L.A. Pursues Lawsuit Over New Vessel’s Soaring Cost : Contracts: Ship’s builder denies claims in city suit over the 85-foot oceanographic ship that cost more than three times its original estimate of $1.5 million.

The city of Los Angeles has sued the designer and builder of a $5.7-million oceanographic vessel that took five years to complete and only recently began environmental monitoring for the city in Santa Monica Bay.

The lawsuit, filed last month in San Diego Superior Court, alleges negligence and breach of contract by the ship’s designer and its builder. The suit names Rados International Corp. of San Pedro as the designer and Knight and Carver Custom Yachts of San Diego as the builder.

In February, The Times reported that the 85-foot vessel, La Mer, had cost Los Angeles more than three times its original estimate of $1.5 million. The total cost included $1.2 million to Rados International--a company owned by then-Harbor Commissioner Robert Rados Sr. That amount alone exceeded the entire cost of new oceanographic vessels built for the county’s sanitation districts, the city of San Diego and the state Department of Fish and Game.

The ship was commissioned by the city Bureau of Sanitation to replace an older vessel used for water sampling and other environmental testing in the bay. Sanitation officials argued that new Environmental Protection Agency regulations required the city to conduct modern tests that were beyond the scope of its smaller, 1967 vessel.

City officials ultimately acknowledged that the La Mer had been plagued by delays and soaring costs, but put the blame for those problems on Rados International and Knight and Carver. Those claims were denied by the companies, where officials said their work was authorized--and sometimes ordered--by the Bureau of Sanitation and the Board of Public Works.

In its lawsuit, the city summarizes the troubled five-year history of the vessel, dating to Sept. 26, 1986, when Rados International was awarded a design contract by the Board of Public Works. That contract, the lawsuit notes, was later changed to also pay Rados International as a consultant to evaluate the qualifications of boat builders and oversee the La Mer’s construction.

The lawsuit alleges that Rados International “negligently and carelessly” designed the vessel, driving up its construction costs and forcing repairs to make the ship seaworthy. The company is also accused of failing to ensure the ship’s “good and workmanlike” construction by Knight and Carver, allowing that firm to build a vessel that was flawed and unsafe when it was delivered to the city last August.

Knight and Carver not only built a defective vessel, the suit alleges, but breached its warranty with the city by failing to make repairs under its contract.

To date, those unspecified repairs have cost Los Angeles about $400,000, city officials have said. The repairs were made at a San Pedro boatyard selected by the city and owned by Rados’ nephew.

Robert Rados Sr. could not be reached for comment about the lawsuit and his son, Robert Rados Jr., president of the family-owned business, declined comment. The company’s Long Beach attorney, Joseph Mirkovich, did not return phone calls Thursday.

But Meri Knight, president of Knight and Carver, and San Diego attorney Sampson Brown, denied the city’s claims of shoddy work on the La Mer and breach of warranty by the San Diego yacht-building firm.

They contend Knight and Carver’s work on the La Mer met all of the city’s specifications and that the company was never told of alleged problems with the vessel. Had the city reported specific problems, they said, the La Mer would have been repaired at no cost, in accordance with Knight and Carver’s contract.

“The interesting thing is that they (city officials) never brought the boat back (for repairs) under the warranty. . . . What they have done is go ahead and make corrections for alleged problems” and then blame the problems on Knight and Carver, Brown said.

“It’s kind of like buying a car . . . deciding you want to make some changes to it, and then taking it back to the dealer and saying, ‘You should pay for this,’ ” Brown said.

Deputy City Atty. Lauren Arky, who filed the lawsuit against the companies, declined comment on its allegations.

The lawsuit was filed in San Diego because Knight and Carver previously sued the city in San Diego to collect its final payment of $212,000 for building the ship.

No trial date has been set for the case, which was recently moved to Los Angeles at the city’s request.