Lawsuit Tops $115,000 in Mold Case
For something that Romeo Community Schools doesn’t concede to be a legitimate health concern, the legal stakes keep escalating.
Wonder Makers Environmental Inc., a Kalamazoo-based air quality and environmental testing firm that inspected Washington Elementary School, filed a lawsuit Monday seeking damages above $115,000 from the Romeo district and several other defendants.
At issue are mold and other potential health hazards found at the school last May, plus district officials’ allegedly “misleading” claims afterward that the problems were “overstated.”
“These statements . . . put (Wonder Makers) in false light, (and) the publication of these remarks has resulted in damages to (its) reputation in the community and economic loss,” documents in the lawsuit state.
Wonder Makers and its CEO, Michael Pinto, together claim breach of contract, unjust enrichment, defamation and false light by the district, superintendent John Kingsnorth, school board trustee Linda Southby, attorney Frank Andrews, and several other private companies with some connection to the mold and cleanup issue.
“The entire problem the school is having is because it ignored these findings and tried to handle it on the cheap,” said Wonder Makers attorney Norman A. Yatooma. “A serious problem eventually became an astronomical one.”
The dispute centers around the alleged discovery of some toxic molds – black mold was named as one possible contaminant – and the subsequent cleaning efforts displacing hundreds of students.
Workers uncovered toxic mold this summer during a routine job to replace ceiling tiles in the school. The board voted in August to close the school for cleanup purposes, and students were farmed out to other elementaries and a part of Romeo High School.
“Because they’re claiming something doesn’t mean their claim is true,” Kingsnorth said. “It’s like any disagreement between tow parties; we each have our own reasonings.”
Approximately 265 students from grade 3-5 returned to the school in January, and Kingsnorth said a few more in kindergarten and first grades have returned since. Officials expect the entire Washington student body to return to the school building next week.
Pinto and Wonder Makers also claim the district never paid the firm for its air quality testing and remediation plans, totaling $90,125. Kingsnorth confirmed there was an unpaid balance but said he thought it was somewhere around $75,000.
“When this all comes out, there will be legitimate reasons we’ve felt they should not be paid,” Kingsnorth said, but he would not elaborate.
The lawsuit seeks $25,000 on each of the defamation claims, plus the $90,125 which Wonder Makers says it had lowered to $74,339 “as a courtesy to Romeo” earlier in the dispute.
Romeo Community Schools also faces a lawsuit from Statewide Disaster Restoration Inc., a remediation contracting firm hired to clean up mold and other contaminants at Washington, demanding $522,600 plus costs and attorney fees.
