Supreme Court rules against DOT

LADSON — The state highway department broke the law four years ago when it awarded a road contract in Charleston County without soliciting bids, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

Ed Sloan, a citizen watchdog from Greenville, alleged in a lawsuit that the state Department of Transportation shouldn't have used an emergency exemption to hire a contractor to finish widening a five-mile stretch of Ladson Road.

The project had been a headache for residents because the first contractor, Eagle Construction of Newberry, twice missed completion deadlines before the department fired them.

Sloan alleged no emergency existed that justified the department's hiring a new company, Sanders Brothers, to finish the project without soliciting bids.

"Even though it was a political crisis and a P.R. fiasco, it was not a case of an emergency," said Jim Carpenter, Sloan's attorney.

Carpenter argued that the state should have either forced Eagle's bonding company to finish the project or solicited bids that might have generated a lower cost.

Instead, the department agreed to a nearly $8 million contract with Sanders although approximately $5 to $6 million remained unpaid on the project, the ruling states.

The Supreme Court sided with Sloan, reversing and remanding an earlier trial court decision.

Read more details in Tuesday's editions of The Post and Courier.