Jury grants $9 million judgment to Campbell mobile home park owners

RUSTBURG — A jury has granted a $9 million judgment in favor of the owners of a Campbell County manufactured home park who sued the county claiming the landfill next door polluted their drinking water and made their land and business unsellable.

The seven-person jury announced its verdict last week at the end of a nine-day trial.

Landowners Claude “Butch” and Virginia Royal declined comment, as did County Attorney David Shreve.

Shreve said the parties would most likely not comment about the matter until after a meeting later this month of the trial jury to consider whether it will also assess a judgment for attorneys’ fees and costs.

The Royals, who own the 160-acre Twin Oaks park near Yellow Branch, sued the county in 2005 and 2006 after testing in 2002 showed chemicals were leaking from the landfill into their drinking water.

Circuit Court Judge Michael Gamble ruled in September that the county was responsible for polluting the water. During the trial, which started Oct. 19, jurors heard evidence about the value of that damage.

During the trial, Charlie Williams, the Royals’ lawyer, told them the manufactured home park was worth about $6 million, and that the family lost about $1 million holding down rent charges and $2 million from the loss of their use of groundwater.

Shreve argued the Royals have clean drinking water on their property and were able to immediately switch tenants from polluted wells to clean wells when the contamination was discovered. He also argued the county has offered to provide piped-in drinking water to the property for years, largely at the county’s expense.

The Royals contended the water offers were made in exchange for giving up claims against the county.

Shreve declined to comment about any matter related to the case until after the Nov. 13 hearing about the possible award of attorneys’ fees, including the prospect of an appeal or the chance of renewing a lawsuit against the county’s former landfill engineering consultant, Joyce Engineering.

The county agreed to drop a cross claim against the engineering company earlier this year. The suit was initially filed to cover the cost of treating the polluted groundwater and to at least partially recover some of the money awarded to the Royals.

In April 2008, Shreve said county officials believed Joyce was negligent in monitoring groundwater around the landfill.

Campbell administrator David Laurrell said Monday he could not comment on case specifics because it is still pending.

“We’ll have to take it into consideration for the budget process next year,” he said responding to questions about how the county might pay for any judgment. “We’re going to have to look at a mixture of approaches in order to resolve the issue.”

The county has a reserve fund it has been growing for several years, he said. “Obviously that will be one of the things we have to look at.”

Public records show that fund had about $9.9 million. But, Laurrell said, “much of that is budget offset for the anticipated shortfall we anticipate from the state next year and the following year.”

Staff writer Sarah Watson contributed to this report.