New York-based civil construction manager Judlau Contracting has filed a lawsuit against the Illinois Tollway Authority alleging that the highway’s “pre-bidding errors, misrepresentations and misrepresentations” have caused years of delays and increased costs for its parts of the Interstate 490/Illinois toll interchange project.
The contractor claims in the lawsuit filed March 27 in DuPage County Circuit Court that it is owed $29.4 million in damages for damages caused by the highway failures. A $19 million settlement was reached between Judlau and the highway in September 2025, but only $9.6 million has been paid, and Judlau is now asking the court to rescind that agreement and allow him to recover the full amount.
At the root of the dispute, Judlau claims the tollway failed to obtain the necessary easements for two projects that are part of the overall effort to build the new Interstate 490 toll road on the west side of O’Hare International Airport and connect it to Interstate 294 and Interstate 90.
The $534 million project includes construction of three miles of I-490’s main roadway along with 16 ramps and 15 bridges, according to the toll authority’s website.
Judlau’s two projects are for the construction of a new over $21 million Union Pacific Railway Bridge and the construction of a $37.8 million retaining wall from the Canadian Pacific Railway Yard in Bensenville, Illinois to Iving Park Road.
Without the necessary easements and permits, and with revisions to the project, the 13-month deadline to build the bridge turned into 777 days before Judlau could begin work, the suit claims.
The retaining wall project lost 514 days because of the highway failures, the suit also claims.
The highway awarded contracts in 2021 and 2022 to Judlau for the projects with a collective value of more than $60 million, according to the lawsuit.
“Unbeknownst to Judlau, the expressway’s representation in each contract was false,” according to the lawsuit. “The expressway had failed to obtain required approvals; Judlau was unable to access construction sites; and the expressway revised the plans repeatedly after the contracts were awarded,” leading to years of delays and increased costs for Judlau.
After Judlau threatened a lawsuit in April 2025, the suit claims the highway agreed to make partial payments to mitigate the loss. Then, in September 2025, the highway refused to pay Judlau the final nearly $10 million owed.
Judlau alleges that the highway almost immediately sought to undermine the September agreement by ordering its project manager in October 2025 to withhold nearly $4 million in other pending payment requests for steel cost adjustments that it says were not part of the September 2025 agreement.
RELATED
The settlement will pay Judlau and subcontractors 315M for the terminated contract
“Adding insult to injury,” the lawsuit says the turnway claimed Judlau’s documentation for the additional payment was insufficient and therefore refused to pay the nearly $10 million that had already been approved by the Illinois Toll Authority Board. Judlau says it hired a construction appraisal expert to provide a detailed assessment and breakdown of Judlau’s increased costs caused by the freeway on both projects, which it provided to the freeway in January 2026.
The highway did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a separate lawsuit filed in 2024, the highway agreed to pay nearly $31.5 million to Judlau Contracting and its trade contractors after it ended a $324 million contract with Judlau to rebuild the southbound lanes of the Interstate 290 and Interstate 88 interchange near Oak Brook, Illinois.
