KS Supreme Court tackles 15-year feud on flawed installation of glass panels at KU football stadium

LAWRENCE — The Jayhawks are winless on the football field in 2020, but frustration borne of that folly cannot compete with the 15-year competition to assign financial responsibility for life-threatening mistakes with installation of the glass-and-metal shroud on Memorial Stadium’s press box.

This extraordinary legal controversy fostering a pile of Johnson County District Court rulings, three Kansas Court of Appeals decisions and a new Kansas Supreme Court opinion has been characterized as the state’s “Odyssean litigation” for its sheer longevity and eventful turn of the screw.

Shortcomings with the facade installed in 1999 weren’t discovered until 2004 during KU’s investigation of water leaks. That’s when it became apparent a subcontractor used the wrong set of shop plans and affixed the transparent wall with improper attachments. The deficient anchors, district court records show, created a “hazard of certain casualty” if the wall system failed.

“The structural integrity of the press box itself was in peril,” said Danne Webb, an attorney representing general contractor Walton Construction Co., formerly headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri.

Read more: https://kansasreflector.com/2020/11/27/supreme-court-tackles-15-year-feud-on-flawed-installation-of-glass-panels-at-ku-football-stadium/


The Kansas Supreme Court is attempting to referee an end to 15 years of litigation from the fumbled installation of glass panels on the press box and luxury suites at Memorial Stadium at the University of Kansas. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)