A New Jersey based contractor represented by Construction Group Co-Chair Mitchell Taraschi can move ahead with construction work for the Elmwood Park School District Board of Education as the result of a New Jersey Appellate Division ruling holding that an unsuccessful bidder on the project submitted an ineffectual bid bond.
The New Jersey Appellate Division issued the holding in the context of determining whether to grant an emergent stay application filed by the unsuccessful bidder, The Bennett Company, Inc., after a trial court sided with Connell Foley’s client, the New Jersey-based Grove Contracting, LLC. Both the trial court and the Appellate Division held that the Board of Ed had not acted “arbitrarily, capriciously, or unreasonably” when it rejected Bennett’s bid based on two defects with its bid bond: an impermissible penal sum limitation and a failure to specify the number of days that Bennett had to enter into the contract and provide a performance bond after the Board awarded the contract.
Finding that Bennett’s bid bond was ineffectual because it did not comply with the requirements of either the relevant statute or bid specifications, the Appellate Division held that Bennett had failed to “make a preliminary showing of a reasonable probability of ultimate success on the merits,” and that the “State’s business and the public interest in the State’s contractual endeavors should not be unreasonably delayed while an unsuccessful bidder seeks another level of review.”
THE BENNETT COMPANY, INC. V. ELMWOOD PARK SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD OF EDUCATION, GROVE CONTRACTING, LLC AND VANAS CONSTRUCTION CO., INC.
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