On August 30, Wolfeboro filed their Amended Complaint to include allegations of fraud and a request for treble damages under NH RSA 358-A.  Yesterday, WP filed their  Response to the Amended Complaint.

No big surprises here.  Like the amended complaint, it’s substantially the same as the original except for the inclusion of the new allegations of fraud and fraudulent misrepresentation.  WP denies these allegations, paragraph by paragraph, in much the same manner as the answer to the original complaint.  However, unlike the original answer, they now make the claim that Dave Ford overloaded the RIB during start-up, in deliberate disregard of WPs recommendation to keep it to 600,000 gallons per day.  They further allege that the breakouts that occurred as a result of that over-loading were predicted by the model and validate the accuracy of the model.

So it looks like, beyond the boilerplate procedural stuff like venue and statute of limitations, they intend to place the blame squarely on Wolfeboro for breaking the thing during the first month of operation.

No way I see the town budgeting another half-million for a trial next year, but a part of me hopes it goes there.  I’ll be in the front row.