Sometimes you have to wonder about the economics of suing a vendor…and ask the question of whether any award you win will just come back to bite you in the wallet later on.
From the Courant:
The 70 municipalities that received $27 million last month in a lawsuit against the state trash authority could wind up paying back more than four times that amount because of the closing of the agency’s landfill in Hartford.
Officials for the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority estimate it will cost $115 million to close the landfill along I-91 and ship the towns’ waste to other sites through 2012, when its agreement with the towns expires.
Paul Nonnenmacher, an authority spokesman, said the landfill will reach its capacity by the end of the year and CRRA will no longer be able to use it for depositing ash from its Hartford trash-to-energy plant. He said the waste probably would be shipped to other states.[...]
Nonnenmacher said the $150 million recovered so far from [lawsuits in the aftermath of Enron's collapse] has been used to benefit the towns and help keep their tipping fee low. The authority also hoped to use some of the $150 million to pay for the landfill closure.