Both Messrs Clause Samples

Both Messrs. Bowman and Fisher admitted that the site was at least partly flooded during their brief visit, see id. at 87:18–88:4; Tr. at 552:23–553:7 (Bowman referring to the site as “inaccessible” due to flooding), and Mr. Fisher stated that the Lost Lake borings might have been too shallow to allow plaintiff to assess the conditions at Lost Lake, JX 98A (Fisher Dep.) at 85:24–86:3 (“The visual, what we could see from the surface [at Lost Lake], appeared to match some of the core borings that were provided in the plans and specs, although, as I recall, they were all fairly shallow, the borings that we were looking at.”). Notwithstanding these circumstances, Messrs. Fisher and Bowman did not extend their site investigation, nor did they conduct more than a cursory visual inspection of the site. E.g., JX 98A (Fisher Dep.) at 85:6-13, 16–19. The court does not believe that the plaintiff acted as a reasonably prudent contractor to determine the conditions at Lost Lake prior to making its bid. Moreover, there is no evidence whatsoever that plaintiff relied on any representation in the Contract about the subsurface materials at Lost Lake that later proved to be erroneous. In addition, some doubt is cast on plaintiff’s claim that the levees could not be constructed as a result of soft foundations by the fact that after the Upper Bayou Project, GLDD and its subcontractor, Affolter Contracting, completed the levee construction at Lost Lake and hydraulically constructed North Levee to a height of no less than +30 feet MLT and, in some areas, as high as +36 feet MLT. See Tr. at 1623:13–1625:11 (Affolter); id. at 3533:22–3536:12 (Van Norman, Construction Manager for GLDD).