An arbitration panel has awarded a disgruntled JD
Edwards customer more than $1.8m for a botched implementation of
the software maker's OneWorld enterprise resource planning
suite.
An American Arbitration Association panel in New Orleans found in
favour of manufacturer Evans Industries, ending a saga that began
in 1999, when the company launched an ERP initiative around JD
Edwards' applications.
Evans' lead attorney, John Landis of the New Orleans law firm
Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann, said he could not discuss the
details of the arbitration board's judgment but confirmed the award
and the dollar amount.
However, the basic allegations in the arbitration were detailed
in a lawsuit filed in September 2000 against JD Edwards, now a part
of PeopleSoft, and its partner IBM. The suit alleged that OneWorld
was "defective and failed to operate and function as promised by
the defendants".
The OneWorld system had originally been expected to go live on
Digital Equipment hardware in September 1999, with IBM providing
the installation and configuration services. But a year later, the
system still was not working.
As a result, Evans charged that JD Edwards "has failed and
refused to fulfill its obligations under its agreements", and with
IBM failed to install the OneWorld software "such that it is
operational". Attempts to install subsequent releases of the
OneWorld software to correct problems with the initial version also
failed.
That prompted the company to sue for breach of contract, fraud
and negligence, among other charges, and it sought to recover
several million dollars. The suit against JD Edwards went into
arbitration, as have a number of other similar legal actions
against the software maker.
Although the JD Edwards suit has now been resolved through
arbitration, a separate case against IBM remains pending in federal
court in New Orleans, said Landis.
Marc L Songini writes for
Computerworld