On Friday Worcester City Manager sat down with Spectrum News 1 to discuss the city’s path forward now that all appeals in their case versus Holden have been exhausted. In 2022 a jury found that Worcester had overcharged the town of Holden for sewer services. In 2023 a judge ordered Worcester to pay Holden over $26 million plus interest. The total award to Holden is now over $35 million.
When asked where things currently stand City Manager Eric Batista said, “Right now, basically, we have continued conversations with Holden in trying to find a resolution to the matter. Holden has pursued a process in which they have requested the courts to execute this judgment. And so our hope is that we can, as part of the conversations and communications with the town of Holden, our hope is that we can come to a resolution sooner rather than later because the interest continues to accrue as part of this process.” Batista continued, “I think legally we wanted to explore all of our options and extend our options, which was appeal to the Appellate Court and appeal to the Supreme Court. We felt strongly that we had a case at the moment because we’ve never had a contract with Holden. Our contract was directly with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
According to Christopher Petrini, attorney for the town of Holden in this case there have been two conversations between him and the Worcester City Solicitor. Petrini added that Worcester offered Holden “$5 million to start to pay up and that was rejected by Holden.”…