Campbell County officially appealing landfill decision

Campbell County supervisors Monday made it official that they will appeal a $9 million jury award in a landfill contamination suit to the state Supreme Court.

Also Monday, county officials said they now are working with a Richmond law firm that specializes in environmental issues, which will assist the two county attorneys with the case.

The firm, Troutman Sanders LLC, has “a good history of legal expertise in the environmental field,” said County Administrator David Laurrell after the meeting. “We were pleased with their experience and what they could bring to the table.”

Supervisors voted unanimously to appeal the case after nearly an hour-long closed session where they met for the first time with environmental lawyer John Burke. Laurrell said the county has been working with Troutman Sanders for about two months.

County attorney David Shreve said the appeal could be a yearlong process and can’t start until Judge Michael Gamble certifies last month’s ruling upholding the $9 million jury award.

“If we prevail on the issues that are the ones we think are the strongest arguments, the case could be reversed and dismissed,” he said after the meeting. “It is possible that the Supreme Court decision would be to remand the case back to trial, but in my opinion that’s less likely.”

During a court hearing last month, Shreve argued that the $9 million jury award plus legal fees and interest was excessive and calculations for lost earnings and damages included twice the actual amount. Shreve asked the judge for a new trial because he felt the jury had been misled by an expert witness who used inflammatory language that misrepresented facts during the trial, influencing the jury to award such a high amount.

Gamble denied that request, but did rule that the county does not have to pay interest on the jury award.

Claude “Butch” and Virginia Royal, who own the 160-acre Twin Oaks mobile home park near Yellow Branch, sued the county in 2005 and 2006 after testing in 2002 showed chemicals were leaking from the nearby county landfill into their drinking water.

Gamble ruled in September that the county was responsible for the pollution, and jurors awarded the $9 million judgment in October after a nine-day trial that detailed the value of that damage.

During the trial, the Royals’ lawyer said the property and business was worth about $6 million and the family lost about $1 million holding down rent charges and $2 million from the loss of their use of groundwater.

The county argued that the Royals have clean drinking water on their property and were able to switch tenants to clean wells soon after contamination was discovered. The county also argued it offered to provide public water access for years, largely at the county’s expense.

The Royals said the offers were made in exchange for giving up claims against the county, and that that the pollution left the property uninsurable and created a high liability risk.

Records obtained through a Freedom of Information request show that, since the contamination was discovered in 2002, the county has spent a total of $1.2 million in legal expenses. The amount includes $452,000 in legal fees, $353,000 for consultants and $409,000 for all other expenses, including court reporters, expert witnesses, legal consultants and geological information.

In that same time period, the county spent $1.3 million for all other legal bills not including landfill-related issues.