DOTHAN, Ala. – Talks with an insurance company over a damaged guardrail have reached an impasse and the Dale County Commission attorneys recommend moving forward with a lawsuit.
At the Dale County Commission meeting April 13 Dale County Attorneys Henry Steagall and Matthew Simechak gave a status update about an incident that occurred in May 2020 involving a logging company truck driving over a bridge on County Road 33.
Dale County Engineer Derek Brewer said that the truck had equipment sticking over the edge of the trailer which damaged the guard rail on one side of the bridge.
Brewer said that the county has an agreement with the Alabama Department of Transportation concerning bridges that were “grandfathered in” when ALDOT guard rail standards changed. A “grandfather clause” is a provision in which a former mandate continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases.
“We have an agreement that we adopted years ago with ALDOT that if something is damaged on one of the ‘grandfathered in bridges,’ we would bring any repairs/replacements up to current standards,” Brewer said. “Guard rail standards change about every five years.”
Steagall said that the cost to repair one guard rail is $30,000 but that in accordance with the county’s agreement with ALDOT, both guardrails need to be replaced.
The logging company’s insurance company has been given copies of the Dale County agreement with ALDOT but does not appear to understand why they are being asked to replace both guard rails, Simechak told commissioners.
“We’ve been handed around from one claims specialist to another,” Simechak said. “With the one that we most recently ended up with, we went back and forth on some of the policies explaining why we needed both guard rails fixed. We gave them the documents showing that we were ‘grandfathered in,’” he said.
“In January we were notified that the claim had been approved and they wanted the address to send the check to,” said Simechak. “So we gave them the commission’s address to send the check to and when we didn’t receive it, we reached out to them—several times.
“In March we were finally given the answer back that they (the insurance company) did not understand why they have to pay for both guard rails,” he added. “The last communication we had they were still trying to figure out why they had to pay for both sides of the guard rail.”
“We were told the check was in the mail but somewhere higher up the ladder somebody put a hold on it and now we can’t even get a phone call returned,” Steagall said. “We’re at a stalemate so we just need the commission to authorize this lawsuit.
“We’re going to make one last effort and we’re going to send them a copy of the minutes (of the commission decision to authorize litigation) so they know we are ready to go,” Steagall said. “Hopefully we’ll get it settled but if not we need to go forward.”
Simechak agreed with Steagall’s recommendation. “We recently sent another letter saying that if they don’t pay the claim we are going to seek legal action,” he told the commissioners. “I would like to use your approval as one last ditch effort to get them to pay.”
The next meeting of the Dale County Commission is Tuesday, April 27, in the Dale County Government Building. A work session begins at 10 a.m. and is followed immediately by a voting meeting. Both meetings are open to the public.
