Dive summary:

• Jacobs Engineering Group paying the City of Victorville, Calif., more than $52 million to settle a lawsuit that involved Jacobs' Carter & Burgess unit, a power plant intended to attract business to the town and an inexperienced but very ambitious municipality that needed more than the standard level of client care.
• Jacobs was appealing a 2011 jury verdict against it, but interest was piling up at the rate of $14,000 a day if it lost the appeal, too, and attorneys persuaded Jacobs and its insurers to cut their losses.
• Carter & Burgess was playing a role of both designer for the power plant and adviser to the city, and that put the firm into a role in which, a jury agreed, it had a fiduciary responsibility to Victorville, not just a technical one.

From the article:

In winning the settlement, Victorville’s attorneys successfully argued that an engineer’s responsibility to its client can be, at times, much more than the customary standard of care. ...