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COLUMBUS — Among the tens of thousands of pages of documents, reports and proceedings in Gildner v Accenture is a one-page, hand-written note that gets to the point.

"This is unbelievably bad — lack of capacity of current system & lack of documentation ... Can we sue Accenture?" wrote then-Gov. Bob Taft after he learned that the state had paid $63 million in unbid contracts for OhioWorks, a large computer system that performed so poorly it was abandoned.

The state didn't sue. In fact, the state has done everything it can to get rid of a lawsuit that is trying to get the $63 million back for Ohio taxpayers.

Two Dayton attorneys teamed up to launch what may be the largest taxpayer lawsuit in Ohio history. Jamie Greer is representing his friend, Lance Gildner, and all Ohio taxpayers in the case that appears to be moving toward trial in the Ohio Court of Claims early next year.

Greer and Gildner want the court to order Accenture to pay back the original $63 million, plus interest, attorney fees and costs, and punitive damages. The payoff could be upwards of $100 million, but it's a gamble. Greer and his colleagues have already covered $300,000 in upfront expenses, and would get nothing if they lose.

"Our motivation is to do the right thing and get the money for the taxpayers," said Greer, a third-generation attorney in Bieser Greer and Landis, and the son of well-known attorney David Greer. "It's a case that feels good because it's doing the right thing. And you know if you weren't doing it, it wouldn't get done."

The state attorney general's office declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Accenture spokesman Peter Soh said, "The suit is baseless and without merit, Accenture and the state having settled their disputes through a valid and binding agreement more than seven years ago."

He added that OhioWorks linked together more than 155,000 employers, jobseekers and state and local agency personnel from the time it went online in 1998 until the state chose to move to a new system in 2002.

Nonetheless, the OhioWorks computer system was one of the biggest debacles of the Taft administration. Beginning in 1996, the state started giving unbid contracts to Accenture, then Anderson Consulting, to build a computer system that would match unemployed workers with jobs.

Six years and $63 million later, the state decided the system was unworkable and couldn't be salvaged.

In June 2001, state Inspector General Tom Charles released a 92-page report that detailed corruption and mismanagement of the Accenture contracts and eventually led to criminal convictions for former state human services director Arnold Tompkins and Accenture consultant Donna Givens on ethics charges.

But rather than suing Accenture, the state moved quickly to settle.

By October, Accenture and the state Department of Job and Family Services inked a deal under which Accenture paid $5.5 million in debt forgiveness and cash and the state agreed to tell anyone who asked that the OhioWorks system was a success.

It wasn't anything close to a success and state officials knew it.

Two weeks before the settlement deal, another contractor, Compuware, reported to the state that "...the current system cannot be salvaged, and a complete rewrite of the system is necessary." The Compuware report, however, didn't come out publicly until after the settlement was reached.

Following the boondoggle in the news, Greer and his colleagues at Bieser Greer & Landis saw what they thought could be a good taxpayer lawsuit.

Greer recruited Gildner, his college roommate and a tax attorney with Taft, Stettinius & Hollister who has spent his career fighting big government on behalf of small taxpayers, to put his name on the suit. Gildner jumped at it.

"If you need a taxpayer representative, I'm all over that," Gildner told Greer over lunch at Uno's in downtown Dayton.

It irritated Gildner that the state hounds small taxpayers for little bits of money yet the state didn't go after Accenture.

"Here is a $60 million, blatant rip-off and they walk away from it without batting an eye," Gildner said.

Greer filed the case in October 2005. Since then, both Accenture and the state have maneuvered to get the suit dismissed, saying in court papers that the settlement deal is valid, there was no fraud, and Gildner has no standing to file the case in the first place.

Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge John W. Kessler overruled motions by Accenture and the state to dismiss Gildner's suit. Kessler noted that then-Attorney General Betty Montgomery's "as to form" signature on the deal was not an approval of the settlement's terms. (Montgomery said it was the only time in her eight years in that office that she signed off on a deal in that manner but declined further comment, citing attorney-client privilege.)

After Kessler refused to dismiss Gildner's case, Accenture sued the state. That move forced both cases — Gildner v. Accenture and Accenture v. state — into the Ohio Court of Claims in Columbus where both cases are now pending.

Accenture and the state both argue that the settlement agreement is valid and that Gildner doesn't have standing to undo the deal, nor can he prove that the settlement was the product of fraud.

"The Gildners have not even offered a theory of who committed the alleged fraud, what misrepresentations were made, when they were made, or who made them," Accenture's attorneys from Squire Sanders and Dempsey said in court papers.

Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1624 or lbischoff@DaytonDailyNews.com.