York County government has lost its appeal of a court decision regarding a database provided by a vendor. TAMMY WELLS/Journal Tribune
ALFRED — York County government and the York County Registry of Deeds have lost an appeal of a court decision in a dispute over a data contract.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court rendered its decision on Thursday, affirming the original judgment handed up by the York County Superior Court in favor of PropertyInfo Corporation Inc. in the civil complaint.
York County filed a complaint in December 2016 against PropertyInfo Corporation alleging breach of contract and unjust enrichment.
The lower court ruled that the statute of limitations had expired, and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, in affirming that decision, agreed.
The county had contracted with Landata, the predecessor to PropertyInfo Corporation on Dec. 3, 2003, for Landata to digitize and make available to the Registry of Deeds and the public an indexed collection of registry documents.
On May 2, 2005, York County and Landata entered into an equipment and software contract supplement by which Landata agreed to provide, among other services, an index of deeds data and images from 1940 to 1965. According to the high court’s decision, York County paid Landata $500,987.50 on Dec. 7, 2006, which included $404,878.75 for services related to the 1940-1965 supplement.
The two parties exchanged email for three months , with York County noting data was missing from the 1940 to 1965 index.
In 2008, PropertyInfo. Corporation succeeded Landata and assumed their contract obligations.
A new database for the 1940 to 1965 plan was delivered in 2011, but it still had problems. In 2015 and 2016, PropertyInfo Corporation reviewed the 1940-1965 project, which identified errors concerning mortgages and mortgage releases as well as other types of errors.
PropertyInfo delivered a new index in the summer of 2016. York County raised numerous issues with the 2016 database, which PropertyInfo attempted to remedy, but York County remained dissatisfied with PropertyInfo’s performance of the indexing contract, according to the decision.
The county’s civil complaint was filed 10 years after the database was originally delivered to York County and the county had paid PropertyInfo’s predecessor.
The county contended that PropertyInfo failed to complete performance of a service contract that had not expired and that the cause of action does not accrue until completion of the contract. The county argued that because PropertyInfo continued to make corrections to the database until the filing of suit in 2016, there had been and is a “continuing” breach of contract.
The York County Superior Court entered a summary judgment in favor of PropertyInfo based on its conclusion that the statute of limitations had expired on each of York County’s claims.
“Even if we were to bless the ‘continuing’ breach doctrine, the doctrine would not apply to the claim for breach of contract at issue here, where a material breach of a service contract occurred when the defective database was delivered,” the justices wrote in their decision.
— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 780-9016 or twells@journaltribune.com.
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