state court late last week.
That settlement will see $21,350,000 paid into a fund to be set up and administered by DOTD to be used for revisions to the median wall as well as other flood relief measures. DOTD will report to the court and the parties involved every year for five years regarding the results of its work. The settlement does not seek actual damages for individuals.
The defendants participating in the settlement are DOTD, ABMB Engineers Inc. (now known as Stantec Consulting Services Inc.), Evans-Graves Engineers Inc., Gilchrist Construction Co. LLC, James Construction Group LLC and Volkert Inc. GEC Inc., another of the defendants named in the lawsuit, is not participating in the settlement and remains a viable defendant.
