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The same business that filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the city of North Augusta – and then sued the city last summer over its delayed response to that request – is again filing a complaint, this time for damages sustained over five years of what the business alleges was unfair treatment in the city’s contracting for tow services. Attorneys for Atomic Custom, LLC filed the complaint in Aiken County Court of Common Pleas on Nov. 4, alleging that former North Augusta Public Safety Chief John Thomas and NADPS Lt.
Vern Sadler had conspired to prevent Atomic from being added to the agency’s rotation of wrecker services it relies on for towing. According to the complaint, Atomic estimates it lost out on $29,000 per year or $145,000 in all between 2019 and end of 2023, due to what Atomic alleges was unfair practice that gave preferential treatment to other businesses. During the timeframe outlined in Atomic’s complaint, the city of North Augusta did not have an enforceable ordinance for how Public Safety contracted with wrecker services on tows, only a more informal agency policy.
This policy is at the root of Atomic’s complaint. Edgefield County got another multi-million dollar investment, this time from the West Coast Created in 1998, it was amended twice – once in 2011 to limit the number of services on the call rotation between six and 10 companies, and then again in 2012 to permit only those services based in North Augusta to be on the rotation. According to Atomic’s complaint, however, the rotation was further limited to six companies, not the range of six to 10, and limited not by any policy amendment but merely by the decision of former Chief Thomas and Lt.
Sadler. According to the complaint, Lt. Sadler had told Jared Littrell, owner of Atomic Custom, that “the reason he held the number to six, in spite of being authorized to work with as many as ten, was that the ‘current companies on the list really had a problem with adding more companies to the rotation, as it cuts into their number of weeks on call for a year which cuts into their business.
’” Atomic alleges it was repeatedly “rebuffed” by Thomas and Sadler “without cause,” according to the complaint, even though it is based "within the city limits and completely meeting the requirements” of the agency’s policy, according to the complaint. Sadler and Thomas, the complaint reads, “preferred their current providers so much that after Midlands had been purchased by another tow company (Lively’s), Sadler agreed to allow the Midlands rotation slot to continue to be toned out as if it were a separate entity, rather than allow [Atomic] to be placed on the wrecker rotation list.” Atomic alleges the way in which services were selected for the rotation “did not appear to comply with” North Augusta’s own procurement process, “nor on its face” with statutory mandates for the state of South Carolina.
Littrell previously warned the city, prior even to his FOIA suit, which since has been dismissed, that Public Safety was running a system too much like a lottery system, leaving the city open to a lawsuit like the one his attorneys filed this month. Since that warning, the city has revised how Public Safety handles tow calls – and Atomic is now on the list. North Augusta City Council last year did away with the more informal policy of Public Safety to instead create an ordinance that would govern procurement of tow services in a way officials said would be more “ legally defensible ,” City Attorney Kelly Zier at the time acknowledging the city even then had met with some “legal problems” stemming from that earlier policy.
The ordinance initiated a new system that began in January this year. There is no longer a cap on the number of services that can be on the rotation, but the week-by-week call basis (as opposed to a call-by-call basis) carried over from previous practice..
