City Could Have Settled Early On For $32,500 Or $30,000.
Our next post explores an incredible case in North Carolina involving a North Carolina couple, the Wilkes, who sued the City of Boiling Spring Lakes in inverse condemnation for raising the level of a lake and taking away about 1,200 square feet of the couple’s property. (This case actually went to the North Carolina Supreme Court, which sided with the couple.) The amount of the property loss was pegged somewhere in the five-year litigation for $2,070.35 in damages (no typo here).
Now, the couple is seeking substantial attorney’s fees as the prevailing party.
Here is some more factual context. City offered to settle for $4,000, but the Wilkes wanted $32,500. Wilkes later offered to settle for $30,000, but City stuck to $4,000. Meanwhile, the litigation kept going such that the couple and City apparently have spent $627,187.90 (actually, if another couple is counted with similar claims, $699,257.75). City taxpayers have footed at least $378,878.90 to date over five years, a pretty hefty sum for a municipality with an annual $400,000 budget.
But there is more—you guessed it, attorney’s fees shifting by the couple. They have filed a request to recoup $318,308.50 in fees from City—a request pending before Brunswick County Superior Court Judge Tripp Watson.
Those $30-32,500 prior settlement offers should look pretty good, in retrospect, to the City. Yikes!