School District Would Hand the Property Back.
To show you how expensive modern litigation happens to be, take the case of the Natomas Unified School District. (Natomas is one of the remaining undeveloped communities in the northwest Sacramento, CA area.)
A grand jury report in May 2009 alleged that the District paid six times the value of a certain land purchase from two developers in 2007, land which was going to be used to build a bioscience magnet school on the site once the residential market began to rebound. In response, the District filed suit in Sacramento County Superior Court, naming the two developers and other participants in the sale (the law firm and lead attorney, the real estate broker, and the appraiser and his appraisal firm).
District has based its suit on the theory that appraisals for the property were inflated, with all the defendants apparently part of some scheme to profit by the sale. (District paid $13.3 million for the property, $10.4 million too much if its claims are favorably adjudicated.)So, what is the litigation tab for the District (inclusive of legal costs both before the after the property’s purchase in 2007)? According to Diana Lambert in her February 15, 2010 article “Natomas school district’s legal fees top $450,000 in land suit” (published in The Sacramento Bee), the bill so far is $454,878.03. District hopes to recover fees if they win, but the parties have apparently been participating in mediation that may or may not result in some reimbursement for the legal tab incurred thus far.