Yukon wants $8.5M, contractor claims zero responsibility in appeals over cracked Whitehorse airport apron case

The Yukon Court of Appeal heard arguments this week over decisions that doled out liability and damages over the 2014 replacement of the Whitehorse airport's concrete apron, which began cracking shortly after it was finished. 

Lawyers for contractor Norcope Enterprises Ltd., project bond-holder Intact Insurance Company, and the Yukon government spent Monday and Tuesday arguing that their respective parties held zero responsibility for what happened. 

Norcope and Intact Insurance say they don't owe the government anything, while the government argues Norcope owes it more than three-and-a-half times the money originally awarded.

The Yukon government originally took Norcope to court in 2017, about three years after the company was awarded a multi-million dollar contract to replace the concrete apron —  the area where planes park, also informally known as the tarmac — at the Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport. 

The concrete panels began cracking the same year.

The government also sued Intact Insurance to recover the more than $1.78-million bond on the project. 

Norcope quickly responded with a counter-lawsuit, and the case was the subject of a five-week-long trial. 

Yukon Supreme Court deputy Justice Adele Kent ruled last year that the government, Norcope and subcontractor Tetra Tech, which was doing quality control and assurance for both sides, all held different levels of responsibility for the cracking.

In her decision, Kent wrote that the government didn't supervise the project closely enough, while Norcope had poor construction practices and Tetra Tech didn't provide adequate quality control and also provided a bad concrete mix. 

The Yukon government settled with Tetra Tech outside of court. Kent ordered Norcope to pay the government more than $2.3 million for its part in the project going sideways, and in a follow-up decision, ruled that Intact Insurance was jointly liable and had to pay out the bond.

The government, Norcope and Intact Insurance all appealed. 

In court Monday, Norcope's lawyer, James Tucker, acknowledged there was deficient work that caused a handful of the approximately 250 concrete panels in the apron to crack. However, he said it wasn't fair to infer that bad concrete and workmanship was present across the entire apron and that it was the reason other panels cracked too.

The judge didn't fairly consider if frost heaves were behind the damage, he said, which Norcope would not have been liable for. 

Tucker also took issue with Kent relying on a Tetra Tech report about the cracking and testimony from the report's author, arguing that evidence shouldn't have been admitted at all.