PORTLAND, Maine — The former manager of the Great Northern Paper mill has asked the state’s top court to vacate part of a $9.2 million award to the shuttered mill’s natural gas supplier.
Cate Street Capital last week filed an appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, asking the court to nix a $1.5 million of the arbitration award “because the arbitrator strayed from the plain language of the document for which the parties bargained.”
Arbitrator Peter DeTroy’s decision was unsealed in May, granting the $9.2 million award to the Massachusetts-based Xpress Natural Gas under its contract to supply the East Millinocket mill with natural gas delivered by truck.
In XNG’s initial statement of claims to the arbitrator, the company said the mill began accepting natural gas shipments in late 2013. When prices shot up 600 percent in December, Cate Street declined to pay for the gas and sought to back out.
Cate Street attorney Brian Champion wrote during arbitration that the price spike made it impractical for the company to satisfy its gas purchasing agreement and provided grounds to end the deal.
Cate Street appealed the $1.5 million portion of the award to the Maine Superior Court earlier this year and lost. The company’s appeal filed last week seeks to vacate that ruling.
Timothy Norton, the attorney for XNG, wrote in an email that he could not disclose whether Cate Street or its affiliates had paid any portion of the arbitration award, citing a confidentiality agreement in the contract.
Norton said a response to Cate Street’s appeal is due in December.