It was pitched as a win for all involved: the 400 metal benches that FUEL Outdoor of Toledo, LLC, would install at bus stops across the city would be better maintained than the wooden ones provided by another vendor, and their advertising would generate revenue for both the city and the company.
But the contract the Toledo City Council authorized with the Ponte Vedra, Fla.-based company was only a few years old when the city law department sent a letter to Patrick Mency, the company’s president, notifying him it was being terminated and that his company had 30 days to remove any benches and wastebaskets that had been installed by that time.
A U.S. District Court jury on Tuesday began hearing the trial of a breach-of-contract lawsuit FUEL filed Aug. 23, 2023, that accuses the city of breaking the contract in contravention of its terms and seeking damages equivalent to its calculation of the net income it would have made from the benches’ advertising through 2040.
Mr. Mency, who was under cross-examination by a city lawyer when Judge Jack Zouhary adjourned the trial’s first day, repeatedly said that the city’s March 9, 2023, termination letter made no mention of any ways in which FUEL had failed to fulfill its contractual obligations.