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It took an army of contractors and subcontractors two years to build the hotel, at a cost of more than $1.5 billion. When the scheduled pre-millennium opening was delayed, it became clear that something was wrong. Subcontractors started complaining that they had not been paid, and the resulting tangle of suits and countersuits quickly grew massive in scale. When the dispute finally reached a jury, the trial dragged on for months and became one of Nevada's longest-running civil jury trials ever.
By the time the testimony wrapped up in 2003, lawyers had put into evidence more than 10,000 exhibits. While the number of exhibits was large, it represented only a tiny fraction of the more than 2 million documents and 50,000+ pages of pleadings that had to be tracked. Catalyst's client, one of the world's largest international insurance and financial services companies, entered the litigation and immediately saw the need for a technology solution to manage the millions of pages of paper. The insurance company's Director of Operations for excess claims arranged a meeting with John Tredennick, Chief Executive Officer of Catalyst. Tredennick, a courtroom veteran and technology expert, understood the situation immediately and laid out a plan detailing how Catalyst (then caseSHARE) could help this insurance giant manage the Las Vegas litigation load.
The Director of Operations was impressed. Although he had looked at other extranet providers, in his mind, none measured up to Catalyst. In short order, Catalyst received the green light. The director and his litigation team met regularly with Tredennick and his development team, who tailored a Catalyst system to meet the client's specifications. Within months, the insurance company was ready to deploy the system and take command of the mountains of case-related documents associated with the Las Vegas litigation.
AIG, the insurance company has since used Catalyst for other large cases, a testament to their satisfaction with the product. They extended their relationship with Catalyst beyond the courtroom, commissioning four additional, extranet-based document management projects:
- An Executive Claim Summary System that links all of the insurance company's adjusters via the Internet to their supervisors and other executives for the purpose of automating the claim review process.
- A comprehensive reinsurance repository system that enables all of its reinsurers to share all relevant information about a case or series of cases, via the Web.
- A system linking law firm and other vendor bills to payment requests that enables the insurer and its reinsurers to track payments on a large litigation matter.
- A system to manage settlement agreements that enables the legal department to find similar agreements easily.
The insurance company has expressed appreciation for the quality of Catalyst products, as well as for the rapid project development times and reasonable cost. "Catalyst is so flexible that it is capable of serving many, many different needs," noted the Director of Operations. "In fact," he adds, "the Catalyst name is so frequently invoked within our company that it has become a catchphrase: "Let's get Catalyst to do it'."
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