NEW Cooperative ordered to pay nearly $4 million in civil trial

NEW Cooperative was recently ordered to pay nearly $4 million to a Red Oak contractor.
Brett Ryan, attorney with Watson & Ryan PLC of Council Bluffs said the civil case between his client, the plaintiff, Gohlinghorst Excavation, and the defendant, NEW Cooperative, stemmed from unpaid cleanup work Gohlinghorst did for NEW Cooperative, unrelated to the spill that killed hundreds of thousands of fish in the East Nishnabotna River in 2024.
“Gohlinghorst Excavation was hired by NEW Cooperative for a spill that happened a few months before the East Nishnabotna spill. This incident occured on Dec. 2, 2023. There was an accident on a bridge, and as a result, a large quantity of diesel and fertilizer went into the Tarkio River, and Gohlinghorst was hired by New Cooperative for the clean-up,” Ryan explained. “Gohlinghorst worked around 78 days on the clean-up, and they probably averaged at least 16 hours a day and possibly more than that in terms of how many hours they were out there with crews of between two or three and up to 10 people cleaning this spill up, pursuant to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ specifications.”
According to Ryan, when they got to the end of the project, NEW Cooperative declined to pay the bill, leading to the civil case, which has been a long time coming to fruition.
“We had a hearing more than a year ago at this point where we got summary judgment on the issue of ‘did they breach the contract.’” That was pretty straightforward. Gohlinghorst did the work, it met all the DNR requirements, and Gohlinghorst did whatever they were asked to do. NEW Cooperative felt that the bill was too much and that they needed to reach a reasonable sum,” advised Ryan. Golinghorst ended up submitting two different bills. The first bill was the preliminary bill for around $2.7 million. New Cooperative asked Gohlinghorst to itemize the bill, and was told if they did so, the bill would contain additional items if they went back through the logs and billed for everything and stated the bill was going to be higher. They did itemize, however, and the final bill came in at $4,005,000.”
On Nov. 18, a jury trial took place in the Iowa District Court in Montgomery County. Jury deliberations took place the next day, on Nov. 19, and lasted just short of two hours.
“We had a jury trial in Red Oak where a group of eight members of the community determined what the amount of damages were for breaching this contract. The jury looked at the suit and they awarded $3,968,000 to my client, Gohlinghorst Excavation. While that was a little less than the final bill that was submitted we didn’t we didn’t ask them specifically for that amount,” stated Ryan. “We gave the jury instructions that because liability had already been established, they had one question, and that was what do you award Gohlinghorst and that was the number they put down. We did have to exclude a few jurors for cause, which meant they convinced the judge that they were not going to be able to fairly hear this case. There were, I think, two or three jurors that were upset about the DNR settlement with the fish kill and that it didn’t hold NEW Cooperative responsible enough and they basically said they didn’t think they could be fair to NEW Cooperative because of that.”
Ryan said he’d seen breach of contract cases that ended up in orders in the tens of millions, but this suit was vastly different.
“I would certainly think for something of this nature that it was the correct amount. Gohlinghorst was basically asking to be paid what it was owed for the work and for the use of their equipment in doing the work. It’s not the type of civil case where, say somebody was driving drunk and they hit a person and there were all kinds of bills, pain and suffering and future disability. In those instances, there would be a lot more opinions on whether or not this is a big verdict or a small verdict. This was simply a case of employee cost and equipment cost and the unpaid invoice,” commented Ryan.
As part of the order, the awarded amount has a post-judgment interest rate of 5.65% that will be added if the balance is not paid in full in a reasonable amount of time.
“It’s a statutory provision. The judge basically gets that number based on the interest rates and that 5.65% interest starts as of the day of the judgment. If NEW Cooperative were to do something such as file an appeal, the interest would run on that during dependency of the appeal, or if they make payment 30 days after the date of the ruling, which is pretty standard,” Ryan said.  “There’s kind of a 30-day window where no one’s going to be chomping at the bit, especially for something this size. No one is expecting the full balance payment the day after tomorrow so whatever time passes between the judgment date of Nov. 19 and the payment, the interest would be applied on that.  It’s no different than any other interest rate on any other order being awarded.”
Ryan said they had specific reasons for choosing a jury trial rather than an order directly from the judge.
“When you go to a jury trial, you get the result much faster. A judge will take something under consideration and on a larger case like this, even though it was parsed down, the judge, in the best case scenario, would take it under consideration and get you a ruling in 30 to 60 days, whereas with a jury, once you give it to them, they’re going to sit in the courthouse until they reach a resolution and, like in our case, we were able to get the jury’s verdict the same day they went into deliberations,” advised Ryan.
Another factor, Ryan said, was giving people in the community a chance to take part.
“Quite frankly, the people in the jury are the folks that live in the community and have been affected by the environmental spills. We felt that the co-op should go in front of the people in the community and explain why they shouldn’t pay the contractor to clean up their mess,” Ryan stated.
Now that the civil case is all said and done, Ryan said he and his clients are very satisfied with the outcome.
“I think the jury did an excellent job. This wasn’t a case where my client was asking for millions in pain and suffering, they simply wanted to be paid the money they had earned for their work,” Ryan commented. “I commend both the judge and opposing counsel. I think they both did a very good job and I express my appreciation to the jury for their service.”
At this point, Ryan doesn’t suspect that the judgment will be appealed by NEW Cooperative.
“Obviously, it’s not my decision to make, but when you have a situation where liabilities are already established and via a summary judgment motion, as well as the breach of the contract already being established, it’s hard to go up and challenge on what the award was. As a matter of law, I don’t think they would have a good appeal point. On appeal you have to say somebody screwed up somewhere along the way, and it’s almost got to be an issue of law and there’s really not any good issues that they could bring up. The amount of damage is basically a factual question not a legal question and those on appeal are almost impossible to win,” Ryan said.
The Red Oak Express reached out to NEW Cooperative and they declined to comment.