PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) — After the entire court system of Oregon moved its public records online with software from a private vendor, the county government in Portland hired the same company, Tyler Technologies, to upgrade its criminal case management system. But that initiative hit a $1 million snag that stalled the project and has now sparked a federal lawsuit.
Tyler Technologies, a rapidly growing company based in Plano, Texas, is raking in the public’s dollars, with a $13 billion market cap and over $1 billion in revenue last year, according to the company’s 2019 annual report. Going back almost a decade ago, the company and the Oregon courts agreed in 2011 to set up an electronic filing, storage and retrieval system for a projected price of $31 million.
Based on that contract, the Oregon Judicial Department first put an electronic system in place in Yamhill County Circuit Court in 2012. Administrators added three more small county courts before launching courts in groups of five every few months. As each county went live, they switched over to Tyler’s support team for maintenance and help, and to implement additional features. The state’s three largest counties — Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas — implemented the new system one at a time. Mandatory e-filing followed on Dec. 1, 2014.
In a separate deal in August of 2016, Multnomah County hired Tyler to replace the district attorney’s aging criminal case management system with Odyssey software from Tyler. The county agreed to pay $1.3 million for over 8,000 hours of professional services, $249,000 in software licensing fees and $52,000 for the first annual maintenance fee, according to county records. But after a series of evidently acrimonious negotiations with the Portland area’s county government, Tyler sued Multnomah County in federal court this week. The suit claims the county refused to pay for customized features in a software upgrade to its prosecutorial records system.
Tyler says the county initially agreed to buy a ready-made program called “Odyssey Attorney Manager,” that Tyler refers to as a “commercial off-the-shelf” or “COTS” product — which Tyler says are cheaper than its custom-made software programs.Tyler says in the complaint that it uses a standardized system that it adjusts for each client, rather than creating entirely custom software for every client, whether it’s for a court, a school district or a prison.
But the county repeatedly asked for additional functions that nearly doubled custom development work and increased the price by almost half a million dollars, Tyler claims. At the same time, Multnomah County allegedly told Tyler it didn’t have the staff to complete its own work for the implementation scheduled for April 2018. So Tyler says it agreed to do the work the county was supposed to do.
Records provided by Multnomah County to Courthouse News show the county agreeing in August 2016 to an initial $1.3 million deal, as the lawsuit claims. And the county signed amendments and subsequent service agreements in 2017, 2018 and 2019, agreeing to a series of additional fees for customized software features beyond the scope of the original plan. Those additional fees total over $1 million.
Tyler invoiced the county in March 2019 in preparation for the project’s final steps. Days later, the county sent a letter to Tyler “vaguely alleging that Tyler had breached the agreement” and claiming that the steps Tyler had taken so far “were not complete,” according to the complaint. The county did not provide its correspondence with Tyler by press time.
Tyler alleges a breach of contract based on the county’s refusal to make a partial payment. “The agreement expressly provides for payment of each part and piece along the way, not for payment only at the completion of the project,” the lawsuit states.