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Judge Payne rules for county in airport lawsuits
By Lynn Hotaling
A Superior Court judge Monday (Dec. 1) ended two lawsuits filed two years ago against the Jackson County Airport Authority by landowners whose property is adjacent to the airstrip.
According to Eric Ridenour, attorney for plaintiffs R.L. Ammons and Dewayne Pruett, Judge Ronald Payne granted summary judgment on behalf of the airport authority and co-defendant Jackson County. Though the judge’s order has yet to be filed, Ridenour said Judge Payne’s ruling was based on the “statute of repose,” which Ridenour said limits the time parties have to bring lawsuits to seven years.
Airport Authority Chairman Greg Hall said Tuesday he’s pleased by the ruling.
“I’m delighted the judge found in our favor,” he said. “Now we can move forward with the airport improvements without the threat of lawsuits hanging over us.”
The lawsuits stem from an August 2005 landslide that happened after an isolated storm dumped massive rainfall on the Little Savannah watershed and sent large amounts of mud onto the Ammons property. The same storm caused movement at an earlier slide on the Pruett property.
The ruling means that his clients would have had to file a lawsuit in 1984 for a landslide that occurred in 2005, Ridenour said, citing the fact the airport was completed in 1977.
Pruett said he’s disappointed by the decision and told The Herald Tuesday that the county ought to at least clean out his creek and fix his driveway.
“They’re saying the airport’s not dangerous when I’ve got reports from the N.C. Geological Survey saying it is,” Pruett said.
Ridenour said he and his clients disagree with the ruling based on the statute of repose because there’s been negligence on the county’s part since the airport was constructed.
“County officials knew it was built wrong, and there’s a (1979) lawsuit that proved contributory negligence,” he said Tuesday. “(The county) has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on studies that all said things need to be done. (County officials) willingly elected to wait and see if any damage would happen, and when it did, they turned their backs.”
Ridenour also expressed surprise at county officials actions toward Ammons and Pruett.
“I can’t believe our local government is doing this to local people,” he said. “I can’t believe the group of men on that board would knowingly cower behind loopholes in the law and the might of (the county’s) $78 million budget to avoid taking care of the people their airport damaged.”
He and his clients have not yet determined whether to file an appeal, Ridenour said.
The lawsuits contended county officials and the authority share responsibility for addressing these concerns and asked for fair market value for their property. County officials initially said they didn’t own the airport and filed court papers asking to be removed as a defendant. That strategy changed after October 2007 attempts at mediation failed, and the county and airport authority mended their fences following the appointment of county Manager Ken Westmoreland to the authority early this year.
Westmoreland did not return several Herald phone calls seeking comment for this report.
Controversial since its mid-1970s construction, the Jackson County Airport sits atop Berry Ridge near Cullowhee. In their lawsuits, which appear to be the 10th legal actions to revolve around slope failure, Ammons and Pruett contended the 30-year-old airstrip is threatening their homes and property.
The 1979 lawsuit Ridenour referenced above found Jackson County suing the contractor (Burton) who built the airport and the engineering firm (Barbot) that supervised its construction. A copy of that suit in The Herald files indicates that the county alleged negligence on the part of both Burton and Barbot.
In that suit, the plaintiff, Jackson County, which was represented at the time by now-retired attorney Ben Bridgers and current county attorney Paul Holt, alleges that since construction of the airport began ... “the drainage has not been adequate or proper” and “the plaintiff has encountered numerous serious problems and defects ... in that water and other materials have drained and washed from the airport onto the property of adjoining landowners damaging the property of said land owners” and “one large landfill area has failed and eroded, sliding down the slope and removing the lateral support of the airport runway.”
When contacted by The Herald in 2007 as to the outcome of that court battle, Bridgers said that the contractor was not found to be negligent because testimony showed he didn’t do anything he was not told to do.
The engineering firm, on the other hand, was found negligent but did not pay any damages because the county was found to be “contributorily negligent” in that county officials approved improper construction methods, Bridgers said.
A local contractor who was hired by the airport authority to clean out drainage ditches and repair some of the damage to the Ammons property after the 2005 landslide said at the time that airport construction was to blame for both the Ammons and Pruett slides.
“Building the airport caused the runoff problems,” Paul Lewis said. “I was raised in that area, and there never were these kind of problems before they built it.”
According to Lewis, no effort was made to clear the site of vegetation before airport construction began.
“They just went up there with big bulldozers and started in,” he said. “There was no pipe, and no drainage.”
Herald reporter Stephanie Salmons contributed to this report.
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