Elizabeth City plumbing contractor James Morris said he expects to be paid this week almost $50,000 owed to him by Basnight Construction for subcontracting work he completed in July 2002. Morris has said he thinks that the political influence of Marc Basnight, president pro tempore of the N.C. Senate and president of Basnight Construction, made it difficult for him to collect the money.
“I am thankful it is about over. I have been hesitant to believe it would work out this way. It seemed everything was stacked against me winning this lawsuit,” he told Carolina Journal. Morris said he will not be able to recover attorney’s fees and is expecting to pay his lawyer about $10,000 for the legal work.
In January 2004 Morris won a judgment against Basnight’s company in Hyde County Superior Court. Basnight Construction appealed that decision. The N.C. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Morris in March of this year.
On Monday, the Hyde County clerk of court received a check from Basnight Construction for $49,592. The amount included $41,776 in principal, $7,526 in interest, and $290 in court costs. Clerk of Court Sharon Sadler told CJ that Morris’s check would be in the mail Tuesday.
Basnight has repeatedly said that he was not involved in the day-to-day operation of the company and that his cousin Jimmy Basnight, who is secretary-treasurer, ran the business. The dispute involved a $5 million contract to install a sewer system in Engelhard, an unincorporated community in Hyde County.
A Virginia company, Peters and White, won the contract and subcontracted a portion of the work to Basnight Construction. Basnight subcontracted another portion of it to Morris’s company, JMM Plumbing and Utilities of Elizabeth City. Marc Basnight was responsible for securing the grants for the state-funded project. “We got the grants through Marc Basnight,” Sanitary District Chairman Tommy Ethridge told CJ earlier this year.
Don Carrington is executive editor of Carolina Journal.