Doyle Plumbing & Heating Co. v. Board of Education
Case Date: 07/30/1997
Court: 4th District Appellate
Docket No: 4-97-0198
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IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS FOURTH DISTRICT DOYLE PLUMBING & HEATING COMPANY, a ) Appeal from Delaware Corporation, ) Circuit Court of Plaintiff-Appellee, ) Adams County v. (No. 4-97-0198) ) No. 97CH13 THE BOARD OF EDUCATION, QUINCY PUBLIC ) SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 172, ) Defendant-Appellant, ) and ) E.A. WAND PLUMBING & HEATING COMPANY, ) Defendant. ) ----------------------------------------) DOYLE PLUMBING & HEATING COMPANY, ) Plaintiff-Appellee, ) v. (No. 4-97-0274) ) THE BOARD OF EDUCATION, QUINCY PUBLIC ) SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 172, ) Defendant, ) and ) Honorable E.A. WAND PLUMBING & HEATING COMPANY, ) Mark A. Schuering, Defendant-Appellant. ) Judge Presiding. _________________________________________________________________ JUSTICE GARMAN delivered the opinion of the court: Doyle Plumbing and Heating Company (Doyle), based in Jacksonville, Illinois, submitted the lowest bid on a boiler replacement project for the Board of Education, Quincy Public School District No. 172 (Board), but was not awarded the contract. Rather, the Board voted to award the contract to E.A. Wand Plumbing & Heating Company (Wand), a corporation based in Quincy, which bid $3,855 more than Doyle. Doyle sued Wand and the Board, alleging a violation of section 10-20.21 of the School Code (Code) (105 ILCS 5/10-20.21 (West 1994)), a competitive bidding statute. The circuit court of Adams County held for Doyle and ordered the Board to grant it the contract. The Board and Wand appeal. We affirm. I. BACKGROUND In the summer of 1996, the Board authorized a project to replace the boilers in Quincy Junior High School. It hired Architechnics, Inc., to design and coordinate the project. In January 1997, Architechnics solicited bids in the Quincy Herald- Whig (the local Quincy paper). Todd Moore, an engineer with Architechnics, also contacted some firms by phone to inform them of the project because he wanted to be sure to get more than one bid on it. One of the contractors he contacted was Doyle. Doyle bought the bid specifications, attended meetings in Quincy relat- ing to the project, and decided to submit a bid, as did Wand and three other firms. In February, Architechnics opened and tabulated the bids. Doyle's bid of $416,895 was the lowest, followed closely by Wand's bid of $420,750. However, the building committee of the Board recommended that the Board award the contract to Wand, because of the travel time between Jacksonville and Quincy. After he threatened litigation, Ed Doyle was allowed to attend a special meeting of the Board on February 26. He was allowed to make a presentation about Doyle and say why he felt it was qualified to do the work, but was not allowed to discuss technical aspects of the boilers; his request to have engineers present at the meeting was denied. Ed testified Doyle had done similar work, both installation and servicing, for a number of other entities over a geographical area ranging from Maywood and Melrose Park in the Chicago area to Paris, Illinois, and Terre Haute, Indiana, in the east, to Pike County and Macomb in the west and even into Missouri for commissioning services. He had told the Board his response time was "well within industry stan- dards" and service on the boilers was "so easily handled it means nothing to take care of this job." He also noted that although he "cannot put an 18,000[-]pound boiler in [his] truck," he could and did take replacement scanners, programmers, pressure controllers--"the life's breath of that system"--with him when he made service calls. He felt Doyle had the ability to successfully complete the project and service the boilers once installed. He did tell the Board it could realistically take as long as 2 |