Riffort wins case against Manhattan

October 28, 2008 6:59 AM

Head contractor Manhattan must immediately lift the retention. This was the decision of the summary proceedings. The judge attached a penalty payment of 100.000 guilders a day to the sentence.

At the end of the morning the banner proclaiming that the contractor is exercising his retention right still hung on the hotel building. “I assume they will remove it”, says attorney Madeleine Aanstoot after she has won the court case on behalf of her client.

The case was brought by constituent Riffort, on behalf of project developer MetaCorp that is developing the Renaissance Project at the Rif in Otrobanda. It goes without saying that director Ron Elferink is satisfied. “They were found against and have to pay all the costs. We remain reasonable and give them a half day’s time.”
The three claims which are the reason why Manhattan is exercising the retention were not proven sufficiently. The 5 million and the 7.2 million dollars that Manhattan is claiming for detailing work are not approved by the architect and are now submitted for arbitration. “The architect was given a central role by both parties”, finds the judge in his sentence dated today. His judgment is therefore the guideline till is judged differently in Arbitration. Regarding the 3.7 million dollars that Riffort held back due to the delay, the judge finds that Manhattan is not convincing that they should not be held accountable for the delay.
The request of Riffort to forbid Manhattan to call off retention again, was not honored by the judge. “Riffort goes by the idea that the architect can still give paid tasks.” Should the constituent not fulfill this request, than Manhattan does have the right to resort to these rights.

During last month’s retention period work was able to continue. Riffort demanded this through a judge previously. According to the American contractor the resort is ready to welcome its first guests in the middle of December. This means then that besides the hotel with 240 rooms also the casino, cinema and parking garage must be ready by then. “Otherwise we can’t open”, says Elferink.

In the meantime the project is dealing with more than a year’s delay en there lies also the grounds for the ongoing dispute between the constituent and the contractor. According to Manhattan continuous changes during the building process are at the core of the delay. Besides exceeding of the building period, there is also detailing.
The constituent has a completely different take on the reason for the delays, as well as several other sub-contractors by the way. The cause for the delays, according to them, is Manhattan. In the mutual agreements there are fine clauses included for the exceeding of building time.
Both parties claim millions of one another. The constituent wants to get part of the delay damages back. The contractor wants to get paid for the alleged detailing work. Arbitration must provide a solution in this case. It is expected that this case will drag on for years to come.

The Renaissance Project costs according to contract (maximum) 46.4 million dollars. The architect has retained 3.7 million guilders, in anticipation of the damage claim for the delay.
Manhattan demanded a payment guarantee for a claim of 16 million dollars and showed willingness during the treatment of the court case to submit a guarantee themselves for the same amount in view of the counter claim.

(Source: National newspaper Amigoe)

27 October, 2008

In this case Riffort Village was represented by lawyer Madelaine Aanstoot of HBN Law and Manhattan by Thomas Aardenburg of Soliana Bonaparte Aardenburg.