[June 19, 2008]

Firm sues Waco over cemetery deal

(Waco Tribune-Herald (TX) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jun. 18--A Lampasas archaeological firm fired from a job excavating human bones for an expansion project behind the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against the city of Waco.

The American Archaeology Group also is asking Judge Jim Meyer through a declaratory judgment motion to determine if the Texas Historical Commission had grounds to cancel its work permit and if, by issuing an identical permit to another company, the commission properly canceled AAG's permit.

The lawsuit, filed in Waco's 170th State District Court, seeks unspecified damages and names the city of Waco as a defendant. It also names the Texas Historical Commission and Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan (PBS&J) as declaratory judgment defendants, or parties with an interest in the dispute.

Tomball attorney Rick A. Eckerson, who represents AAG, said the firm was required by statute to name PBS&J, an Austin firm that was hired in AAG's place, as a declaratory judgment defendant because the latter firm is an interested party.

"While the city of Waco may dispute the facts in the petition, AAG is confident that when everyone is deposed under oath and the truth comes out, AAG will be fully vindicated," Eckerson said.

Waco City Attorney Leah Hayes said through a city spokesman that the city denies all the charges and will vigorously defend the suit. James Bruseth, the Texas Historical Commission official overseeing the project, deferred comment on the lawsuit to the attorney general's office, which represents state agencies. A spokesman with that office didn't return phone calls Tuesday. Messages left at PBS&J in Austin also were not returned.

The lawsuit alleges the city of Waco, which sponsors the museum, had no grounds to terminate a $437,000 contract with AAG to relocate human remains from the site, a former burial ground.

Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum director Byron Johnson said in March that the city chose to "part ways" with the firm over differences of opinion about the archaeological process. He declined additional comment at the time because AAG already had threatened a lawsuit.

The city hired AAG in May 2007 after the city's trenching for a proposed sewer line at the expansion site "desecrated a number of human burials," the suit alleges.

City officials induced AAG to do the work by assuring AAG that the "scope of the project was very narrow and that there would be few, if any, burials," the suit claims.

The city told AAG officials that they wouldn't need more than 30 days to finish the work and promised future work for AAG on projects involving the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, the Knox Hall extension of the Texas Ranger Research Library and the Brazos riverwalk as further inducements to enter into the contract, according to the suit.

Over the next several months, AAG staff located more than 150 burials, uncovered "dense grave patterns with multitiered burials and a number of coffins in almost every area that was investigated," the suit alleges.

Later, the city amended its agreement with AAG and appropriated more money for the job.

At one point, the suit alleges, a former city worker confirmed what AAG suspected, "that the cemetery was actually located directly under the site and in the areas where proposed utilities were to be located," and that the cemetery had not been relocated in 1968, despite a court order then to do so.

The suit also alleges that some utilities for the expansion project already had been installed without archaeological clearance, brutally impacting several graves.

"AAG began to question and investigate whether or not Waco was in full compliance with all applicable federal and/or state laws in light of the fact that it was now clear that the cemetery still existed under the construction site," according to the suit.

The city terminated the agreement "without cause or explanation," the suit alleges.

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