Becket, Blandford headed to court in dispute with tree removal company

BECKET -- Two towns and a tree-removal company are headed to trial in a legal battle over cleanup costs from a December 2008 ice storm.

Becket and Blandford have filed counterclaim suits in Superior Court against BRD LLC, the tree-removal company that sued them individually in 2012, alleging they weren't paid or paid in full for clearing up tree debris created by the storm.

The trial between Becket and BRD is scheduled for March 2, 2015, according to records from Hampden Superior Court in which the case will be heard. No trial date has yet been set for Blandford's case, which will be heard by the same jury after a judge approved the consolidation of the cases in February.

Last August, BRD LLC of Suffield, Conn., sued Becket, claiming the town had only paid $263,700 of its $875,218 bill for clearing and removing debris like limbs and trees. BRD also sued Blandford for not paying its cleanup bill.

Both towns hired BRD to perform debris removal in the spring of 2009. The costs were to be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but only for work directly related to the storm cleanup and documented to FEMA specifications.

In its suit, BRD claims the company performed the work, but was not paid or paid in full.

In lawsuits of their own, the towns claim that BRD not only didn't perform and document the work to the specifications required, but also instructed the towns not to pay the bills because the company hadn't properly documented its work.

The towns allege BRD worked beyond the parameters of its work order (such as cutting down healthy trees and ones on private property), didn't properly document the work it did, and sold town-owned trees to Moosehead Harvesting Inc., which is owned by the wife of BRD principal Robert Reed and the mother of the company's other principal, Robert Reed Jr., for profit.

The towns also allege its trees have either been sold or could be personally used by one or more of BRD's employees.

Despite BRD's objections, Judge Richard Carey in February 2013, citing "virtually identical facts and involve similar legal claims" approved a request to consolidate the cases being overseen by Kopelman & Paige, which is representing both towns.

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Becket, Blandford headed to court in dispute with tree removal company